AN ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN MASTERING

THE SIMPLE PAST TENSE AT THE SECOND GRADE OF SMPN

1 SUKARESMI CIANJUR

1. BACKGROUND OF THE RESEARCH

The ability of using English in the era of globalization is very needed

considering that English is the international communication language.

(Supriadi,2009:3). But if we want to be able to use English we have to master

the grammar, grammar is the system of rules governing the structure of

phrases, clauses, and sentences consisting of words contained in the lexicon

(Sri Widiati, 1998:7). Grammar, which is an essential part of language,

without understanding it, it will be very difficult for us to speak in a correct

pattern. The mastering of grammar of all languages plays an important role

in communication, unfortunately many people still aren’t aware of this role

of grammar.

The errors that writer is going to analyze is focused on Simple Past Tense,

as we know, Simple Past Tense is one of the important tenses in grammar and

commonly used in English. We normally use the Simple Past Tense to talk

about events, actions or situations which occured in the past and are now

finished. In Simple Past Tense there are regular and irregular verbs which are

the essential parts of the Simple Past Tense. Irregular verbs are more

complicated and cause many difficulties for students, and many students are

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still poor in understanding irregular forms even for the students in universities.

(James, 1998:142).

The competence-basis language curriculum is a systematic draft and

strategy which build the communicative competence or the competence of

contextual. It means that it builds all the basis of competences themselves.

They are like linguistics competences, social culture and strategies to make the

benefit context.”

From the statement above, it is clear that Curriculum Based on

competence tries to develop and achieve the communicative competence or

discourse competence and has perspective that is comprehensive to the

discourse. The learners must be able to master the four skills, they are:

listening, speaking, reading, and writing, also English components such as:

grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.

Among the four skills above, writing is the most difficult one. Because it

requires demonstrating the control of a number of variables simultaneously;

they are control of content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation

spelling, etc. Nunan (1989: 35) points out, “It has been argued that that

learning to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the macro

skills for all language users regardless of whether the language in question is

first, second, or foreign language.” Another opinion comes from Heaton

(1989: 138). He explain that the writing skills are complex and sometimes

difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical

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devices but also of conceptual and judgment elements. It means that ability to

write needs a special skill and process in organizing language material by

using learners’ own words and ideas and to be a good composition.

According to Kurkulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP) English at the

second grade explain that the English language in Junior High School involves

reading, writing, listening and speaking. Besides grammar, vocabulary ,

pronounciation and spelling are also being taught to support the development

of the four language skills. The learners have to understand, know and

comprehend the English language in order not to make errors.

Based on the reasons above, the researcher is interested in analyzing the

students difficulties in past tense. So, the title taken by the researcher is “ An

Analysis of the Students Errors In Mastering Past Tense at the second grade of

SMPN 1 Sukaresmi Cipanas-Cianjur.

2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The students complain that learning English is difficult. For example they

have difficulties studying the past tense. The problem can be defined by the

researcher as follows:

1. How high the students’ability in mastering the past tense?

2. What are the difficulties that are encountered by the students in mastering

the past tense?

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3. REASON FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC

In this study, researcher has some reasons for choosing this topic as

follows :

 The first reason is that many students still do not understand much

about English tenses and especially past is one of them that

confuses the students. Without understanding English grammar,

students will get difficulties especially when they will translate

English sentences into Indonesia or other languages.

 The second reason is that since the students get difficulties in using

English tenses mentioned above, they will make mistakes in

building English sentences. As a result, the English lesson

objectives that are hoped to be in the curriculum of junior high

school specifically the expectation about students’ability in

practicing both written and oral communication will be difficult to

be achieved by the students.

4. OBJECTIVE OF THE RESEARCH

Based on the formulation questions, the main goals of this research are

follows :

1. To find out how high the student’s ability in mastering the past tense.

2. To identify the difficulties encountered by the student’s in mastering

the past tense.

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5. LIMITATION OF THE RESEARCH

This research is about error analysis in the second grade students of

SMPN 1 Sukaresmi Cipanas- Cianjur. The focus of the research is on

errors in mastering past tense. Based on the background above the

researcher wants to focus on the following questions :

1. What errors do the students make in mastering past tense.

2. What is the alternative solution to overcome the student’s errors?

6. DEFINITION OF KEY TERM

The topic of this thesis is “An analysis of the students Errors in

Mastering the Simple Past Tense”. To make the term stated in the topic

clear and limited, the writer classifies as follows:

1. An analysis is “a study of something by examining its parts”. (Martin

H. Manser, 19:13)

2. Student is “person who studying at college or university”. (Martin H.

Manser, 191:412)

3. Error is “a mistake, being wrong”. ( Martin H. Manser, 191: 141)

4. Mastering is “great skill or knowledge”. (Martin H. Manser, 191:256)

7. RESEARCH METHOD

This research uses a descriptive method. This method is to establish

the existence of phenomena by explicitly describing them. It involves a

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collection of techniques that used to specify or describe naturally the

difficulties in mastering simple past tense.

8. RESEARCH TECHNIQUE OF COLLECTING DATA

The collection of data is conducted by gathering the test to the

learners. This technique is adopted because the data can be collected from

various types of SL after the subjects have a theory and practice, and so

have abilities of mastering the simple past tense.

9. POPULATION AND SAMPLE OF THE RESEARCH

Before the writer determined the population and sample in this

research, she firstly formulated the definition of population and sample. A

population is a group of individuals’ persons, objects, or items from which

samples are taken for measurement. Burns say that: “A population is an

entire group of people or objects or event which all have at least one

characteristic in common, and must be defined specially and

unambiguously ( 1995:63)”.

In this research the population was the second grade students of SMPN

1 Sukaresmi Cipanas – Cianjur in 2012-2013 academic years. There were

27 classes of total number of 108 students.

Sample is a half or a part of researched population, named sample

research if we intend to generalize the result of sample research.

Concerning the sample, the writer determines based on Suharsimi

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Arikunto’ opinion(1997:112) “just estimate if the subject is less than a

hundred so that better take a subject the research is population research

and vice versa”.

A sample is a finite part of a statistical population whose properties are

studied to gain information about the whole (Webster, 1985). When

dealing with people, it can be defined as a set of respondents (people)

selected from a larger population for the purpose of a survey, In this

research, the writer used a cluster sample. This type of random sampling is

obtained by selecting clusters from the population on the basis of simple

random sampling. The sample of this research was the students of the

second semester in second grade students of SMPN 1 Sukaresmi Cipanas

in academic year 2012-2013.

This random sampling is carried out by using lottery. Then, ho got

class B that consists of 40 students and the writer took all of the students

in class B.

There were two tests provided by the writer. The first test was an

objective test in multiple choice forms. The items consisted of fifteen with

four options. This was the test to recognize students’ mastery in simple

past tense. Therefore, the results of the test scored and calculated.

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10. ORGANIZATION OF THE PROPOSAL

To simplify this analysis the writer writes the organization of proposal

as follows :

Background of the research, research question, reason for choosing the

topic, objective of the research, limitation of the research, definition of

key term, research method, research technique of collecting data,

population and sample of the research, and organization of the

proposal.