CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Research

Language is a communication tool for transferring information, ideas

and feelings from one person to others both written and oral form. In English

there are four skills that must be mastered by the students namely listening,

speaking, reading and writing. Listening and reading skills that involve

receiving messages are regarded as receptive skills. Speaking and writing

skills which involve language production are considered to be productive

skills. As productive skill, writing is not like speaking skill nor other receptive

skills. Writing is a difficult skill for not only it needs a lot of vocabularies in

composing paragraph, but also grammatically correct in order to be

comprehensible besides other writing’s rules. Therefore, composing paragraph

in writing activity takes a lot of time. As Harmer (2004 : 31) states:

Writing is often not time-bound in the way conversation is. When

writing, students frequently have more time to think than they do in
oral activities. They can go through what they know in their minds,
and even consult dictionaries, grammar books or other reference
material to help them.

In syllabus of 2013 Curriculum of SMP N. 1 Gido stated that writing is

included as one of the skills that should be taught to the students. The core

competence expects the students are capable in applying, factual, conceptual,

procedural, and metacognitive knowledge based on the students’ curiosity

about the science of arts, technology, art. Culture with humanity's insight,

national, state, and civilization-related causes phenomenon and event.

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Meanwhile, basic competence expects the students to analyze the social

functions, text structures, and linguistic features, in the recount text either in

written and oral form, short and simple text, based on personal experience in

the past.

Based on observation of the student’s work documents in recount text

writing and interview that were done by the researcher with English teacher in

SMP N. 1 Gido, the researcher found many problems related to the teaching

learning process of writing skill particularly recount text. In writing a recount

text, the students were not able to fulfill the requirements needed for writing

recount text. Focusing on grammar, it was found that students of eighth grade

confused to understand simple past tense for example they did not know the

verb 2 form, when they made a sentence in simple past tense, they always

used verb 1. Second, they did not know the form and the usage of adverb of

time. Third, they still had lack of knowledge about the differentiation of

irregular and regular verb form. For example Ibu membeli beras In translating

in English students wrote Mother buyed rice meanwhile the right sentence was

Mother bought rice. The students could not achieve the targets because their

knowledge in English was lack particularly in grammar.

In writing it is impossible that students never make errors. In fact it is

very normal and unavoidable to make errors. Hence, the teacher should be

aware of this problem and correct to avoid them making errors by analyzing

what students are doing. Errors analysis is very important because the

researcher wants to identify the errors made by students of using simple past

tense in writing recount text and the factors that influence their errors.
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According to James (2013: 1) “Error Analysis is the process of determining

the incidence, nature, causes and consequences of unsuccessful language.” In

other words, error analysis considers various rules or criteria in writing so that

the errors can be identified.

The other research was performed by Sa’diah, a student from Raden

Intan State Islamic University Lampung, a research entitled An Analysis of

Students’ Errors in using Simple Past Tense in writing Recount Text at the

First Semester of the Eighth Grade of SMP N. 1 Adiluwih Pringsewu

Academic Year 2017/2018. In his study the writer found that there are four

errors made by the students, they are ommision, addition, mis-formation and

mis-ordering and the most common error is mis-formation error with total

number is 33%.

Regarding to the explanation above, those were the reasons why the

researcher wanted to analyze students’ recount writing. Therefore, the

researcher conducted the qualitative research entitled “AN ERROR

ANALYSIS ON THE USE OF SIMPLE PAST TENSE IN WRITING

PERSONAL RECOUNT TEXT AT THE EIGHTH GRADE OF SMP

NEGERI 1 GIDO IN 2019/2020 ”.

B. The Focus of The Research

The focus of the research are analyzing the students’ errors and the

source of errors using simple past tense in writing personal recount text made

by the Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 1 Gido.

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Furthermore the research are questions of this research were :

1. What types of errors are made by the Eighth Grade Students of SMP

Negeri 1 Gido in using simple past tense in writing personal recount text?

2. What are the source of errors made by the Eighth Grade Students of SMP

Negeri 1 Gido in using simple past tense in writing personal recount text

C. The Purposes of the Research

The purposed of the research was to analyze the types of errors and find

out the sources of errors made by the Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 1

Gido in using Simple Past Tense in writing personal recount text.

D. The Significances of the Research

The result of the research is expected to give contribution to the related

study both theoretically and practically.

1. Theoretically

The result of the research was expected to be reference in teaching learning

process especially for teaching writing subject. The research theoritically

would enlarge the scope of the writing material of English book.

2. Practically

a. For the students, by conducting the research, it showed the students

about errors that they have made, so they were able to minimize

misunderstanding about the used of simple past tense in recount text.

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b. For the teachers, it would improved the teachers’ ability and knowledge

for looking the best and suitable components of teaching writing in the

class such as strategy, material and media.

c. For other researchers, the research could be used as reference in doing

research in the same field in the future.

E. Definition of the Key Terms

1. Error Analysis

Error analysis is the study of errors made by second and foreign

language learners. Error analysis may carry out in order to: a) find out the

types of errors which the learners make in language learning, b) find out the

causes of learners errors and c) obtain information on common difficulties

at once the suitable strategy in teaching language learning, as an aid in

teaching or in preparing teaching materials.

2. Writing

Writing is an activity to express writer’s idea, thought, and feeling on

a paper by using our own language. Writing requires fluency like word and

sentence, knowledge of various paragraph structures, and the ability to

develop a single unifying theme through those skill and competences.

3. Recount Text

Recount text is a text which tells about the story or event that

happens in the past time with the purpose to entertain or informing the

readers. Recount text is the text which is so close to the students‘life. The

students do not need to think hard to find the ideas in creating the story,
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because they go through with the events, so they can write the story

smoothly.

4. Simple Past Tense

Simple past is one of the tenses that is used to show an action or

activity in the past time without indicating any connection with the

present.

F. Research Method

In the research, the researcher used descriptive qualitative method,

qualitative method relies on text and image data. Creswell (2014:32) states:

Qualitative research is an approach for exploring and understanding the

meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.
The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures,
data typically collected in the participant’s setting, data analysis
inductively building from particulars to general themes, and the
researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data. The final
written report has a flexible structure. Those who engage in this form of
inquiry support a way of looking at research that honors an inductive
style, a focus on individual meaning, and the importance of rendering
the complexity of a situation.

It means that qualitative research is a research design where the researcher

presents the data with using description. The research gives the description

about the phenomenon and the situation which existed at the time of the

research. The written result of the research contains the explanation of the data

to illustrate and substantiate the presentation.

1. Research Approach and Type

The approach used by the researcher to conduct the research was

inductive approach with the aim of finding the meaning that originates the
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facts with an approach to make observation, recording all facts holistically

scientific with the observed problem. Futhermore, there were two types of

instruments used in the research. First, Student’s recount text writing

documentation. From this, the researcher knew the errors made by students in

writing recount text focusing in using simple past tense. The second, the

researcher conducted the interview to the English teacher as well as the

students in getting the deeper information about the sources of errors made by

the students.

2. The Setting of the Research

The place of the research was SMP Negeri 1 Gido, located in Hiliweto

village, Gido Subdistric, Nias regency. The researcher chose this location

because this school was easy to reach and the MCC that has been decided by

the school, could not be achieved by most students especially in writing skill.

3. Research Data and Informant

The data of the research indicates the types of data that shoud be

collected and analyzed by the researcher. According to Cresswell (2014:235)

the qualitative data for the study are from multiple sources of data or multiple

form of data such as interview, observations, documents, and audiovisual

information rather than rely on a single data source. Then the researcher

reviews all of the data, makes sense of it, and organizes it into categories or

themes that cuts across all of the data sources. In other words, the data and
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informant are selected purposefully that will help the researcher to understand

the problem and the research focus that have been formulated.

The data sources were the recount text written by the students and also

the transcripts of interview of the English teacher and students. The

researcher chose class VIII-F as the informant of the research because it was

suggested by the English teacher because most of the students had the low

score in writing recount text.

4. Procedures of Collecting Data

In collecting the data, the researcher used students’ recount text writing

documentation and interview. Creswell (2014:239) states that the data

collection of qualitative research consists of some procedures as follows:

identify the purposefully selected sites or individuals for the proposed study, a

related topic would be the number of sites and participants to be involved in

your study, indicate the types of data to be collected, collecting information

through unstructured or semi structured observations and interviews,

documents, and visual materials, as well as establishing the protocol for

recording information. Regarding to the theory above, the researcher followed

these procedures.

The researcher identified the informant of the research namely Class

VIII-F SMP Negeri 1 Gido, decided the number of participants that consists of

30 students, the types of data which would be collected were recount text and

transcrips of interview, as well as the researcher collected the data through

student’s recount text writing documentation and interview.

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After collecting students’ recount text writing documentation, the

researcher analyzed it in order to get the types of errors and formulated the

questions at once used in interview depending on the types of error made by

the students. Then, the researcher interviewed the students in obtaining the

reason why did the students made errors in using simple past tense of recount

text as well as the researcher interviewed the English teacher to know what

the difficulties faced by the students. After all the data had been collected

then the researcher analyzed it.

5. Technique of Analyzing Data

The technique of data analysis which used by the researcher in the

research was qualitative analysis technique which is function to describe and

interpret the result of qualitative data. In analyzing the data, the researcher

followed some procedures based on the theory of Troike in (Ellis,1994:47)

collecting of a sample of learner language, identification of errors, description

of errors, explanation of errors and evaluation of errors. Thus, the researcher

adopted this steps. In combining the data from both instruments students’

writing documentation and interview, for the first, the researcher explained the

errors made by the students as the result from the students’ recount text

writing documentation. As well as, the researcher explained and classified the

causes of errors made by the students in writing recount text based on the data

from interview work. Thus, by comparing and integrating each other, the

researcher took the conclusion through interpretation.

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For getting the quantitative data, it would be described in the table of

percentage and formula by Sudjono (2010) in Mulyono (2016:69) to have the

frequency and percentage of error as follows:

P = F X 100%
N
Notes: P: Percentage

F: Frequency

N: Number of cases (total of frequency)

6. Checking the Validity of Data and Research Findings

Checking Validity or to ensure trustworthiness in a research Guba

(1981:75) proposes several criteria :

a. Credibility

Guba and Lincoln (1989:101) claim the credibility of a study is

determined when researcher or readers are confronted with the

experience, they can recognize it. Credibility addresses the “fit” between

respondents’ views and the researcher’s representation of them

Qualitative researcher can use triangulation to show the research study’s

findings are credible.

In the research, the researcher used triangulation method by

integrating three data sources namely test recount writing, the result of

teacher’s interview and students’ interview.

b. Transferability

Transferability is how the researcher demonstrates that the research

findings are applicable to other context. In this case, other context can
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mean similar situation, similar population, or phenomena. Transferability

refers to the generalizability of inquiry. In qualitative research, this

concerns only to case-to-case transfer (Tobin & Begley, 2004:388).

c. Dependability

To achieve dependability, researchers can ensure the research

process is logical, traceable, and clearly documented (Tobin & Begley,

2004:390). When readers are able to examine the research process, they

are better able to judge the dependability of the research . In order to

address the dependability issue more directly, the processes within the

study should be reported in detail, thereby enabling a future researcher to

repeat the work, if not necessarily to gain the same results.

d. Confirmability

Confirmability is concerned with establishing that the researcher’s

interpretations and findings are clearly derived from the data, requiring the

researcher to demonstrate how conclusions and interpretations have been

reached (Tobin & Begley, 2004:393). To establish confirmability, the

researcher can provide an audit trail, which highlights every step of data

analysis that was made in order to provide a rationale for the decisions

made. This helps establish that the research study’s findings accurately

portray participants’ responses. In this research, the researcher checks the

validity of data by consulting to lecturer and English teacher.

7. Procedures of the Research

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In conducting the research, the researcher conducted some procedures

to obtain the result as follows :

a. The researcher asked permission to the principal of SMP Negeri 1 Gido to

do the research.

b. The researcher decided the informant and the number of informant of the

research.

c. The researcher made a schedule with the English teacher of SMP Negeri 1

Gido to collect documentation of the student’s writing .

d. The researcher came to school and made a cooperation with the English

teacher in collecting the documentation of students’ writing

e. After collecting the data or documentary, the researcher analyze the

students’ recount text in getting the types of errors and validated by

validator.

f. The researcher formulated the questions used in interview in obtaining the

causes based on the students’ error and validated by validator.

g. The researcher conducted interview to the English teacher and to the

students to get the information about the causes.

h. The researcher analyzed the data and classified the causes based on the

answers from the interview and validated by validator.

i. The researcher took the conclusion and made interpretation of the

research.