Problematic Grammar of Chinese Sentences Faced by Students Having Indonesian as Their Mother Tongue

This paper examine the grammatical problems faced by Surabaya students having Indonesian as their mother tongue when constructing Chinese sentences. A qualitative descriptive method consisting test materials made by
30 students learning Chinese as a second language was used. Some grammatical errors in the Chinese sentences were found. Problematic in writing Chinese sentences consists of: sequence errors of place and time determinant words; grammatical errors about the Modifier and Head norm in arranging words; errors using the three kinds of words de, “的de”, “得de”, and “地de”. All these errors were influenced by their Indonesian mother language, while in arranging Chinese sentences, it was also interferences by the English grammatical norm to be. To overcome these problematics, the best solution is using contrasive analyses, which expose the differences between these two languages, and thereby clarify the point of differences.
Key words: Problematic Grammar error Chinese Indonesian