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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. Background of Study
English is one of the important languages in the world because it is widely used and studied all over the world. There are many reference books written in
English, such as books of technology, science, art, and so on. Besides, English makes us easier in communicating with other people all over the world and makes
us easier in using some technology. In Indonesia, English as a foreign language is a compulsory subject in
national curriculum. Therefore, English has been taught from elementary school up to university level. It means that English has an important role so that it is
taught in Indonesia‘s school. Although English has been taught from elementary
school, it can be seen there are many students are not able to communicate well orally or written and they have a low score of English subject.
Low students‘ score in English subject is a problem that has not been completely resolved. In learning English, the students should study the four basic
skills that related each other, there are listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Through listening and reading, people can get the information from anywhere all
over the world, and through speaking and reading, people can share their feelings. Writing is an important skill in teaching and learning English process.
Writing involves some language components such as grammar, spelling, vocabular
y, and punctuation. Because writing needs some components‘ mastery, there are some problems related to students‘ ability in writing. The common
problem that students often face when writing is the lack of English language vocabulary that make them feel writing is a difficult subject. In addition, improper
punctuation placement is also a problem often faced by students in addition to the lack of mastery of vocabulary. Placement of punctuation that does not fit within a
text, making the text content is not coherence with each other. The last important
component in writing but many students are still frequently make mistakes is the lack of proper grammar usage. Grammar has an essential role in writing to make
meaningful utterance. In this case, tenses have an essential role because it tells the readers when action takes time. Careful and accurate use of tense is important to
clear writing. There are various ways to organize sentences in a piece of writing. One of
them is in the form of recount text. Recount text is a text that describes about someone experience that happened in the past. In recount text, it is told past event
and used tenses that have the function to tell story in past tense. To make a good recount text, the writer or the students have to choose the correct tenses and they
also should know many vocabularies because text is an arrangement of words, sentences, and paragraphs.
In writing recount text, the common tense that often used is the past tense. The past tense is a tense that indicates an event happened in the past.According to
Frank, ―the past tense indicates definite time terminating in the past, whether a time word is given or not.‖
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There are four kinds of past tense that students should know; simple past tense, past continuous tense, past perfect tense, and past perfect
continuous tense. Based on the writer‘s experience and her observation while she was doing
PPKT PraktekProfesiKeguruanTerpadu at SMPN 178 Jakarta, the writer found that in writing recount text, students commonly have some difficulties in choosing
tenses that suitable with the situation they write in the text. If the students have mastered in choosing the tenses, it could make the students easier in writing good
recount text. Another problem that commonly faced by the students is about changing the verb. In writing recount text that uses past tense as a tense, the
students have to change the verb from verb 1 to verb 2 or from verb 1 to verb 3. In this case, there are two form of verb; regular and irregular verb. The problem is
the students sometimes forget that not all verbs are ending in –d or –ed as a
regular verb, but there are also some irregular verb that used in the past tense.
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Marcella Frank, Modern English: A Practical Reference Guide, New Jersey: Prantice- Hall, Inc., 1972, p. 73.
Based on the background of study above, the writer is interested in conducting a research about the relationship
between students‘ understanding of past tense and their skill in writing recount text. Because recount text tells the
event in the past, this text is using past tense as a tense in writing it. The writer wants to know how well the studen
ts‘ understanding in grammar especially in past tense and how well they use it to express their past experience in recount text. In
this case, the writer conducted the research at Mts. Mathla‘ul Anwar, Tangerang.
B. Identification of Problem
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