Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

In learning English, there are four skills Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing that should be mastered by students. Besides the four skills, Grammar also should be mastered by them. Grammar is needed even in communication. Without the proper knowledge of grammar the students will find many problems to build up the sentences and express their ideas for communication activities, but if they have good grammar, they will be confident in speaking English to other people. According to Penny Ur, “there is no doubt that a knowledge-implicit or explicit of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of language: you cannot use words unless you know how they should put together” 1 . Grammar is one of the language aspects which are taught to every language learner. It has an important role in understanding the English language. As said by Paul Robert that “grammar is a body of generalization about how people says things. In order to make generalizations, we must first agree on the meaning of terms for the things we wish to talk about”. 2 Grammar accuracy is only part of communication to convey a message, where grammar is merely a tool. 1 Penny Ur, Grammar Practice Activities, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 4 2 Paul Robert, Understanding Grammar, New York, 1954, p. 2 In this skripsi, the writer will not discuss grammar in general. He will write about tense. Tense is one of discussions of grammar. According to Richard Veit, “Tense is frequently described as the property that relates to the time a verb’s action is performed” 3 . Some grammarians said that English has a great variety of tenses. This is one of reasons why the Indonesian students have difficulties in understanding tenses, because there are no tenses in Indonesian language. Present perfect tense is one tense that should be mastered by students, but it sometimes makes them confused. The effect is they cannot use and understand properly the present perfect tense. Even though the twelfth grade students of Senior High School have learned it, they still find difficulty in learning present perfect tense, especially in using forms and usages. From that background, he is interested in writing about the problems in grammar test on Present Perfect Tense to the third year students of SMK YAPIA Pondok Aren.

B. Limitation of the Study