ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN WRITING SIMPLE PRESENT

TENSE

By :
Delmi Sastra Lingga
Ac No :12120001

English Department

THE FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

OF HKBP NOMMENSEN UNIVERSITY
PEMATANGSIANTAR
2016

ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ERRORRS IN WRITING SIMPLE PRESENT

TENSE
 Delmi Sastra Lingga
Email : delmilingga13@gmail.com
HKBP Nommensen University
ABSTRACT : This objectives of this research is to find out the students’ errors in
writing simple present tense and to identify the common error made by seventh
grade of SMP N 2 Purba. The data obtained by conducting a test and using a
checklist. Then, the writing products were analyzed by using Surface Taxonomy
(Dulay,1982). This research was designed as form of qualitative research,
particularly in writing simple present tense. The research was conducted at SMP N
2 Purba. The subject of this research is class VII-B that consists of 19 students. The
result shows that the students made simple present tense, the omission errors were
found as the highest of occurrence, which was about 47,05% which revealed that
the eight graders of acceleration class still made errors in using simple present tense
in writing descriptive text. The errors that are mostly made by students were errors
of omission.

Key words : Errors, Writing, Simple Present Tense.

 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

1.1The Background of the Research

Language is a tool of communication used by people to relate one another.
By language people will be easy to express their ideas, feelings, opinions etc. There
are many languages over the world. English is one of the languages that used as an
international language. Many people learn English in order to be able to
communicate well and they will go abroad if they master English. In Indonesia,
English consider as foreign language and taught from elementary school up to
university level.
There are four skill should be mastered, they are: listening, speaking,
reading and writing. Listening is part of the transactional of communication
process; the receiver’s responses have a direct impact on the direction of
conversation. Speaking is expressed ideas, opinions, or feeling to the other by using
words or sounds of articulation in order to inform, to persuade and to entertain that
can be learned through teaching and learning process. Reading is the process of
constructing meaning from the written text.
Writing is the language skill that should be constantly improved from time
to time. It means that this skill requires clear thinking about what to write. Students
should be taught how to express their ideas though written from language without
regular practice. Writing can be bored and outraged to students who learn English
as the target language, because they did not enjoy or they have not ideas which
developed when they write. Principally, the main function of writing is as an
indirect device of communication. By writing, the students will be able to explain
their thought or their purpose.
Writing is not easy. When the students write their feelings and ideas into a
word, word into sentence, sentence into paragraph, and it needs hard thinking to
produce the good writing at the same time. As Gyula Tanko (2000:26), “Writing is
a complex activity that requires much more than good language knowledge”. It
means that to write the ideas need the knowledge and the time to develop our
knowledge in writing.
Based on the writer’s experience in conducting research in SMP N 2 Purba,
there were so many students made errorrs in writing simple present tense and they
were difficult to write as the formula given.
According to Frank (1972:66), simple present tense is used to express a
habitual action with adverbs like usually, always, or often. They often write ‘She
love me every time’’, instead of ‘She loves me every time’. Actually we have to add
suffix –s or –es to the third singular person (he, she, and it).
In fact, the students have problems to write their ideas, feelings, opinions,
etc especially in writing simple present tense. They made errorrs because they do
not know the structure, rules in making a sentence, especially to write simple
present tense.
According to Corder (1973:257), errors are breaking the rule, due to a lack
of competence such as knowledge of language, which may or may not be conscious.
It means that errorrs are breaking rule, cause the students had limited knowledge.
The errorrs occured in conscious and unconscious when the students written the
simple present tense. Dulay et.al in Ellis (1994:56) divided errors into the following
categories: (1) omissions, (2) additions, (3) misformations, and (4) misorderings.
Based on the above reasons, the writer is interested in conducting a research
entitle “Analysis of Students’ Errors in Writing Simple Present Tense at grade VII
of SMP N 2 Purba”.

1.2 The Problem of the Research

Based on the background of the research, the writer formulated the problem
of the research as follows:
a. What are the students’ errors in writing simple present tense made by
the seventh grade of SMP N 2 Purba?
b. What are the dominant errors in writing simple present tense made by
seventh grade of SMP N 2 Purba?
1.3 The Objectives of the Research
The objectives of this study are:
a. To find out the students’ errors in writing simple present tense at seventh
grade of SMP N 2 Purba.
b. To find out the dominant errors in writing simple present tense at seventh
grade of SMP N 2 Purba.

1.4 The Scope of the Research

The scope of this study is to find out the errors and dominant errors made
by the seventh grade in writing simple present tense using Surface Taxonomy
(Dulay,1982).

1.5 The Significance of the Research

This research is expected to give theoretical and practical significance of the
research.
Theoretically, give more information about the students’ errors in writing
simple present tense, solve their problem in writing simple present tense and by
showing their errors, they can improve their knowledge in writing skill.
Practically, the result of this research is expected will provide further
information for English teachers in developing the quality of teaching and learning
process.

1.6 Definition of Key Terms

1. Erorrs are systematic deviation when a student has not mastered something and
constantly gets is wrong.
2. Erorr analysis is the study of students’ error which can be observed, analyzed,
and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learners.
3. Writing is an activity to express ideas, feelings, opinion and information in
printed symbols.
4. Simple present tense is the tense that used to express habitual action.
1.7 Theoretical Framework
The writer uses some theories in completing her research from the library research.
The theories are: Brewton et al ( 1962), Brown (1980), Cook and Suter, (1983),
Corder (1973), Creswell (2009), Dulay (1982), Frank (1972), James (1998),
Norrish (1983), Oshima (1991).
 CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF REATED LITERATURE
2.1 Definition of Error
According to Norrish (1983:7), errorr is a systematic deviation form the
accepted system of target language. Then Brown (1980:165) states that an errorr is
notice able from adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the inter language
competence of the learner. Mistakes are imperpectness of utterances which refer to
the language performance.
It is clear that errorr and mistakes are different. A mistake is a deviation due
to performance factor, like the limitation of memory. It can be corrected by the
learners themseves where their attention in drawn towards their errors. While errorr
is a deviation due to language competence and tense to be systematic. All of people
make mistakes in both native and second language situation but they can easy to
correct our mistakes found in students’ answer may be cause of carelessness, forget
or hesitation.
2.2 Types of Errors
Surface strategy taxonomy by Dulay et al. (1982) was used to analyze the
errors of this research. Surface strategy taxonomy analyzed the change of the
surface structures of the sentence. It analyzed the errors in which learners may omit,
add, misform, or even misorder components of the sentence. Based on surface
taxonomy strategy, errors were classified into omission error, addition error,
misformation, and misordering.
Errors of omission were identified by the absence of an item or morpheme
that must appear in a well-formed utterance (Dulay et al., 1982). This error occurred
when the learners omitted some required components from their sentences. Errors
of addition were the opposite of omissions. These kinds of errors were identified by
the presence of an item which is unnecessary or mostly not appear in well-formed
sentences. There were three types of this kind of error. They were double marking,
regularization, and simple addition. There was only
one type of addition errors that was found in this research, which was addition of
double marking. The errors of misformation were identified by the use of wrong
morpheme or structure. There were three types of these errors, which were
regularization, archy form, alternating form. The error of misformation found in
this research was only misformation of archy-forms. Errors of misordering were
characterized by the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in
an utterance.

2.2 Error Analysis

Error analysis is the process of determining the incidence, nature, causes,
and consequence of unsuccessful language (James,1998:1). It means by
determining students’ errors the teacher can not only detect the students’ difficulties
in learning English, but can also determine the effectiveness of certain method in
teaching the language. Brown (1980: 166) says that error analysis is the study of
students’ error which can be observed, analyzed, and classified to reveal something
of the system operating within the learners. Brown’s point of view implies that error
analysis is useful for the teacher. Error analysis will show teachers some problems
confronting the students. It is an advantage that error analysis may be tracked down
to the importance of students’ errors.

Error analysis is heeded to analyze. The similarities and differences between

two or more languges to carry out the feedback from the error is important to the
learners knowledge in language to get the error feedback. In other words, error
analysis carry out in order to find out how well someone knows language and how
people learn language.

2.3 Writing
According to Oshima (1991:1), writing is a progressive activity. It means
that when write something, we have aready been thinking about what are we going
to say and how to say it. After we have finished writing, we read over what we have
written and make changes and correction. Therefore, writing is never one-step
action, it is a process that has severa steps.
 Base on the above statement, we can concude that writing is expressed ideas,
feelings, experiences, and thought in written form. In writing, the aspects incude
the use of vocabulary, structure of sentences, composition of the sentence, spelling
and punctuation. These aspects are important to master in order to be able to
produce good writing. Good writing takes time, time for thinking, making changes,
polishing details, to be good as it can be a piece.
Writing can be in Simple present tense, past tense, and future tense. Simple
past tense is a tense which refers to the activities and events that occured in the past
time. Future tense is the tense that show the activities, wish and events that will be
happen in the next time.

2.4 Simple Present Tense

Tense is a systematic structure to describe different forms of verbs that
showed the time of action. Meanwhile, simple present tense is formed by using the
simple form of the verb that is the form which was listed in the dictionary or it was
called infinitive without ‘to’. When the third person singular subject is present, an
–es or –s ending is added (Cook and Suter, 1983:49). Brewton et al also stated that
the present tense expresses an action or a state of being in the present (Brewton et
al, 1962:263).
Based on the explanation above, we can conclude that simple present tense
is formed by using infinitive without ‘to’ and when the third person singular subject
is present, a suffix –es or –s is added to the verb. Simple present tense expresses an
action or a state of being in the present.

2.5 Form of Simple Present Tense

2.5.1 Present Tense of Verb Be
Present tense form of ‘be’ is formed with to be am, are, or is after the subject
of the sentence. According to Praninskas (1961:2) in English, the present tense of
‘be’ is used to express some situations, such as: (a) Profession, trade, occupation:
Mr. Andi is a Professor, (b) Nationality : Mr. Suharto is an Indonesian, (c) Size and
shape: Mr. Ari is tall, (d) Age: Dini is twenty-five, (e) Characteristic: Mr.David is
clever, (f) Condition : Jack is sick, (g) Place: The children are here, (h) Color: This
book is green.

• Pattern of Present Tense of Verb Be:

- S+ be + a noun or a noun phrase: Mona is a beautiful woman.
- S + be + adjective or adjective phrase: Michael Jackson is famous.
- S + be + adverb or adverbial phrase: Eric is here.
In negative statements with the verb be, the word not is used after the verb be.
The verb ‘be’ has different forms after different subjects. The present tense
forms of be are am, are, and is. Am is used after the first person singular subject (I);
are is used after the first person plural subject (we), second person singular and
plural subjects (you, you) and the third person plural subjects (they, the boys, cows,
etc); is is used after the third person singular subject (he, she, it, the boy, a cow, etc)

2.5.2 Present Tense of Verb

The present tense of verb is formed with simple form of a verb for first
person, and
third person plural subject except for third person singular subject; the verb ends in
-s, or –es. In terms of forms, the simple present can be divided into: positive,
negative, interrogative, and negative interrogative. The adverbs of frequency or
adverbial phrases that are often used in the simple present tense are always, often,
usually, everyday, sometime, never, occasionally, seldom, twice a week, etc.

For example: I always go to school by bus.

He often goes to bed late.

2.6 Revief of Related Studies

1. Esti Winarni in her article “A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE STUDENTS’
ABILITY IN USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE
TEXT AT THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA N 1 KARANGANYAR
KEBUMEN” found that the most error made by the students at the tenth grade
students of SMA N 1 Karanganyar in the academic year of 2012/2013 in using
simple present tense in writing descriptive text is misformation error since the
percentage is 51.19%.
2. Roby Ilham Ramdani in his article entitle “AN ANALYSIS OF THE
STUDENTS’ ERRORS USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN WRITING
DESCRIPTIVE TEXTS AT SECOND GRADE STUDENTS OF MTs
CICANGKANG HILIR” found that 20,18% students most dominant did the errors
in dealing with suffix –s/-es from the verb of third singular person subject, 12,64%
students most dominant did the error in dealing with wrong use verb, and 6,98%
students most dominant did the errors in dealing with omission of be.
3. Ratna Juwitasari,et all with her research entitle “AN ANALYSIS OF
GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN
DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITING BY STUDENTS OF MAN 1 (MODEL) BANDAR
LAMPUNG” found that the most common error committed by the students in their
descriptive text writing was omission (50.90%), from 110 items in the form of
simple present tense, the students committed 56 items omission error.

CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research Design
In this research, the writer follows the methodology in descriptive
qualitative. It is descriptive because makes the description of event or occurence
and this method has an intention to accumulate the basic data. According to
Creswell (2009:22) “Research designs are plans and the procedures for research
that span the decisions from broad assumptions to detailed methods of data
collection and analysis”. The selection of a research design is also based on the
nature of the research problem or issue being adressed, the rresearchers’ personal
experiences, and the audiences for the study. Qualitative research is meaned for
exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups describe 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.
3.2 The Subject and Object of the Research
The subject of this research is grade VII of SMP N 2 Purba. The rsearcher
choose VII-B and the object of the research is the students’ errors in writing simple
present tense.

3.3 The Technique of Collecting Data and Analyzing Data

The writer collects the data by applying field and library research. In
collecting the data acquired data, the writer will apply the library research. It means
that the writer frequently visits library consults the adequate volumes of related
references. But in field research, the writer takes and collects the data from the
students and selects, classifies, and analyzes the data. Then the writer also includes
the steps to analyze the data, as follows:
1. Underline the errors base on Surface Taxonomy (Dulay,1982).
2. Identify the errors in using simple present tense.
CHAPTER IV
RESEARCH FINDING
Findings
From the data collection, there were 82 errors found from the 19 written
products of the students. The errors found were analyzing using the surface strategy
taxonomy proposed by Dulay et al. (1982). Thus, the errors were classifying into
errors of omission, errors of addition, errors of misformation, and errors of
misordering.
This research only focused on the analysis of errors in simple present tense,
while the other errors which were not including to simple present tense were
ignored. However, the whole data were not presenting in this chapter and only
described by some representative data.
The data in this research were analyzing descriptively. In the analysis, the
findings that presented in the types of error, the sample of sentences that contain
errors, the revised version of the sample sentences.

Types of Errors in Writing Simple Present Tense

Surface strategy taxonomy by Dulay et al. (1982) was used to analyze the
errors of this research. Surface strategy taxonomy analyzed the change of the
surface structures of the sentence. It analyzed the errors in which learners may omit,
add, misform, or even misorder components of the sentence. Based on surface
taxonomy strategy, errors were classified into omission error, addition error,
misformation, and misordering.
The result from the analysis showed that there were 85 errors in writing
simple present tense in the 19 students’ writing. There were 47,05 % errors of
omission; 4,70 % errors of addition; 45,88 % errors of misformation; and 2,35%
errors of misordering.

Ommision Error
1.Omission of auxiliary verbs (to be)
Omission of auxiliary verbs was the kind of omission error that mostly made
by the students. There was 62.5 % omission of auxiliary verbs (to be) errors from
all omission error. The sentences are the example: (a) It also not tidy, (b) Many
clothes hanging (c) The shoes on the sofa. The revised sentences should be: (a) It is
also not tidy (b) Many clothes are hanging (c) The shoes are on the sofa.
2. Omission of verb inflection (marker –s/-es)
The students made omission of verb inflection (marker –s/-es) errors in the
percentage of 25 % from all omission errors. The following sentences are the
example: (a) The owner of the room put his shoes, (b) He/she may be forget to turn
off his/her laptop. The revised sentences should be: (a) The owner of the room puts
his shoes, (b) He/she maybe forgets to turn off his/her laptop
3. Other omission errors
There were other omissions of errors found in the students writing. The percentage
was 12.5 %. The other omission of errors was the omission of subject. The
sentences which have error of missing subject are: (a) In that room, is 3 T-shirts (b)
At the door, text “STOP”, “Do not Enter”, and “Do not Disturb”
The revised sentences should be: (a) In that room, there are 3 T-shirts, (b) At the
door, there are text “STOP”, “Do not Enter”, and “Do not Disturb”

Errors of Addition
Addition of Double Marking
Double marking is errors in which the learners fail to delete certain required
components and give more than one marking in constructing sentences.
The examples of this kind of errors are: (a) The room is does not tidy (b) Everything
in this room is does not in that place. The revised sentences should be: (a) The room
is not tidy, (b) Everything in this room is not in that place.

Errors of Misformation
Misformation of Archi-Forms
Misformation of archy-form is the selection of one member of a class of
forms to represent others in the class. The examples of the sentences are: (a) There
are also a doll in the chair, (b) The books is messy. The revised sentence should be:
(a) There is also a doll in the chair, (b)The books are messy.
Errors of Misordering
This error has the percentage
of 2.35 % from all types of errors. The example of these errors are: (a) There are
many thing not in that place (b) In the room are many thing not in that place. The
revised sentences should be like: (a) Many thing are not in that place, (b) In the
room, many thing are not in that place.

Discussion
The findings of the research are discussed in this sub chapter. The first is
error of omission. Omission is kind of error in which the learners omit or delete the
components from the sentences (Dulay et al., 1982). In fact, those omitted
components are necessary for their sentences.
From the result, it is found that omission errors come as the type of errors
with the highest frequency of occurrence. Omission errors make up about 47,05 %
of all errors found in students' writing simple present tense. These omission errors
are dominated by omission of auxiliary verb (be). The highest omission error is in
the omission of auxiliary verbs (be). It has percentage of 62,5 % of all omission
errors. The next type of omission errors is the omission of verb inflection (marker
–s/-es). The last type of omission errors that found in this research is other omission
error is the omission of subject. This type of omission error comes up about 12,5 %
of all omission errors.

CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Conclusions
 In this study, there were 85 errors found from 19 students’ in writing simple
present tense. The errors were classified based on the surface strategy taxonomy
proposed by Dulay et al. (1982). The errors were classified into errors of omission,
addition, misformation, and misordering.
The error of omission was the type of error with the highest frequency
(4705%). Errors of omission found in this study consisted of omission of verb
inflection (marker s/es), omission of auxiliary verbs (is, am, are) and other
omission. The second most frequently occurring error was misformation error
(45.88 %). Misformation error found from the data was misformation of archiforms.
Addition errors appeared as the errors with the third highest frequency (4.70 %).
The addition error found in this study was only addition of double marking. The
type of errors that occur least frequently was the misordering errors (2.35 %).

Suggestions
This section provides suggestions to the following group with regard to
findings and discussion of the study. First is for the teachers. The teachers are
suggested to develop better method in teaching writing in order to reduce the
number of errors and fossilization that done by the students. Besides, they should
integrate the grammar in other skill teaching and learning process. They are
suggested to pay more attention to the particular structures that
Often create difficulties for the students by selecting contextual exercise on
the structures which are often omitted, added, misformed, and misordered. In
addition, the teachers should give clearer explanation about structure differences
between Indonesian and English.

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