The Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

English is one of the international languages that has an important role in the world. It is widely studied and used as a tool of communication among people all over the world. English becomes one of the important subject matters taught at school. In Indonesia, English is considered as the first foreign language and becomes a compulsory subject learned by all students from the elementary school up to university. English language teaching includes four skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. One of the language skill which is very difficult to study is writing. English writing is a subject that learns about how to express our idea in written form. The students of elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school in writing skill especially learn to write words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. Then, when the students make a sentence they should concern with: subject, verb, and tense. In English learning process, students sometimes make some errors and mistakes. In science, the word error does not mean mistake or blunder but rather the inevitable uncertainty of all measurements. Because they cannot be avoided, errors in this context are not, strictly speaking, mistakes. At best, they can be made as small as reasonably possible, and their size can be reliably estimated. 1 Errors are considered as essential things to both learners and teachers since the making errors can be regarded as an important part of learning in order to get information. The information indicates which part of the target language that students have the most difficult to produce correctly. Errors also give another benefit to teachers by showing what learners have not mastered yet in the lesson. According to competence based curriculum, one of the goals in learning English is to increase communication competence in the language that consists of listening, speaking, reading, and writing of course. 2 In other words, learning English means learn to communicate through the target language, not only spoken but also written. As stated in English syllabus, the goal in learning writing for eleventh grade of senior high school is the students could understand and use the short functional texts in their daily life. As the writer ‟s experience, when she was teaching the students of State Islamic Senior High School MAN Cikarang, Bekasi, she found the most of students made errors in using the tenses. That is why the writer tries to analyze the students‟ problems in using the tenses of English verb. Exactly, these problems were at eleventh grade students of State Islamic Senior High School MAN Cikarang, Bekasi. Here, the writer need the students know more about the use of tenses correctly. Tense is an aspect of language that should be learnt by the students. 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 tense. The present is like the base form, although the third person singular adds -s. 1 http:www.usingenglish.comErrorAnalysis.html 2 Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan RI, Kurikulum 2004 Pedoman Khusus Bahasa Inggris Tingkat Sekolah Menengah Umum, Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 2004, P.11 Regular verbs add -ed or -d to show the past tense, while irregular verbs change in many different ways, or not at all in some cases. 3 To make a good sentence they should master tense. Tense is difficult to study. When they write a sentence, most of the students found some problems to determine and to choose the appropriate tense. Tense related with changing of verb agree with the time. There are two kinds of verb namely regular and irregular verb. The students always make error to change the verb in different tense because in indonesia has not irregular and regular verb. The English tense system is quite complicated, but the most common problem is not how to form tenses. The mechanical manipulation of verbs is easily learned through a few rules and formulas. The biggest problem is deciding which tense to use in a given situation. In order to choose correctly and easily, the student must understand the meaning of the tense itself, its time picture or time line. He must know what kinds of activities and states can be described by certain verbs. And this can present problems, too. Finally, the students need to be able to choose accurate time markers to clarify the time picture. According to the writer, the students made errors of using tense because three reasons. First, that english has great variety of tense, is one of reason why the indonesian students have difficulties in understanding tenses. The second reason is that Indonesian students are influenced by their mother tongue. The last reason is in indonesia there is no subject-verb agreement. The students make a sentence without concern with subject- verb agreement. 3 http:www.usingenglish.comglossarytense.html From the description above, the writer is interested in doing research about “An Analysis of Students Error in English free Writing Focused on the Use of Tenses”. B. The Statement of the Problem Based on the background of the study described above, the writer is interested in analyzing the errors done by the eleventh grade students of Madrasah Aliyah Negeri MAN Cikarang in English free writing focused on the use of tenses. These errors are taken from the test. The writer would like to formulate the problem as follow: “what kinds of tenses errors do the eleventh grade students of MAN Cikarang in English free writing? C. The Limitation and the Formulation of the Study The writer limits her study on the errors done by eleventh grade students of MAN Cikarang on English Writing. These errors are taken from the test that focused on the tenses. Tenses they have learned, there are: Simple Tenses; Simple Present, Simple Past, Simple Future. Continous Tenses; Present Continous, Past Continous, Future Continous. Perfect Tenses; Present Perfect, Past Perfect, Future Perfect. Perfect Continous Tenses; Present Perfect Continous, Past Perfect Continous, Future Perfect Continous. D. The Objective of the Study The objective of the study is t o find out the students‟ free writing errors focused on the use of Tenses by eleventh grade students of MAN Cikarang, Bekasi. Then, the writer analyzes the same errors to the students as well.

E. The Significance of the study