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AN ANALYSIS STUDENTS’ ERRORS OF USING SIMPLE PAST TENSE

IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXT AT TENTH GRADE IN SMKN 1
TANJUNGBALAI 2019/2020 ACADEMIC YEAR

By:

Ipin Syahputra 16052049

Nia 16052044

FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND TEACHER’S TRAINING

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH EDUCATION
ASAHAN UNIVERSITY
KISARAN
2019

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DAFTAR ISI

HALAMAN JUDUL ......................................................................................i

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION.................................................................. 1
1.1 Background of The Study ......................................................................... 1
1.2 Identification of The Study ....................................................................... 3
1.3 The Limitation of The Study ..................................................................... 3
1.4 Formulation Question ............................................................................... 3
1.5 The Objective of The Study ...................................................................... 3
1.6 The Significance of The Study.................................................................. 3
a. Students ............................................................................................... 3
b. Teachers .............................................................................................. 4
c. Researchers ......................................................................................... 4

CHAPTER II THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK ....................................... 5

2.1 Theoritical framework ............................................................................... 5
1. The Description of Theoritical framework ......................................... 5
2. Relevant Studies .................................................................................. 5
2.2. Error ......................................................................................................... 7
1. The Definition of Error ....................................................................... 7
2. Error Analysis ..................................................................................... 8
3. The Types of Errors ............................................................................ 8
a. Omission ....................................................................................... 8
b. Addition ........................................................................................ 9
c. Misinformation.............................................................................. 9
d. Misordering .................................................................................. 10
e. Errors and Mistakes...................................................................... 10
1. Simple Past Tense .................................................................. 10
2. Recount Text .......................................................................... 12
a. Orientation ........................................................................ 12
b. Events ............................................................................... 13

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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD .................................................... 14

3.1 Research Design ....................................................................................... 14
1. Setting of the Study ........................................................................... 14
2. Subject ............................................................................................... 14
3. Source of the Data ............................................................................. 14
4. Focus of the Study ............................................................................. 14
5. Technique of Collecting Data ........................................................... 15
6. Technique of Analyzing Data ............................................................ 15
a. Table of Error Frequency ....................................................... 16
b. Table of Evaluating Error ..................................................... 16

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 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of The Study

In Indonesia, English has been taught for students as a foreign
language since they are at basic level of education. According to
Curriculum of 2013, English is learnt by students since they are in class
seventh. When students learn English they focus on mastering four macro
skills of English; they are listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Listening and reading are receptive skills while speaking and writing are
productive skills. Among those four, writing is considered as the toughest
skill because in writing the writer should combine and express what
she/he would like to convey in good written forms. Writing skill not only
need a lot of vocabulary in composing a paragraph, but also correct
grammars, apart from other writing’s rules, in order to be comprehensible.
In Senior high school, the students are introduced to several English texts,
such as narrative, report, descriptive, discussion, explanation, and so on.
They are taught about the function, generic structure of the text
which includes the tenses used in those forms of text. Since then, the
students have been expected to master the simple tenses and to produce a
well-constructed English text in good grammar. However, there are still
many grammatical errors found when the students are trying to produce
their own English writing.
This research is concerned with a type of text, which is recount
text. Recount text is the form of text that aims to retell some events in past
time, the sentences are usually organized according to time order or
chronological order. Many students find difficulties in learning recount
paragraph. One of the difficulties which are faced by students in learning
recount paragraph is lack of knowledge of the structure and grammar. In
writing recount text, the students should pay attention about simple past
tense both the regular verb and irregular verbs. In other words, the students
have to know the list of regular verb and irregular verb because the past

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form is commonly used in writing recount text. In conclusion, the mastery

of the past verb form is the student has to memorize the verb form both the
regular and irregular verbs so that the students can write recount text when
they are asked to tell their past experience.
The explanation above is supported by the writer’s unstructured
interview result with the English teacher of SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai that the
main problem faced by students in writing activity is grammatical rules.
Most of students are getting difficult in choosing the verb to write, so they
got much mistakes, for instance in writing recount text the students had
difficulties in choosing the right form verb for past events.
This research also got such the case above when she was in her
PFE( Practice for Field Experience) in a SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai, most of
the students were not correct in using the verb of past tense and some other
grammatical rules when the writer gave them a task to write their personal
experience for a recount text.
This research thought that the students’ mistakes are caused by
some factors; first they translated their ideas in Indonesian sentences word
by word into English sentences and it often made their sentences read
unusual and wrong in English way. The other factor is the students’
knowledge. Probably they didn’t know the correct changing form of verb
tense they wrote in their writing and they were confused to put to be in the
non-verbal or verbal sentence they wrote. It could be caused by the
interference of the students’ first language or their deficiency competence
that reflected on how much the students had learnt the grammatical rules
of the target language.
From this explanation, this research is interested to analyze the
students errors in the uses of simple past through recount text because
writing a recount text should be clear, vivid, and concrete. In addition, the
researcher wants to know the errror types and the percentage of each error
in the use of simple past tense are made by the tenth grades in writing
recount text.
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1.2. Identification of The Study

Based on the background above the reasearcher identified the
problem as follow :
1. The students simple past tense sentence in writing ability is still low.
2. The student recount test in writing ability is still low.
3. The students frequently make errors in writing recount text.

1.3. The Limitation of The Study

In this research focussed in SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai, there are many
interesting aspects to study, but the reasearcher only focussed on analyzing
in students’ errors recount writing especially in using simple past tense
based at grade X-I students of SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai.

1.4. Formulation Question

1. What are the errror types on the use of simple past tense in student’s
recount text writing ?
2. What is the presentage of each error on the use of simple past tense in
student’s recount text writing ?

1.5. The Objective of The Study

1. To describe what the types of error on the use of simple past tense in
student’s recount text writing use of.
2. To find out the precentage of each error in the use of simple past tense
in student’s recount text writing use of.

1.6. The Significance of The Study

This study is expected to give benefits for students, English
teacher, and future researcher.
a. Students
This study is useful for students because the students can write
more accurately and correctly in the future. This study could help the
students to avoid making the same errors, especially producing their
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own writing in using simple past tense form. One of the ways to do
that is paying attention with the changes of of verbs and to know how
to make a good sentence. Furthermore, the students can improve their
writing in simple past tense form in the recount text.
b. Teachers
This study is meaningful for English teacher because the analysis
can be used as a reference if they want to make a medium for
teaching recount text. Teachers can help the students to understand
more about the changes for past form by knowing the students’
difficulties. So that, the English teachers will be able to teach better.
c. Researchers
This study is significant for future researchers in order to give them
idea how to teach simple past tense form better for students so that
the students can understand more abou the use of simple past tense in
writing recount text.
 CHAPTER II
THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1. Theoritical framework

1. The Description of Theoritical framework
In the theoretical framework, the researcher discusses the
description of some theories that are related in answering the research
questions. In this chapter, this research conducts this study using the
definition of errors analysis by Brown (2000). Error analysis occurs
when the learners make errors which these errors can be observed,
analyzed, and classified to reveal something what the learners have
got (Brown, 2000). Hence, the researcher analyzes the data from the
students’ errors in their recount text writing in simple past tense by
using Brown’s theory of error analysis. The researcher classifies the
errors by using the theory from Dulay, et al.(1982) as cited from Ellis
(2008). The researcher employs Ellis’s theory of surface strategy
taxonomy of errors because it is more general from original theory of
Dulay, Burt, and Krashen. Hereafter, Ellis argues that there are four
types of errors; omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering.
Furthermore,the researcher also pays attention to the students’ form
of simple past tense in telling past experience because the students
tell about something happened in the past so then the researcher uses
theory by Azar and Hagen (2009). In that theory, they explain the
form of simple past tense and provide some examples for irregular
and regular verb. Then, the researcher focuses on the schematic
structures in the recount text whether the students’ stories have been
written correctly text or not. The researcher conducts the study based
on the theory by Anderson and Anderson in 1997.
2. Relevant Studies
The researcher employs five previous studies to support this study.
First study is an undergraduate paper entitled An Analysis on
Grammatical Errors Made by ELESP Students in Writing the

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Research Proposal by Lestari (2014). The researcher analyzes the

chapter I of the research proposal. This study only focuses on
grammatical errors from minimum requirements made by ELESP
students. The result shows that the researcher found 33 errors in
omission, 12 errors in addition, and 57 errors in misinformation.
Bahasa and carelessness are the causes of errors which appeared
frequently in the research proposal. The second study is an
undergraduate paper entitled The Grammatical Error Analysis on
Using the Simple Past Tense in Writing Recount Text by Bayinah
(2013). The researcher analyzes and classifies the types and the
sources of students’ errors in using the simple past tense in writing
recount text. The researcher classifies errors with Corder’s theory.
The result of the error analysis shows that the students make errors
into four types: omission, miselection, addition, and ordering.
Miselection is the most appeared in the students writing. Most of the
students are affected by mother tongue and Indonesian logical
thinking (interlingual transfer). In the other hand, the errors happen
because the students generalize and apply incompletely.The third
study is an undergraduate paper entitled A Study of Errors in
Descriptive Text Writing of the Tenth Grade Students of SMA Tiga
Maret Yogyakarta by History (2015). The researcher focuses on
errors made by tenth grade students of SMA Gama Yogyakarta in
writing descriptive text. The result shows that the most appeared error
in the students’ descriptive text is omission, there are 135 errors
found. The factors of errors by the students are carelessness, first
language interference, translation, and overgeneralization. The fourth
study is a journal entitled Analysing the Students’ Grammatical Error
on Writing Narrative Text by Janah (2015). The researcher focuses
on analyzing grammatical error on the second semester students in
the narrative writing. The result of the study shows that the researcher
finds the most of mistakes made by the students are missing subject,
missing be in simple predicate, wrong simple predicate missing be,
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superfluous be, misinformation of passive form, the verb comes after

the subject, pronoun form, agreement, and reference. The fifth study
is an undergraduate paper entitled Subject-Verb Agreement Errors
Made by Students in Paragraph Writing Class by Mali (2011). The
researcher concerns with subject-verb agreement errors made by the
second semester students in one paragraph writing class of ELESP in
2010/2011 academic year. The result shows that the researcher finds
the most of errors, which are misinformation category, omission
category, and addition category. The researcher finds five major
causes of errors, such as interlingual error, ignorance of rule
restrictions, incomplete application of rules, false concepts
hypothesized, and carelessness. Those previous studies are analyzing
errors made by thestudents’ writing. In this study, the researcher only
focuses on the use of tenses especially simple past tense in recount
text written by eighth grade students in SMP Pangudi Luhur 1
Yogyakarta. Thus, the researcher does not analyze the grammatical
errors, but only took some parts.
2.2. Error
The researcher uses the theories of errors to find out the answer to
the research questions. The theories are taken from the definition of
errors, error analysis, the types of errors, and the causes of errors.
1. The Definition of Error
Errors happen when the learners have lack of knowledge in process
of language learning in target language. An error can be seen from the
deviation of adult grammar of native speaker that reflects on the
learners’ competence (Brown, 2007). In addition the description of
learner’s error is caused by the process of reconstruction from the first
language into the target language (Ellis, 2008, p. 50). Mourtaga states
that errors happen because the learners have not had enough
knowledge within target language so that they cannot be self-
corrected (as cited in Abushihab, 2014, p. 214). Hence, the learners do
not know whether they have used appropriate utterances in the target
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language or not. When the learners make error and no one gives
correction to those language, they will make incorrect form.
2. Error Analysis
Brown (2000) argues that error analysis is a technique to analyze a
learner’s errors; they can be observed, analyzed, and classified which
reveal something that comes from a system operating within the
learners. Error analysis is very important for a researcher and teacher
in order to reveal how far the students understand language learning
and what difficulties the leaners get from what they have learned in
learning process. Thus, errors play a part as a positive element in
language learning because the teachers can reflect the learner’s
systematic attempts to master the new language (Mourssi, 2013). As
for example, by committing errors, the learners will show their
understanding and difficulties for the teachers to work on. From error
analysis, it can be seen whether the learners are affected by their
mother tongue interference or they have not understood the rule of
target language. Error analysis is needed in order to (a) figure out
someone’s capability in knowing a language, (b) figure out someone’s
way in learning a language, and (c) get information about common
difficulties in language learning, because they will be a really helpful
aid in teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials (Hasyim,
2002). Therefore, error analysis is needed by the researcher to analyze
recount text written by tenth grade students in SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai.
Furthermore, this research can identify the areas of difficulty that are
faced by class X-1 of tenth grade students in SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai.

3. The Types of Errors

The researcher discusses types of errors which are taken from
Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982), as cited from Ellis (2008). They are
divided into four major types of errors which classifications have been
identified as follows:
a. Omission
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Omission errors are the absence items which any

morpheme or word in a sentence is not well-formed (Ellis, 2008).
It means that the learner omits the item that should appear in a
good utterance. Omission has two types of morphemes.They are
content morphemes and grammatical morphemes. Content
morphemes are morphemes that have meaning like nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs. In the other hand, grammatical
morphemes are little words that play a minor rule in delivering the
meaning of a sentence. They include noun and verb inflections
(the –s in birds, the –s in Mother’s, the –ed in looked, the –ing in
laughing), articles (a, the, an), verb auxiliaries (is, will, can, etc.);
(is, was, am, etc.), copula, short plural, long plural and preposition
(in, on, under, etc.) (Dulay, Burt, & Krashen, 1982). Dulay, et al.
(1982) argue that the learners can make errors in a part of
omission because they have limitations of capacity in acquiring
the rule of target language (as cited in Maniam & Rajagopal,
2016).The example of omission is “She sleeping.” The item in a
sentence does not contribute to the meaning of sentence.
b. Addition
Addition errors are the presence of an item which is not
supposed to appear in a well-formed one (Ellis, 2008). In this part,
types of addition errors are divided into irregular past, regular past,
article, and preposition (Dulay et al., 1982). For instance, “We did
not went there”. As shown in the example, the auxiliary “did not”
should not be followed by past verb, it should change into present.
Thus, the sentence should be “we did not go there”.
c. Misinformation
Misinformation error comes from the use of the wrong item
of the morpheme or structure (Ellis, 2008). Misinformation error is
divided into regular past, auxiliary, preposition, and possessive
pronoun (Dulay, et al., 1982, p. 169-170). The example of
misinformation is “The dog ated the chicken”. The sentence
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contains misinformation in the use of regular past. The verb “eat”

is an irregular verb so it should be changed into past form which is
“ate”.
d. Misordering
Misordering errors are described by the incorrect placement
of a morpheme or group of morphemes in an utterance (Ellis,
2008, p. 52). The example of misordering error is “what daddy is
doing?”. The sentence has error because there is an incorrect
placement. To be, “is”, should be put between “what” and
“daddy”. The correct sentence should be “what is daddy doing?”.
4. Errors and Mistakes
According to Brown (2000) an error is caused by the competence
error. Meanwhile, a mistake is caused by performance error. To
distinguish between error and mistake, they have their own factor.
First, the factor of error comes from the learner’s competence. The
learners cannot be self-corrected because they lack knowledge of the
rules of the language (Brown, 2000). Furthermore, the learner made
some errors consistently so it is called error as well. Second, the factor
of mistake comes from slip of tongue, fatigue, and inattention (Dulay
et al., 1982), it is caused by failing to utilize system correctly (Brown,
2000). A mistake is inconsistent deviation from the learner in learning
language when sometimes the learner gets something wrong in the use
of certain item or form, but sometimes the learner gets something
right (Norrish, 1983). In this study, the researcher chose errors
because the researcher looks at the students who make the errors, it is
not caused by slip, but the learner’s competence.
1. Simple Past Tense
Simple past tense is a tense used to tell events or actions in
the past. According to Parrot (2010), while telling stories that
happened in the past, the actions or events require a period of time
for example last week, at the weekend, and others. In addition,
Azar and Hagen (2009) state that simple past tense indicates an
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activity or situation began and ended at a particular time in the

past.Furthermore, the verbs in simple past tense are divided into
two types, they are regular verb and irregular verb including past
tense of the verb be (Kirn & Jack 2002).The first type of simple
past tense is a regular verb, which is the verb that inflected by
suffixes –ed at the end of the verb. Azan and Hagen (2009)
provide a list of regular verbs namely lived, started, and listened.
Besides, they also give an example of the sentence for regular
verb, which is “I walked to school yesterday”. The example of
regular verb is “walk” in which the verb is a regular verb that
should be changed into past form. Thus, the verb “walk” should be
added by suffix –ed to be “walked”. The second type is irregular
verb, which is different from a regular verb because an irregular
verb has a more specified change for a particular verb. The
converted forms of the verbs are usually in a dictionary. As a
result, the learner should memorize the changed of past verb
(Bayinah, 2013). For example, “I bought a new car three days
ago”. The verb “buy” will change into past form, “bought” (Azar
& Hagen, 2009). When simple past tense is modified to negative
form, the main verb will change into present. From the example “I
walked to school yesterday” and “I bought a new car three days
ago”, they will change to “I did not walk to school yesterday” and
“I did not buy a new car three days ago”. It is done since the rule
of negative form in simple past tense requires by adding “did not”
before main verb and automatically the main verb should change
into present. Not only regular verb and irregular verb but also
there is a verb of be, when there is no verb both regular and
irregular. Simple past tense has a rule form after subject, it should
be added be (was, were). To be was is followed by subject I, she,
he, it, whereas to be were is followed by subject you, they,
we(Bayinah, 2013).On the other hand, there are spelling
regulations of regular verb form in simple past tense. The first is
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when the simple form of verb is ended in a consonant –e, it should

be added by –d for example: dated, hoped. The second is if a
simple form of verb is ended by –y and –y is preceded by a
consonant, it should be replaced by –I then it is added by -ed, for
example studied, tried. Meanwhile, if –y is preceded by a vowel,
the verb should not change but keep by adding –ed at the end of
verb. The third, if a simple form of verb is ended by –ie, it should
be added –d by the ending of the verb, exception –w and –x are
notdoubled. For example: lied and died. The fourth, if the simple
form of a one syllable word ends a consonant, it should be added –
ed for example: listened, offered (Azar & Hagen, 2009).
2. Recount Text
Recount text is a text of which function is to retell the
sequences of events which happened at a particular time. The
notion of recount text is also stated by Anderson and Anderson
(1997), who say that recount text is a piece of writing that retells
past events in which the purpose of recount text is to entertain the
readers. In addition, Sudarwati and Grace (2006) state, “the
purpose of recount text is to tell the readers what happened in the
past through a sequence of events” (p. 30). Thus, recount text
means to retell the story which happened in the past and to give
entertainment to the readers. Recount text has three schematic
structures, namely orientation, events, and re-orientation
(Anderson & Anderson, 1997, p. 24). The researcher elaborates
the schematic structures as follows:
a. Orientation
Orientation takes place in the opening of the first
paragraph. The writerusually gives information about 5 W
(what, who, when, why, and where). Based on Boardman, the
orientation provides details background information about who,
what, where, and when (Saragih, Silalahi, & Pardede, 2014).
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b. Events
In the recount text, the main important step is the event,
because the event tells what happened in a chronological order
(Sudarwati & Grace, 2006). It means that the main of the story
in the recount text takes place in the event.3) ReorientationThe
reorientation in the recount text is the closing of the story. In
this part, the writer usually concludes all things that happened
in the past or retell what happened in the end of story (Saragih,
Silalahi, & Pardede, 2014).
 CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHOD
3.1 Research Design
This is a descriptive qualitative research which answers the
problems of errors commonly found in students’ writing. This research
can be named as a descriptive research because the data is described
using words that tell its condition. For further details, this research was
one of many branch of language study called Error Analysis (EA). In
1970s, EA became a recognized part of applied linguistics that owed
much to the work of order. EA was not a new development. There
were many linguists studied this field of language research. They
studied learner language which was useful for foreign language
learning in the school classroom. The presence of the native language
mixed with the new rules of target language brought out the obstacles
in learning language. Thus, EA was very useful in determining what
the types students had made were and how the errors came in their
language production.
1. Setting of the Study
The study was conducted at SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai. This
research was conducted on 20th January until 9th February 2020.
2. Subject
Population is the entire research subject. Population of this
research was all the tenth grade students of SMKN 1 Tanjungbalai
which consist of 8 classes. Because of the huge amount of the
population, it was impossible for the researcher to analyze all of
the tenth grade students’ writing tasks, so the participant should be
simplified by choosing one class as the sample. Sample is a part of
population to be researched.4 The sample of the study was X-1
which has 34 students.
3. Source of the Data
The research talked about the learners’ errors due to their
practice in writing recount text. In researching the types of errors,

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the cause of errors, and the sources of errors that learners made, the
students’ worksheet in the form of recount text writing task is
needed. Their writing task was discussed and analyzed by the
researcher.
4. Focus of the Study
This research focused on the errors analysis on the use of
simple past tense in students’ recount text writing. The analysis of
the errors included the types and the source of errors that found on
the tenth grade students’ recount text writing.
5. Technique of Collecting Data
To obtain the data needed, documentation technique was
used in this activity. The documentation is a technique to collect
the data in the form of notes, transcripts, books, newspapers,
inscriptions, agenda, etc. The data was found in the students’
recount text writing.
In order to make an effective and guided analysis, all the
students of X-1 were required to write a recount text based on the
topics given. The topics were going to somewhere interesting, a
story about your bad day ever,and an experience that changes your
entire life. They were asked to write a recount text within a period
of 45 minutes. The students were asked to write based on the
generic structure and language feature of recount text that they had
learned in the previous learning. After finishing their writing, their
works were submitted to the teacher. Then, the researcher asked
permission to the teacher to copy their works by photocopying.
Their writing would be analyzed by the researcher in order to know
the error types and error causes that they had produced in the next
step.
6. Technique of Analyzing Data
There were following steps in EA research; collection of a
sample of learner language, identification, description, explanation,
and evaluation of errors. The data analysis was started after all the
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students’ recount text writing collected. The second step in

analyzing students’ error was identification of the errors. The
identification was done by reading the students’ writing task and
underlying the errors. The third step was description the errors
made according to the Dulay’s Surface Strategy Taxonomy. The
taxonomy talked about many errors types that commonly found in
second language learners’ sentences. The types of errors were
omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. If the
sentences contained errors, they were classified according to the
error type’s taxonomy. The result of the classification was
calculated by the frequency and the percentage of each error.

a. Table of Error Frequency

Error Types Frequency of Errors Percentage (%)
Error Types Frequency of Errors Precentage ()
Omission
Addision
Misinformation
Misordering

The last step was evaluating errors. In this step, after the learner errors
found, the researcher gave a correction of the wrong sentences. The correction
was used as an evaluation for both learner and teacher.

b. Table of Evaluating Error

Code Error Identification Error Corection
U-1
U-2
U-3
.....