18
From the explanation above, it can be concluded that narrative text is the text that tells a story and when the story only contains the beginning
or just the middle or just in the end, it cannot be a good story because there must be the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story. It is to make
the story good and easy to be understood.
C. Tense
1. The definition of Tense
The word “tense” is derived ultimately from the latin tempus meaning time.
22
Tense commonly refers to the time of the situation which relates to the situation of the utterance or at the moment of speaking.
There are many definitions of tense. One of them is as stated by Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik stated that by tense we understand the
correspondence between the form of the verb and our concept of time past, present, future.
23
And Michael Swan stated that the verb-forms which show differences in time are called tense. Tense are formed either
by changing the verb e.g. know, knew, known; work, worked, worked, or by adding auxiliary verb e.g. will know, had worked.
24
Tense refers to the indication of time by the form of the verb or verb phrase, whether an action is a present, past or future one.
Based on the statements above, the writer concludes that tense is a verb-form or series of verb forms used to express a time relation, and tense
refers to the time of the situation relating to the situation of the utterance.
2. Types of Tense
Tense is used to show the relation between the action or state described by the verb and the time, which is reflected in the form of the
verb. There are two basic tenses in English; the present tense and the past
22
John Lyons, Linguistic Semantic An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.312
23
Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik, A Communicative Grammar of English, London: Pearson Education Limited, 2002, 3
rd
ed., p.415
24
Michael Swan, Practical English Usage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 604
19
tense. The present is like the base form, although the verb of the third person singular is added
–s. Regular verbs are added ed or –d to show the
past tense, while irregular verbs change in many different ways, or not all in some cases.
The time that a verb shows is usually called tense. The most common tenses are the simple present, past and future, in addition, there
are nine or other tenses, that enable to express more specific idea about the time.
25
Furthermore, Azar stated in more detailed overview the English verb tenses as the simple tense. The progressive tenses, the perfect tenses,
and the perfect progressive tenses.
26
There are four types of verb tense in English: the simple, the countinous, the perfect, and the perfect countinous. Each type of tense has
a present, a past, and a future form, as well as other modal forms. Thus just as there are four present tenses in English, there are also
four past tenses: the simple past, the past countinous, the past perfect, and the past perfect countinous.
Based on explanation above, the writer concludes that there are twelve verb tenses, and examples of each tense. They are:
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Table 2.1 Example of Tense
Tense Examples
Present I wash the clothes every day
Past We watched the opera last night
Future Rudi will go to the beach next holiday
Present Perfect Mr. Hasan has taught English since four
years ago.
25
John Langan, Sentence Skills, form A, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc, 2003, 7ed, p. 188
26
Betty Schrampfer Azar, Understanding and Using English Grammar, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1989, p. 2-7
27
Langan, Op.Cit., p. 189
