Background of the Study

1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

English is known as one of the International language in the world. It is a tool or an aid to communicate with other people. In community life, language is very important, because language is means of communication for mutual making relationship or sharing experience. Moreover, in present day, English language becomes the language learnt by people in every country over the world, such as Indonesia. Teaching English language is known as teaching of foreign language. It could be said that Indonesian language is as the mother tongue language of students; and English language is as the target language studied by the students. In Indonesia, English language must be learnt and it is one of compulsory subject in every education level, that is Sekolah Menengah Pertama SMP or Junior High School, Sekolah Menengah Atas SMA or Senior High School, and even in Universities. In addition, English language includes as local content subject in education level of Sekolah Dasar SD or Elementary School in the country. The teaching process in education levels is based on the guideline of rules that stated by the government in the curriculum. The latest one named Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP or School Based Curriculum. This curriculum provides some rules about teaching English for each level of education. It states the objective of the teaching learning process that held in Draft of Badan Standarisasi Nasional Pendidikan BSNP 12 April 2006 which consists of Standar Kompetensi SK or Standard Competence and Kompetensi Dasar KD or Basic Competence for each language skill – Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. They exactly explain about minimum materials should be reached as the out comes of the teaching process. It can conclude that the final objectives in teaching English are that students have competence in communicating both spoken and written. Then, based on BSNP, for Senior High School level the level in which the writer takes as the population, with its first year as the sample there are some Standard Competences completed by their Basic Competences in each aspect of the four skills. Besides the four skills, the language components or sub-skills such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation etc. One of the sub skills that should be mastered in learning English by the learner is grammar. Grammar should be taught appropriately because it is the basic element of the language and without the proper knowledge of grammar; the learners will find many problems to build up sentences to express their ideas in communication among the people. Scoot Thornbury in How to Teach Grammar stated: ”Grammar is partly the study of what forms or structures are possible in a language. Traditionally, grammar has been concerned almost exclusively with analysis at the level of the sentences. Thus, a grammar is description of the rules that govern how a language’s sentences are formed.” 1 Penny Ur said in A Course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory that “Grammar is a set of rules that define how words parts of words are combined of changed to form acceptable units of meaning within a language” 2 and in another source stated that ”Grammar is the system of a language.” 3 The students who learn English meet a number of problems, one of them is grammar. Some students think of grammar as rather boring subject 1 Scoot Thornbury, How to Teach Grammar, United Kindom: Bluesstone Press, 1999,p.1 2 Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996, p. 87 3 http:www.englishclub.comgrammargrammar-what.htm when they learn English, they try to avoid the grammar because it is confusing and hard to understand. For some students who have lack of knowledge in grammar, of course they will become confused why the verb of a sentence must change; either it is Present, past or future. In talking grammar, one of the most important part to be learn is “tense”. “Tense is usually defined as relating to the time of an action, event or state” 4 . By tense, the students can know when the time action occurs, and their concept of time. W. Stannard Allen in Living English Structure stated: “English has three main divisions, past, present and future…” 5 . Absolutely, the verb in English is influe nced by the “time”, when it happens or will happen past, present, or future. So, a verb should be related with the time. When the students want to tell a verb that is used to indicate an action that took place at an indefinite time or over a period of the time in the past, but still has relevance in the present” 6 . It is called the present perfect tense.” And the most common time expression is prepositional phrase beginning with for and since. Other such expressions include up to the present now, many times, often, frequently, finally, already, etc. 7 Indonesian language and English are different. In Indonesian language, there are no tense used as in English. When students say something happened in the past in Indonesian language, they used adverb of time to show the definite time there is no change in the verb. Meanwhile, in English language, to show something happened, it could be used adverb of time to follow past tense it is a must and also could used none of adverb of time -or it is not important- to follow present perfect tense. Therefore, Indonesian students often do mistakes in differentiate the usage of both tense, past tense finished time and present perfect tense unfinished time. For example the students usually say: “I have done my homework yesterday.” for present 4 Laurie Bauer, English Word Formation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p.157. 5 W. Stannard Allen, Living English Structure, London:Longman, 1987, p.175 6 George E. Wishon Julia M. Burks, Let’s Write English, Revised edition, New York: Litton Educational Publishing International, 1980, p.206 7 Ge orge E. Wishon Julia M. Burks, … p.207 perfect tense, which grammatically is wrong, because that is because present perfect form is not stressing the time of the action. To express something happened in the past but still true at present is better to say “ I have done my homework”. The most important things to remember about the present perfect is that it can never be used with adverbs which describe finished time periods, such as yesterday, five minutes ago and at three o’clock. If a time adverb is used with the present perfect, it should describe a time period which is unfinished. 8 On the other hand, the most important in past tense form is stressing the definitive time of the action. Then, from the student’s sentence above it means that when using the verb as ”I have done my homework”, it must not be followed by the adverb of time “yesterday”, because it indicates the present perfect tense. Whereas in the use of present perfect tense, the adverb of time is not “important” to be used. It is different from past tense that is usually followed by adverb of time. As it is stated by Martin Parrot in his book that is” learners generally have far more difficulty in using present tense correctly than in understanding them”. 9 Consequently, learning present perfect tense is really important for the students in order to understanding its usage correctly, how they use it in sentences and to do not change into past tense. So, when the students want to make sentences that have happened or have done they should use the present perfect t ense, for example: “I have done my homework”, without using past time. In this case, the writer is interested to analyze the students’ problem in learning Present Perfect Tense”, because there are many students who still have difficulties in understanding the simple perfect tense, and also they still have difficulty in using the right form of simple present perfect like the use of havehas and the use of verb form like regular and irregular verb, and the usage the use of time expression of present perfect tense, and some students are still lack of knowledge of regular and irregular verb. 8 http:www.geocities.comSiliconValley2527presentperfect.htmlintroduction,18 Oktober 2009 9 Martin Parrot, Grammar for English Language Teachers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p.162 Based on the problem mentioned above, the writer would like to discuss about “An Error Analysis on Students’ Learning in Present Perfect Tense ” A Case Study at the first year Students of Madrasah Aliyah Soebono Mantofani Jombang-Ciputat.

B. The Limitation of the Study