This study is aimed to discover the types and the dominant type of theme markedness in EFL students’ recount texts based on the theory of systemic functional linguistics. Qualitative content analysis approach was utilized in this study. Writing sheets were utilized as the instruments of collecting the data. The data were in the form of clauses taken from 33 recount texts written by second-year students of English literature department of University of Sumatera Utara. Based on the analysis, it was discovered that there were 1144 clauses in the data. Then, in terms of theme markedness, marked theme (MT) had 213 occurrences (18.62%) and unmarked theme (UMT) had 931 occurrences (81.38%). The conclusion can be drawn that there were 2 types of markedness namely marked theme (MT) and unmarked theme (UMT), and the dominant type of theme markedness was unmarked theme (UMT). It means that the students dominantly used unmarked theme in their recount texts.Keywords: markedness, theme, recount text, systemic functional, content analysis

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This study aims at investigating and classifying the syntactical errors in the writing of report text made by 20 students of Department of English Literature of FIB-USU. Syntactical errors in writing made by EFL students are needed to be investigated by using the Error Analysis theory developed by Gass & Selinker in 2008 as it provides six appropriate investigation procedures, namely; collecting data, identifying errors, classifying errors, quantifying errors, analyzing errors and remediation.  Each of students was assigned to write a topic-based report text with the length of 150 up to 250 words in count. This study dealt with a qualitative descriptive approach. After the EA procedures applied, in this study found that the students made major syntactical errors within the use of article ‘a/an’,’ the’ in terms of omission and addition of articles, the use of relative pronoun, and the use of subject-verb agreement in terms of past tense agreement and number agreement. Based on the error analysis procedure applied, it was obtained that the most predominant syntactical errors made by the students was the use of article which comprises of 125 errors (50.2%), followed by the use of subject-verb agreement with 117 errors (47%) and followed by the use of relative pronoun as the least error which comprises of 7 errors (2.8%). The syntactical error made by the students caused by two major sources, intra-language error and intra-language error. By seeing at these problematic areas, the researcher has suggested to take out several related pedagogical remediation to the students.

This study was aimed at discovering the levels of English-Arabic code-mixing in Islamic boarding school students’ daily conversation. This study departs from code-mixing theory in sociolinguistics. Qualitative approach was utilized as the research design. The data were in the form of word, phrase, and clause taken from utterances obtained by recording the conversations of students. From the data analysis taken from 20 situations, there were 98 utterances of code mixing, which were used by students in their conversation at Islamic boarding school covering intra- and extra-sentential code – mixing. The dominant occurrence is in word level totalling to 65 occurrences (66.4%), followed by clause level 13 occurrences (13.2%), phrase level 10 occurrences (10.2%), and sentence level 10 occurrences (10.2%). Therefore, the code – mixing did exist in students’ conversation. Even though the appearance of the code – mixing in students’ conversation was not really high but this needs to be re-examined the correct use of the code – mixing in orther to avoid the misunderstanding and miscommunication among the students and with teachers.

This research aims to determine and explain the types and the core constituents of Acehnese relative clauses which so far have not been thoroughly discussed. To collect data for this study, a direct elicitation technique is used, and the data is then analyzed through a qualitative descriptive technique. The results showed that the relative clauses in Acehnese were clauses embedded as modifiers of noun phrases. Similar to the relative clauses’ theory proposed by experts in the Acehnese, there are five types of relative clauses: relativization of subject, relativization of predicate, relativization of object, relativization of possessive, and relativization of noun. Relative clauses in Acehnese are formed by connecting core nouns and relative clauses through the connecting word ‘nyang’, except for the relative clause of the predicate element through the ellipsis of the predicate element. The basic structure of the Acehnese relative clauses is the arrangement of the main constituents preceding (postnominal) the relative clauses. The constituents that described the relative clauses could form words or phrases depending on the reference to the meaning of the relative clauses. In the Acehnese, the following elements do not exist: (1) relative clauses that can be reduced by adverbials such as in English, (2) relative pronouns as in German and relative particles such as in Chinese Mandarin; and (3) the attachment of relative suffixes to verbs as in Korean.