THE ABILITY OF THE 2015/2016 3
RDYEAR
STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 3 BINJAI
IN USING ENGLISH TENSES
A PAPER WRITTEN
BY
MUHAMMAD DHUHA
REG. NO : 122202031
DIPLOMA III ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM
FACULTY OF CULTURAL STUDY
NORTH SUMATERA UNIVERSITY
MEDAN
AUTHOR’S DECLARATION
I am MUHAMMAD DHUHA, declare that I am the sole author of this paper.
Except where the reference is made in the text of this paper, this paper contains no
material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a paper by
which I have qualified for or awarded another degree.
No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main
text of this paper. This paper has not been submitted for the award of another
degree in any tertiary education.
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Name : MUHAMMAD DHUHA
Title of Pape : THE ABILITY OF THE 2015/2016 3RD YEAR STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 3 BINJAIIN USING ENGLISH TENSES
Qualification : D-III / Ahli Madya
Study Program : English
I am willing that my paper should be available for reproduction at the direction of
the Librarian of the Diploma III English Department Faculty of Culture Study
USU on the understanding that users are made aware of their obligation under law
of the Republic of Indonesia.
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ABSTRACT
ABSTRAK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bismillahirrahmaanirrahim.
First of all, I would like to thank to Almighty God, Allah SWT for blessing
and giving me health, strength, and ease to finish this paper as one of the
requirements to get Diploma III certificate from English Department Faculty of
Cultural Studies, University of North Sumatera.
Then I would like to express a big gratitude, appreciation, and love to the
dean of Faculty of Cultural Studies, Dr. SyahronLubis, M.A. and the head of
Diploma III English Study Program, Dr. Matius C.A.Sembiring, M.A who give
me their time and knowledge about doing this paper. Then I would like to express
my special gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Matius C.A.Sembiring, M.A for her
availability, spirit, time,guidance, and advice to correct the process of writting this
paper. And my sincere thank to my reader Drs. Siamir Marulafau, M.Hum. For
his time, knowledge and suggestion. I would also like to say a deep gratitude to all
of the lecturers in English Diploma Study Program for giving me many
knowledges, skills, and abilities.
I would like to say thank to my beloved family especially to my parents,
my father H. Ong Rachmad Sukarja and my dearest mother Hj. Chairuna
Mudya. Thank you for all your prayers, loves, motivation, and spirit. I present
this paper for them. Thank to my sister and brother Bobby Anugrah Putra. St
and Drg. Afrilanny Daisy Suhafja, Chairunnisa. Ss I really thank you for being
I would like to say thank to my best friends, Gilang Tirta Arya,
Rahmat Fuad Siregar, Yogi Julian Pratama, Ferdinand Willhart Siagian, Kaka Hanafiah, Jefry Andreas, Rico Syahputra, Bobby Loy, Onward Fellix, Budi Halim Lubis, Arfie Dibyo, Zulfachri Abdilla, Shella Novianti, Lara Rizqy Yoriza, Alfi Navais, Nina Fitriani, Lisha Haris, and Yuni Asyifah
Thank you for your fully support, cares, good times, jokes, availabilityand other
things that help me to finish this paper. Thank you for the nice friendship during
our study. Indeed, the great friends are hard to find, hard to leave, and difficult to
forget,I wish our friendship will be lasting hold.
I would like to thank to RebelMoto Brotherhood, thank you for your
support
I would like to thank to Total Art, thank you for your care.
I would like to thank to all of SOLIDAS friends, thank you for your
good time during my study.
Medan, September 2015
The Writer,
TABLE OF CONTENTS The Background of Writing ….……… The Problems ………
ABSTRACT
ABSTRAK
1.
INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Background of Writing
Language is man’s greatest invention and most precious possession.
Without the present of a language, trade, government, family life, friendship,
religion, and the arts would be either impossible or radically different and cannot
be done. The ways human beings use language, and how well, have much to do
with what kind of people they are,much of what they call education in one way or
another helps people extend their understanding and mastery of language. As they
extend their own understanding and mastery of language, they should remember
these basic principles. For instances, language has a history, it is the way it is for
the same reason a mountain or a giant redwood is the way it is, the forces working
on it from time immemorial have so shaped it over the centuries. Some of the
most recent history of the language they can still trace.They can tell when people
ancestors first became acquainted with a paved “street,” taking from the Romans
both the thing, and its name. People can show that the word silly a thousand years
ago meant “blessed.” But much else in the language—the words, and how they are
put together in sentences—has roots going back into distant prehistory.
As it has been mentioned that language isman’s greatest intellectual
accomplishment, is immeasurably ancient. We may be fairly sure that man was
already making use of the complicated and highly systematized set of vocal
sounds which go to make tip language when the woolly-haired rhinoceros and the
in those far-off prehistoric days, a fact which presupposes his ability to hand down
knowledge of their construction and use to his descendants.
Language is so closely bound up with our everyday experience that we
seldom stop to think of the roles it plays, it is the dress of thought and it has
become commonplace to quote this in support of the view that conscious thought
is behind all languages, and that language is primarily used to ‘dress up’ thoughts
and send them on their way: give substance to thoughts. ‘Language’, we are often
told, ‘exists for the expression of thoughts or ideas.’
There could be wide disagreement over what an idea or a thought exactly
is, and therefore over the meaning of such a definition. But most of us would
probably agree at any rate that the following quotation illustrates language being
used ‘for the expression of thoughts or ideas’. Most of us would equally agree
that this statement of quantum theory represents a genuine, very important, and
perhaps even very common use of language. We are not all physicists, but we all
have to express serious ‘thoughts or ideas’ on this level from time to time, giving
conscious thought to the language we are using. Genuine and even commonplace
as these examples are, without doubt, we may well ask: are they what language is
chiefly and primarily used for, what language ‘exists for’? It may be illuminating
at this point if we try to think back over a day’s events and recall just how we
have in fact been using our language. Calling someone to get up; singing to
oneself in the bathroom; asking if breakfast is ready; grumbling about the weather
or about where that other sock has disappeared to; teasing someone; appealing for
ideas’ a very long way to make it cover all these language activities, yet we can be
fairly confident that they bulk large in the daily use of language by any of us,
whether we are company directors or school children.
We may get some confirmation that this is so by further reflecting that
these uses of language seem ‘easier’, seem to come more naturally, than the
examples dealing with careful ‘thoughts or ideas’ which were quoted earlier. We
can surely agree that all of us find it easier to ask for more coffee or grumble
about our work than to discourse on literary criticism, expectorants, and we
should realize that this is not merely because some of these particular subjects are
beyond our competence: it would still be true if for ‘expectorants’ we substituted
the name of our favorite hobby.
It would be a big mistake to dismiss the ‘easy’ uses of language as trivial
and unimportant merely because they seem so ordinary. Indeed, the more ordinary
they seem, the more obvious it should be that we start from them in considering
the use of English or any other language. If they seem ordinary, it is this very fact
that makes the use of English seems difficult when we are writing an essay or
describing some complicated electronic theory: difficult because unfamiliar and
extraordinary. And again, at the risk of being repetitive and obvious, we must
stress that it is not that the subject is ‘unfamiliar and extraordinary’. We may have
a perfectly clear understanding of the experiment, and the essay may be on our
favorite hobby. It is the use to which we are putting our language that is
1.2 The Problems of Writing
The object of this research is a group of students. They are the students of
SMP Negeri 3 Binjai. They are now sitting on the 3rd year group. They are about
fourteen years of age. They have been taught English by their teachers in the
classroom at least four semesters. In teaching the students, they use the curriculum
which is published by the government of Indonesia. The teachers have given the
students twelve different tenses since those two semester periods. Therefore the
writer of this paper states the problem is, whether they are able to use the tenses or
not, how far the students understand to use the English tenses.
1.3 The Scopes of Writing
In writing a skill writing there can be many different things to be written,
therefore in writing this simple paper the writer wants to give the limit of his
writing. Dealing with the title of this writing is the ability of the 2015/2016 3rd
year students of SMP Negeri 3Binjai in using the English tenses they have been
studied, of course the limit of writing is just on their ability to apply the English
tenses.
1.4 The Purposes of Writing
In writing this paper the writer wants to find out the students ability in
using the English tenses. By applying a project as it is, the writer will be able to
English tenses which are faced by the students can be seen through the
interpretation of the data.
1.5 TheMethods of Writing
When some wants to do a research there can be some methods to be
applied, for instances library research, field research, or experiment. On this
occasion, in taking this project, the writer applies the field research method with
the reasons that all the data he used are taken from the students of the SMP Negeri
3 Binjai on the period 2015/2016. The students are treated as the resources of the
data required. The writer write a set of questions deals with the usages of English
tenses which they have been taught by their teachers since the schooling in the
classroom. This set of the questions of course has already been discussed with the
English teachers who are in charge to teach the students. This idea is concerning
2.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
The word ‘grammar’ derives from the Greek ‘gramma’ which means a
written symbol; the first grammarians were teachers of writing and reading. In the
Middle Ages, to know grammar meant not only to know how to read and write
Latin but to possess the powers of a literate man in a largely illiterate society. In
modern English, grammar is used in several senses:
Any language has its basic dtructures. Every language is a complex of
patterns developed over a long period of time by the people using it. In the
English sentence Youcan see it, we know you is the subject (here the actor) and it
is the object (the thing seen), when you precede a verb and it follows it. Let us see
to the French, for example, the sentence would be written, Tu le vois, with the
subject first, object second and verb last. The order of the elements, as well as
their form, depends on the conventions of the particular language. Every native
speaker learns these and a host of other patterns in his language as a child and can
understand and use them automatically. These patterns may be called the
complete or total grammar of the language; in this sense English grammar is “the
English way of saying thinks.”This is an attempt to describe as systematically and
objectively as possible the total system of a language. In his method, the
grammarian attempt to be scientific: he observes the language as it is in an effort
to discover its underlying system but without trying to guide the language habits
of speakers and writers. Since a language is extensive, complex, varied, and
elusive, a particular grammar will never be completebut will depend on the
usually limit himself to one variety of the language (ordinarily that used by the
educated because the material is most readily available), and he will be limited by
his training (the linguistic philosophy he embraces), the information available to
him, and, of course, his individual competence.
When the description of a language covers a considerable period of time,
describing the evolution of words and forms and constructions, perhaps explaining
present usage in the light of the past, it is called historical or diachronic grammar.
When several related languages are compared, as English might be with Latin or
German, it is called comparative grammar. When one stage of a language is
described, it is called synchronic grammar.
For one variety of the language there will be one basic structure, one
underlying system, one grammar in the sense. Every attempt to describe this
grammar will be a grammar; in this second sense there may therefore be several
grammars. A brief account of the three principal types of these follows:
Though fully aware of the primacy of speech as language, they were able
to break away only gradually from the habit of depending on written records for
their evidence, especially as they were much concerned—Grimm again, for
example—with the history of the language. Nevertheless their achievements have
been enormous, and they established the firm foundations of modern linguistics.
This approach, to which Americans have been major contributors, carries
through much more rigorously two principles of the classical descriptive
grammars: the primacy of speech and the importance of the structural patterns of
therefore begin with the phoneme, go on to the morpheme, and attempt o identify
the syntactical devices by which grammatical relations are signalled.
One unfortunate result of prescriptive grammar is that the teaching of
Formal English has seemed so unreal to students that, unable to separate the
useful from the useless advice, they have paid almost no attention at all to it. If
they talked as their textbooks said they should, they would be laughed at;
consequently they have usually continued their old habits.
Although the usage recommended in schools will probably always be a
little more formal than that being practiced by actual writers, school grammar is
now gradually getting away from traditional prescriptive grammar anti is coming
closer to the actual usage of the educated as presented in the descriptive
grammars.
Many people are occasionally oppressed by a feeling of inadequacy in
their use of English.They believe that all their deficiencies, real or imagined, in
vocabulary, effective expression, spelling, usage, and punctuation would be
removed if they studied “grammar” conscientiously. This is back of the demand
for “More grammar!” in the schools. This demand is really based on a desire for
more varied and more acceptable usage, “good English”. The best remedy is wide
listening and reading and regular practice in using language effectively.
Grammatical terms play a useful but subordinate part in summarizing and
describing the facts of the current language, but they are not themselves the
When you use grammar in speaking or writing, you should be aware of its
various meanings and varied uses, and if necessary indicate the sense in which
you are using it. In this book the term is restricted to the first two senses described
in this article, the exact meaning being shown by the context.
The terms used in grammar deserve a comment also. The analysis of
language is a discipline more than two thousand years old, going back in Western
culture to the philosophers and rhetoricians of ancient Greece. The terminology
devised by the Greeks was used with little modification until modern linguistics
made its inadequacy for the description of other languages apparent. Some of the
old terms have been kept and given more restricted or more precise definition and
new terms have been introduced. Some grammatical and linguistic terms are still
not standardized, but by making their reference clear we can and must use them in
discussing language.
Many people steadfastly refuse to learn the technical terms of grammar.
Students who gaily toss about schizophrenic, marginal utility, Hanseatic League,
dicotyledonous, or trinitrotoluene will not learn the pronunciation and meaning of
predicative, metonymy, or even apostrophe or agreement, and some teachers of
the subject try to work without naming exactly what they are talking about. Many
of the words are a bit difficult—Greek or Latin names that have been taken into
the language—but they are not nearly so difficult as the vocabulary of psychology
or chemistry. This book uses a good many of these terms, without apology,
though when there is a choice of name the simpler and more suggestive has
common facts of usage and style, words which are an essential part of the English
vocabulary of educated people.
In English many groups of two or more words (that is, phrases) function
like single words. Often the division of the elements into separate words in print is
quite arbitrary. High school is not the noun school modified by the adjective high
so much as a noun in its own right just as highway is. But established practice is
to spell the first as two words, the second as one. Many of our verbs are made up
of a verb plus an adverb: close up, hold off, look into the verb,adverb
3.
THE STUDENTS ABILITY
Linguistics has been defined as the scientific study of language. A more
modest definition would be the systematic study of human languages. Scientific
study is today commonly associated with such natural sciences as physics,
chemistry, and biology, whose conclusions lend themselves to objective
verification more readily than those arrived at by investigators of human behavior.
Since speech is a uniquely phenomenon, the systematic study of it remains,
despite the assistance received from other disciplines, a humanistic study, a study
whose ultimate objectives are based on humane values. Linguistic is scientific,
nevertheless, both in the rigor objectivity of its methods and in the technical help
it has received from the natural and social sciences.
Any language—in this writing is our examples are drawn mainly from
English—is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon. The more thoroughly
languages are analyzed, the more astonishing their complexity becomes. This
complexity suggests a structure, and even the earliest ancient Greek investigators
of language recognized the existence of a structure.
Since language is sequences of sound, and sound is invisible, we cannot
see its structure as we can, for example, see the bony structure of a body—its
skeleton. As we recognize the basic elements of the linguistic structure we invent
names for them and attempt to describe the total structure part by part. It is one of
the great beauties of plane geometry that its structures can be seen in their
entirety. Though the native speaker seems to have a full grasp of the total
so that it can all be seen at once. Instead we must break it up into what seems to
be its most significant or at least its most conveniently describable parts and
present them one after another. This is a most exasperating approach. All the parts
are interrelated and necessary to the functioning of the whole, and a native
speaker controls them all, utilizes them simultaneously, and never gives a
conscious thought as to how he is using the using the structure to communicate his
ideas. We know our English but we seldom know how it works. So we find it
irritatingly hard to learn a lot of names for what we do so easily and
unconsciously. It is the function of linguistics to discover the structure, to find
names for its parts, and to use those names to explain how the system operates.
Some of the basic areas of linguistic investigation are briefly defined below:
1). Phonology studies and attempts to describe the primary sound units of speech.
Two related approaches are made in phonetics and phonemics.
2). Morphology studies and attempts to describe the primary meaningful units of
speech; these are called morphemes.
3). Syntax studies and attempts to describe the arrangement of morphemes in
meaningful utterances, usually called sentences.
4). Grammar is a term with a number of senses. Linguistics is concerned with the
first two which are defined in the article grammar.
5). Semantics studies and attempts to describe meaning. In this definition
“meaning” is not used in the same sense above. Morphological meaning is
restricted to the linguistic unit itself; the ‘s’ on the word cats means “plural”
example, if the sentence “I saw a dat” is changed to “I saw some dats,” we
know that dats is plural though we have no notion of what a dat is. Semantics
studies the relationship between the word and what it stands for; the
relationship between cat and the concept of a feline which it represents for us
is its meaning.
A language is a human phenomenon, which will differ somewhat even
from person to person; it will differ far more from one place to another and from
one time to another. These variations in persons, times, and places give rise to
such studies as dialectology, linguistic geography, historical and comparative
linguistics; and, collaborating even more with other disciplines, lexicography, the
making of dictionaries, orthography, the study of spelling, and paleography, the
study of ancient texts.
3.1 Tense and time
In grammar a tense is a disticntive form or phrase of a verb. The traditional
names of the tenses are mainly words indicating time (past, present, and future). It
is therefore assume that the function of tense is to show time and and that the time
shown is that suggested by the ame of the tense. Both assumptions are only partly
true. The function of a verb is primarily to show time. In English most sentences
require a finite verb, and the verb necessarily occurs in a tense form. But the
indication of time in the sentence may be supplied by an adver, or the adverb may
modify the time suggested by the verb.
The tense names in English should be considered, then, as convenient but
of the verb in each sentence being finally determined by other elements in the
construction. It is customary to distinguish sixteen tenses in English. The sixteen
tenses are:
1). Present Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
That man works at the Bank.
You and I enjoy enjoy the dishes.
2). Present Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
Those students are listening to the radio.
The deligent student is writing the exercises.
3). Present Perfect Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
That boy’s brother has gone to the market.
All the students have done the tasks.
4). Future Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
We will study abroad
The new students are going to buy the new books.
5). Future Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The president, Obama will be giving his speech by 10 a.m. next Monday.
6). Future Perfect Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
We will have finished the works tomorrow afternoon.
They will have arrived here tomorrow morning.
7). Past Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The English teacher Taught us English last week.
The postmen Delivered the letters.
8). Past Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The young docter wasexamining his patient.
Those mechanics wasfixing the broken cars.
9). Past Perfect Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The journalist had told us the news.
That father had sent the children to the school.
10). Past Future Perfect Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
Budi and Amin would have sent the new book to the teacher.
The dog would have run after the cat.
11). Past Future Perfect Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The new patient would have been being operated by the experienced docters.
12). Future Perfect Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The pharmacists will have been working in the laboratory by nine o’clock tomorrow morning.
The senior teachers will have been teaching the students in that classroom this afternoon.
13). Present Perfect Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The English class has been waiting since morning.
Those lazy cats havebeen sleeping for an hour.
14). Past Perfect Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
That gir had been playing the piano on that time.
The junior pilot had been flying the plane.
15). Past Future Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
My mother and I would have our dinner before she left to the Mexico city.
My sisters would read the magazine before noon.
16). Past Future Continuous Tense
Subject Predicate Complement
The terrorists would be bombing the city.
The policeman would be arresting the thief.
3.2 Kinds of testing
According to the English teachers of the SMP Negeri 3 Binjai where
the research is taken place that they have taught their students eight tenses. In
tenses. Therefore the test has the validity and reliability. So farin this chapter we
have considered a number of uses to which test results are put. We now
distinguish between two approaches to test constructions.
Testing is said to be direct when it requires the candidate to perform
precisely the skill which we wish to measure. If we want to know how well
candidates can write compositions, we get them to write compositions. If we want
to know how well they pronounce a language, we get them to speak. The tasks,
and the texts which are used, should be as authentic as possible. The fact that
candidates are aware that they are in a test situation means that the tasks cannot be
really authentic. Nevertheless the effort is made to make them as realistic as
possible.
Direct testing is easier to carry out when it is intended to measure the
productive skills of speaking and writing. The very acts of speaking and writing
provide us with information about the candidate’s ability. With listening and
reading, however, it is necessary to get candidates not only to listen or read but
also to demonstrate that they have done this successfully. The tester has to devise
methods of eliciting such evidence accurately and without the method interfering
with the performance of the skills in which he or she is interested. Interestingly
enough, in many texts on language testing it is the testing of productive skills that
is presented as being most problematic, for reasons usually connected with
reliability.
Direct testing has a number of attractions. First, provided that we are clear
the conditions which will elicit the behavior on which to base our judgments.
Secondly, at least in the case of the productive skills, the assessment and
interpretation of students’ performance is also quite straightforward. Thirdly,
since practice for the test involves practice of the skills that we wish to foster,
there is likely to be a helpful backwash effect.
Indirect testing attempts to measure the abilities which underlie the skills
in which we are interested. One section of the test, for example was developed as
an indirect measure of writing ability. It contains items of the following kind:
at first
Perhaps the main appeal of indirect testing is that it seems to offer the
possibility of testing a representative sample of a finite number of abilities which
underlie a potentially indefinitely large number of manifestations of them. If, for
example, we take a representative sample of grammatical structures, then, it may
be argued. Then we have taken a sample which is relevant for all the situations in
which control of grammar is necessary. By contrast, direct testing is inevitable the old woman seemed unwilling to accept anything was offered her by my
friend and I.where the candidate has to identify which of the underlined elements
is erroneous or inappropriate in formal standard English. While the ability to
respond to such items has been shown to be related statistically to the ability to
write compositions (though the strength of the relationship was not particularly
great), it is clearly not the same thing Another example of indirect testing is Lado
(1961) proposed method of testing pronunciation ability by a paper and pencil test
in which the candidate has to identify pairs of words which rhyme with each
limited to a rather small sample of tasks, which may call on a restricted and
possibly unrepresentative range of grammatical structures. On this argument,
indirect testing is superior to direct testing in that its results are more general
sable.
The main problem with indirect tests is that the relationship between
performance on them and performance of the skills in which we are usually more
interested tends to be rather weak in strength and uncertain in nature. We do not
yet know enough about the component parts of, say, composition writing to
predict accurately composition writing ability from scores on tests which measure
the abilities which we believe underlie it. We may construct rests of grammar,
vocabulary, discourse markers, handwriting, punctuation, and what we will. But
we still will not be able to predict accurately scores on compositions (even if we
make sure of the representativeness of the composition scores by taking many
samples).
It seems to me that in our present state of knowledge, at least as far as
proficiency and final achievement tests are concerned, it is preferable to
concentrate on direct testing. Provided that we sample reasonably widely (for
example require at least two compositions, each calling for a different kind of
writing and on a different topic), we can expect more accurate estimates of the
abilities that really concern us than would be obtained through indirect testing.
The fact that direct tests are generally easier to construct simply reinforces this
view with respect to institutional tests, as does their greater potential for beneficial
themselves entirely to direct testing and will always include an indirect element in
their tests. Of course, to obtain diagnostic information on underlying abilities,
such as control of particular grammatical structures, indirect testing is called for.
3.3 Validity
When we discuss about the validity we cannot escape from the contents of
validity. It cannot be denied that a test is said to have content validity if its content
constitutes a representative sample of the language skills, structures, etc. with
which it is meant to be concerned. It is obvious that a grammar test, for instance,
must be made up of items testing knowledge or control of grammar. But this in
itself does not ensure content validity. The test would have content validity only if
it included a proper sample of the relevant structures. Just what are the relevant
structures will depend, of course, upon the purpose of the test. We would not
expect an achievement test for intermediate learners to contain just the same set of
structures as one for advanced learners. In order to judge whether or not a rest has
content validity, we need a specification of the skills or structures etc. that it is
meant to cover. Such a specification should be made at a very early stage in test
construction. It isn’t to be expected that everything in the specification wt11
always appear in the test; there may simply be too many things for all of them to
appear in a single test. But t will provide the test constructor with the basis for
making a principled selection of elements for inclusion in the test. A comparison
of test specification and test content is the basis for judgments as to content
language teaching and testing but who are not directly concerned with the
production of the test in question.
The importance of content of the validity is,firstly, the greater a test’s
content validity, the more likely it is to be an accurate measure of what it is
supposed to measure. A test in which major areas identified in the specification
are under-represented—or not represented at all—is unlikely to be accurate.
Secondly, such a test is likely to have a harmful backwash effect. Areas which are
not tested are likely to become areas ignored in teaching and learning. Too often
the content of tests is determined by what is easy to test rather than what is
important to test. The best safeguard against this is to write full test specifications
and to ensure that the test content is a fair reflection of these.
The criterion of the related validity.Another approach to test validity is
to see how far results on the test agree with those provided by some independent
and highly dependable assessment of the candidate’s ability. This independent
assessment is thus the criterion measure against which the test is validated.
There are essentially two kinds of criterion-related validity: concurrent
validity and predictive validity. Concurrent validity is established when the test
and the criterion are administered at about the same time. To exemplify this kind
of validation in achievement testing, let us consider a situation where course
objectives call for an oral component as part of the final achievement test. i
objectives may list a large number of ‘functions’ which students respected to
perform orally, to test all of which might take 45 minutes for each student. This
each student for the oral component. The question then arises: can such a
ten-minute session give a sufficiently accurate estimate of the student’s ability with
respect to the functions specified in the course objectives? Is it, in other words, a
valid measure?
From the point of view of content validity, this will depend on how many
of the functions are tested in the component, and how representative they are of
the complete set of functions included in the objectivesvery effort should be made
when designing the oral component to give it content validity. Once this has been
done, however, we can go further. We can attempt to establish the concurrent
validity of the component.
To do this, we should choose at random a sample of all the students taking
the test. These students would then be subjected to the full 45 minute oral
component necessary for coverage of all the functions, using perhaps four scorers
to ensure reliable scoring. This would be the criterion test against which the
shorter test would be judged. The students’ scores on the full test would be
compared with the ones they obtained on the ten-minute session, which would
have been conducted and scored in the usual way, without knowledge of their
performance on the longer version. If the comparison between the two sets of
scores reveals a high level of agreement, then the shorter version of the oral
component may be considered valid, inasmuch as it gives results similar to those
obtained with the longer version. if, on the other hand, the two sets of scores show
little agreement, the shorter version cannot be considered valid; it cannot be used
the objectives. Of course, if ten minutes really is all that can be spared for each
student, then the oral component may be included for the contribution that it
makes to the assessment of students’ overall achievement and for its backwash
effect. But it cannot be regarded as an accurate measure in itself.
A test is said to have face validity if it looks as if it measures what it is
supposed to measure. For example, a test which pretended to measure
pronunciation ability but which did not require the candidate to speak (and there
have been some) might be thought to lack face validity. This would be true even if
the test’s construct and criterion-related validity could be demonstrated. Face
validity is hardly a scientific concept, yet it is very important. A test which does
not have face validity may not be accepted by candidates, teachers, education
authorities or employers. It may simply not be used; and if it is used, the
candidates’ reaction to it may mean that they do not perform on it in a way that
truly reflects their ability. Novel techniques, particularly those which provide
indirect measures, have to be introduced slowly, with care, and with convincing
explanations.
What use is the reader to make of the notion of validity? First, every
effort should be made in constructing tests to ensure content validity. Where
possible, the tests should be validated empirically against some criterion.
Particularly where it is intended to use indirect testing, reference should be made
to the research literature to confirm that measurement of the relevant underlying
constructs has been demonstrated using the testing techniques that are to be used
testing!).Any published test should supply details of its validation, without it can
be said that test the test is not valid.
3.4 Reliability
Imagine that the thirty-five students take a 20-item test at nine o’clock
one Thursday morning. The test is not impossibly difficult or ridiculously easy for
these students, so they do not all get zero or a perfect score of 100. Now what if in
fact they had not taken the test on the Thursday but had taken it at nine o’clock the
previous morning? Would we expect each student to have got exactly the same
score on the next test? The answer to this question must be no. Even if we assume
that the test is excellent, that the conditions of administration are almost identical,
that the scoring calls for no judgment on the part of the scorers and is carried out
with perfect care, and that no learning or forgetting has taken place during the
one-day interval—neverthelesswe would not expect every individual to get
precisely the same score on the next test. Human beings are not like that; they
simply do not behave in exactly the same way on every occasion, even when the
circumstances seem identical.
But if this is the case, it would seem to imply that we can never have
complete trust in any set of test scores. We know that the scores would have been
different if the test had been administered on the previous or the following day.
This is inevitable, and we must accept it. What we have to do is construct,
administer and score tests in such a way that the scores actually obtained on a test
on a particular occasion are likely to be very similar to those which would have
ability, but at a different time. The more similar the scores would have been, the
more reliable the test is said to be.
Look at the hypothetical data that the represent of the scores obtained by
fourteen students who took a 20-item test, on a particular occasion, and those that
they would have obtained if they had taken it a day later. Note the size of the
difference between the two scores for each student.
The standard error of measurement and the true score can be seen as
following. While the reliability coefficient allows us to compare the reliability of
tests, it does not tell us directly how close an individual’s actual score is to what
he or she might have scored on another occasion. With a little further calculation,
however, it is possible to estimate how close a person’s actual score is to what is
called their ‘true score’.
Imagine that it were possible for someone to take the same language test
over and over again, an indefinitely large number of times, without their
performance being affected by having already taken the test, and without their
ability in the language changing. Unless the test is perfectly reliable, and provided
that it is not so easy or difficult that the student always gets full marks or zero, we
would expect their scores on the various administrations to vary. If we had all of
these scores we would be able to calculate their average score, and it would seem
not unreasonable to think of this average as the one that best represents the
student’s ability with respect to this particular test. It is this score, which for
obvious reasons we can never know for certain, which is referred to as the
We are able to make statements about the probability that a candidate’s
true score (the one which best represents their ability on the test) is within a
certain number of points of the score they actually obtained on the test. In order to
do this, we first have to calculate the standard error of measurement of the
particular test. The calculation (described in
As we have seen, there are two components of test reliability: the
performance of candidates from occasion to occasion, and the reliability of the
scoring. We will begin by suggesting ways of achieving consistent performances
from candidates and then turn our attention to scorer reliability.
Other things being equal, he more items that you have on a test, the more
reliable that test will be. This seems intrusively right. If we wanted to know how
good an archer someone was, we wouldn’t rely on the evidence of a single shot at
the target. That one shot could be quite unrepresentative of their ability. To be
satisfied that we had a really reliable measure of the ability we would want to see
a large number of shots at the target.
The same is true for language testing. It has been demonstrated empirically
that the addition of further items will make a test more reliable. There is even a
formula (the Spearman-Brown formula, see the Appendix) that allows one to
estimate how many extra items similar to the ones already in the test will be
needed to increase the reliability coefficient to a required level. One thing to bear
in mind, however, is that the additional items should be independent of each other
and of existing items. Imagine a reading test that asks the question: ‘Where did the
was unusual about the hiding place?’, it would not make a full contribution to an
increase in the reliability of the test. Why not? Because it is hardly possible for
someone who got the original question wrong to get the supplementary question
right. Such candidates are effectively prevented from answering the additional
question; for them, in reality, there is no additional question. We do not get an
additional sample of their behavior, so the reliability of our estimate of their
ability is not increased.
Each additional item should as far as possible represent a fresh start for the
candidate. By doing this we are able to gain additional information on all of the
candidates, information which will make test results more reliable. The use of the
word ‘item’ should not be taken to mean only brief questions and answers. In a
test of writing, for example, where candidates have to produce a number of
passages, each of those passages is to be regarded as an item. The more
independent passages there are, the more reliable will be the test. In the same way,
in an interview used to test oral ability, the candidate should be given as many
‘fresh starts’ as possible. More detailed implications of the need to obtain
sufficiently large samples of behavior will be outlined later in the book, in
chapters devoted to the testing of particular abilities.
While it is important to make a test long enough to achieve satisfactory
reliability, it should not be made so long that the candidates become so bored or
tired that the behavior that they exhibit becomes unrepresentative of their ability.
At the same time, it may often be necessary to resist pressure to make a test
practical. The answer to this is that accurate information does not come cheaply: if
such information is needed, then the price has to be paid. In general, the more
important the decisions based on a test, the longer the test should be.
3.5 Score Calculation
No Student’s Names Scores Grades
Answers
Correct Incorrect
01 AddinaFitri 90 A 18 2
02 AnnisaNurhasanah 80 A 16 4
03 AriyaTiranda W 75 B 15 5
04 AzamiAprilla X 70 B 14 6
05 BagasAlwiSyah Putra 70 B 14 6
06 BobyFrans 70 B 14 6
07 Calvin Gilbert 90 A 18 2
08 CauliaSeilla 90 A 18 2
09 CintiaNaburju 70 B 14 6
10 CyntiaApriyanti 90 A 18 2
11 Daniel Aldianta 80 A 16 4
12 Dimas Wardana 85 A 17 3
13 EcaAristia 75 B+ 15 5
14 FaniKurniati 75 B+ 15 5
15 Indri Kardofa 90 A 18 2
16 InggitHertika 65 C+ 13 7
18 JetrinArfanSantiko 75 B+ 15 5
19 Jonner Samuel 75 B+ 15 5
20 M. AldiRialdi 80 A 16 4
21 M. RifqiHarahap 70 B 14 6
22 M. Yusa 70 B 14 6
23 MaulidaMelfinaPutri 85 A 17 3
24 MeisiSimanullang 60 C 12 8
25 M. ArsyaFikri 80 A 16 4
26 Nadia YasminaPutri 85 A 17 3
27 PramudiaRizki S 70 B 14 6
28 Quddusi Sara Ayuni 70 B 14 6
29 Rafi NuliaSazidan 55 D 11 9
30 RiskaSetiaNingsi 80 A 18 2
31 RizaAyuAsmita 70 B 14 6
32 RiskiFadilah 70 B 14 6
33 SitiRamadani 85 A 17 3
34 Tiara Sevanya T 65 C+ 13 7
35 Yohana Gloria S 55 D 11 9
The total numbers of the students is 35. There are two students who are not
able to answer the questions corretly. Therefore they have got the grades D. They
can answer the questions correctly 11 items only out of 20 items, and 9 items
14 students who are able to get the grade A. There are four (4) students who get
the grades B+ and 11 students get the grades B. There are three (3) students get the
grades C+. There is only one student who gets the grade C.There are 20 items of
the questions to given to the students who are treated as the object of the research
and so the resources of the required data to be analysed. Any student who is able
to answer the whole question corretly, to him or her will be given scores 100 (5
4.
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
4.1 Conclusion
As the writer of this paper has finished analysing the data he can conclude that the
students of SMP Neeri 3 Binjai are able to use the English tenses as their teachers
have taught them eight different tenses and only six tenses are tested. The
question given to the students consists of twente items. Each item worth five
scores, so when a student can answer the whole question to him will be scored
one-hundred. Therefore the higest possible scores are one hundred and the
opposite to each item which is answered uncorrectly will be charge or penalty five
scores or point of scores. The highest scores find by the students is 90 and the
lowest is 55. It means that when the student answer the incorretly will be given
minus scores 5 of each item. There are two students or 5,71% and there are
thirty-three students who are able to answer the question correctly or 94,29%. It means
that the 2015/2016 3rd year of SMP Negeri 3 Binjai are able to use English
tenses as they have been taught by their teachers.
4.2 Suggestion
The writer of this paper suggests ythe other students who arfe going to
write their final duty in order to get the Diploma degre from the English
Department at the Faculty of Culture will write about the other aspects of
voice, etc. Therefore the generation of the students will find it easy to study the
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Appendixes Soal
Berikutiniadadibuat 20 item soal.Setiapsoaladadibuat 5 pilihankemungkinanjawaban, yaitu a, b, c, d, dan euntukmelengkapikalimat
tersebut.Saudaradimintamemilihsalahsatujawaban yang benar.LingkarilahjawabanSaudara.
1. The rice crop … harvested than usual this year.
a. Is to be, b. is be, c. will, d. shall, e. could
a. had already start, b. have already, started, c. has started already, d. had already, e. started already
5. I … the Amplas Bus Terminal before I visited Medan last year. a. have ever seen, b. had never see, c. have not see, d. had never seen, e. has unseen
6. When he … up, he saw it was raining.
a. awoke, b. woke, c. awake, d. waked, e. wake
7. When … again he succeeded.
a. try, b. tried, c. trying, d. was try, e. tries
8. The man in charge of the library … us some new books yesterday. a. show, b. showed, c. shows, d. showing, e. shown
9. A good mother will … her children with enough food and clothes.
a. provides, b. provide, c. provided, d. providing, e. be provided
10.I did not … well last night.
a. slept, b. sleeping, c. sleeps, d. sleep, e. sleeped
11.Some scouts … to Brastagi by bus during the December holiday. a. are travel, b. will be travelling, c. are travelled,
12.Where is … snake … in grass.
a. a—the, b. an—their, c. the—its, d. one—it, e. any—a
13.Did you see … man with black beard.
a. the—this, b. one—one, c. a—a, d. any—the, e. a—that
14.I heard that … elephant has escaped from … National zoo. a. An—the, b. a—an, c. the—a, d. a—the, e. any—the
15.I saw … American tourists eating at … Chinese restaurant yesterday.
a. the—an, b. an—a, c. a—an, d. a—a, e. an—any
16.Have you ever eaten at … Indian restaurant near the school?
a. a—the, b. a—an, c. the—the, d. a—a, e. an—an
17.She … sleeping soundly when the thief entered her bedroom. a. is, b. be being, c. was, d. has, e. will be
18.We … going to go to central park.
a. was, b. will, c. shall, d. are, e. were
19.Have you ever … a bull without a horn?
a. seen, b. seeing, c. see, d. saw, e. sawed
20.The dog has … after the cat when it has been away.
