Error Analysis Of Chinese Punctuation Marks Used By Indonesian Students Of Intermediate And Advanced Level

Punctuation marks are one of the important substances of any written language. Therefore, it is justified to say that a student’s knowledge on using Chinese punctuation marks greatly influences his/her writing skill in Chinese. Indonesian students-whose mother tongue is Indonesian-often face confusion and difficulties when it comes to using Chinese punctuation marks. This is because, despite the fact that Chinese and Indonesian are distinct from each other, there are similarities and differences in the usage of punctuation marks of these two languages.In terms of using Chinese punctuation marks, most Indonesian students are frequently influenced by his/her knowledge of Indonesian punctuation marks’ usage. In this paper, the usage of Chinese punctuation marks is compared to their Indonesian counterparts through the analysis on50essays written by the Indonesian students (from Intermediate and Advanced levels) who learned Chinese writing. The misuse of Chinese punctuation marks was identified and classified. In addition to this, the causes of such error were investigated and finally effective methods for teaching Indonesian students the knowledge on using Chinese punctuation marks were proposed. It is hoped that this research could benefit Indonesian students when they learn Chinese punctuation marks and this knowledge would further improve their writing skill.