EGLISH:
This descriptive qualitative study aimed to identify the types and sources of
errors made by tenth-grade students of MAN Insan Cendekia Bangka Tengah in using action verbs when writing recount texts. The subjects were 24 students of Class XA, selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected through writing tasks and semi-structured interviews. The students’ writing was analyzed using Dulay, Burt, and Krashen’s Surface Strategy Taxonomy, while the interviews were used to identify the sources of errors. The findings revealed 150 errors in four types: misformation (95 errors, 63.3%), omission (35 errors, 23.3%), addition (15 errors, 10.0%), and misordering (5 errors, 3.4%). The interviews showed that the errors originated from interlingual transfer (115 cases, 76.7%) and intralingual
transfer (35 cases, 23.3%). These results indicated that they still struggle to apply action verbs correctly in the simple past tense because of mother tongue interference and incomplete understanding of English grammatical rules. Therefore, English teachers are recommended to provide more intensive practice and explicit instruction on action verbs in recount texts to minimize students’ grammatical errors.