46 the average score achieved by the third semester students of the English Language
Education Study program in the academic year 20082009 was 53.
a. The Students’ Achievement in Each Tense
As stated before, the test consisted of ten tenses. They were distributed in fifty items. The ten tenses were simple present tense, present progressive tense,
simple past tense, past progressive tense, present perfect tense, present perfect progressive tense, past perfect tense, past perfect progressive tense, simple future
tense, and future progressive tense. The writer presented the students‟
achievement in each tense to know whether they had mastered each of the tenses or not. It was also to know the difficult and the easy parts of each tense.
The percentage of the students‟ achievement in each tense was determined
by dividing the total correct answers in each tense by the total answers in each tense. The total answers were obtained by multiplying the total sample students
64 students by the number of items of each tense. Based on the results of the test, the percentage of the students‟ achievement in each tense was presented in
Table 4.3.
Table 4.3: The Students’ Achievement in Each Tense No.
Tense The Percentage
1. Simple present tense
81.5 2.
Present progressive tense 45
3. Simple past tense
37.9 4.
Past progressive tense 72.9
5. Present perfect tense
55.7 6.
Present perfect progressive tense 40.6
7. Past perfect tense
72.7 8.
Past perfect progressive tense 30.9
9. Simple future tense
57.3 10. Future progressive tense
32.8
47 It can be seen in Table 4.3 that the highest achievement of the students in
each tense fell on simple present tense, which was 81.5. The second rank was 72.9, which fell on past progressive tense, and then followed by past perfect
tense, which was 72.7 and simple future tense was 57.3. Those percentages of the four tenses showed that the percentages of correct answers for each tense had
reached the minimum standard of mastery, which was 56. The others were below 56, which meant that the percentages of correct answers for each tense
did not fulfill the minimum standard of mastery. They were present progressive tense, simple past tense, present perfect tense, present perfect progressive tense,
past perfect progressive tense, and future progressive tense. It indicated that simple present tense, past progressive tense, past perfect tense and simple future
tense were easier than present progressive tense, simple past tense, present perfect tense, present perfect progressive tense, past perfect progressive tense, and future
progressive tense.
B. Discussion
