ABSTRAC

Yurni Andar, 2019. Conducted the research entitled “the students use of past perfect
continuous tense. English language education study program, teacher training and
education faculty, Khairun University. Advisor (1) Dr. Sutaryo Advisor (2) Asrul M.
Syawal, S.Pd., M.Pd
This research focused on past perfect continuous tense at the second year students of
SMA Negeri 4 Kota Ternate. the objective of this research i to know students’
competence in using past perfect continuous tense. This research applied descriptive
qualitative method to describe phenomena related to the problem of the research. In
this research, the researcher selected the second grade students of SMA Negeri 4
Kota Ternate. There are 330 students consisting of three classes but the researcher
only chooses 33 students of class IPA 6, academic year 2018 using purposive
sampling. Students’ use of past perfect continuous through fill in the blank and
translation, it consist 19 respondents. Six respondents obtained score 50, three
respondents obtained score 45, three respondents obtained score 40, two respondents
obtained score 35. Two respondents obtained score 30%, two respondents obtained
score 25, and one respondent obtained score 20. Mean score from students’ result is
755 and average score 39.73. It means that the second grade students at SMA Negeri
4 Ternate still confused in using past perfect continuous tense. The finding shows that
most Students did not correctly answer the question of past perfect continuous tense.
Keywords: Students, past perfect continuous tense