AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF USING PRESENT TENSE
BY THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SENIOR
HIGH SCHOOL IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT
A THESIS
Submitted as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
FRANSISKA INSANI RAHESTY SINAGA
Registration Number 2113121028
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
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ABSTRACT
Sinaga, Fransiska Insani Rahesty. 2113121028. An Error Analysis of Using Present Tense by The Tenth Grade Students of Senior High School in Writing Descriptive Text. A thesis: English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan. 2016.
This study deals with the error analysis. It was conducted by using qualitative research design. The respondents of this study were Grade Ten (X) students of SMA Negeri 1 Tanjung Morawa. The respondents of this study were 3 classes which chosen randomly ten students from each class. The data of this study were
taken from the students’ descriptive test. Dulay’s theory was applied to analyze
students’ error in writing and divided each error into types. Based on the research there were four types of error found in students’ writing. There were Omission, Addition, Misformation, and Misordering. Then, after analyzing the data, it was found that the highest error found in Omission with the number 281 items (61.50%) . The result of this study shows that students’ ability in using present tense still low and students still made errors.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The greatest gratitude is expressed to Allah SWT, the Almightily and Most
Beneficial for his Grace, Guidance, Praise, Honor and Mercy that has been given to writer so that she finally accomplishes her thesis entitled “An Error Analysis of Using Present Tense by The Tenth Grade Students of Senior High School in
Writing Descriptive Text”.
This thesis is submitted to the English Department, Faculty of Languages and
Arts, State University of Medan as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for
taking the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan. During the completion of this thesis, the
writer realized that she had received a lot of helps, and suggestions. Therefore, the
writer would like to express her sincerest gratitude to:
Prof. Dr. Syawal Gultom, M.Pd., the Rector of State University of Medan.
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the Dean of Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Medan and all her Staffs.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the Head of English Department and her Thesis Examiner.
Dra. Meisuri, M.A., the Secretary of English Department.
Nora Ronita Dewi, S.S, M.Hum., the Head of English Education Program.
Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., her First Thesis Consultant. Dr. Anni Holila Pulungan, M.Hum., her Second Thesis Consultant. Prof. Dr. Busmin Gurning, M.Pd., her Academic Advisor.
Rita Suswati, S.Pd., M.Hum., her Thesis Examiner.
All the Lecturers of English and Literature Department who have taught, guided, and advised her throughout the Academic years.
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All Teachers and Students at SMA Negeri 1 Tanjung Morawa for helping the writer to do this thesis especially to Lisnawati, S.Pd.I and Siti
Maisyaroh, S.Pd.
Eis Sri Wahyuningsih, M.Pd and Mr. Pantes, Administrative Staffs of English Department.
Her beloved parents Edi Sinaga and Widiyawati. Thanks for their endless love and their patience, affection, prayer and everything that have
given not only in finishing her study but also in her entire life. Her beloved
sister Amelia Endayu Syahputri Sinaga.
Her beloved family, Bintang Berliana Panjaitan, Christin Aurelia, Anastacia Itonaro for the support and prayer.
Raja Bobby Adytia, her beloved man for the support, prayer, and companion to the successful of her thesis.
Her beloved friends, the students of English Department, Anna Elisabet Sinaga, Ester Margaretha Sitorus, Putri Sri Murnita Bangun, Ricka Setiawati, Ruminah Rambe, Serius Afandi Bukit for always be there when she needed their support and motivation.
Medan, April 2016 The Writer
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ... 1
A. The Background of the Study ... 1
A. Theoretical Framework ... 7
1. Writing ... 7
2. Definition of Writing ... 7
3. Genre Based Writing ... 8
D.Conceptual Framework. ... 24
CHAPTER III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ... 27
A. Research Design ... 27
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C. The Procedure of Collecting Data ... 27
D. The Technique of Analyzing the Data ... 28
CHAPTER IV. DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS ... 29
A. The Data ... 29
B. The Data Analysis ... 29
C. Causes of Error ... 36
D. Discussion ... 37
E. Research Findings ... 39
CHAPTER V. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ... 40
A. Conclusions ... 40
B. Suggestions ... 41
REFERENCES ... 42
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LIST OF TABLES
vii LIST OF APPENDICES
1 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
There are four language skills that we know in common, namely reading,
writing, listening, and speaking. Two of them are called by receptive skills, those
are: reading and listening. And the other two are called by productive skills, those
are: speaking and writing.
Writing is included in the four skills namely reading, writing, listening,
and speaking that took place as the important thing. By writing people can express
the feelings in the case of sentence, text or anything else which is related to the
written product.
Writing something is not as simple as people think off somehow.
According to Sarosdy, et.al (2006: 57) writing and speaking belong to the output
stage of language production they are operating towards the communicative end
of the communication continuum.
In writing, people need more than just the ability in writing letter or words.
People have to understand about the aspects of language (structure, vocabulary,
and spelling). Those aspects cannot be ignored because a written product can only
be understood by the reader if those aspects of language have completely fulfilled.
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According to Knapp (2005:14) learning to write is a difficult and complex
series of processes that require a range of explicit teaching methodologies
throughout all the stages of learning. In addition, written text has a number of
conventions which separate it out from speaking. Apart from differences in
grammar and vocabulary, there are issues of letter, word, and text formation
manifested by handwriting, spelling, and layout punctuation, Harmer (2001: 255).
Based on previous research by Erdogan that helps me to get me more
influence of how a language learning process might create many problems. It can
appear from the failure to realize the system of language or misunderstanding of
the language target. As I got from my experience of observing tenth grade of
SMA Negeri 1 Tanjung Morawa in that observation they had problems in writing
descriptive in correct pattern, the tense is often wrong, the lack of vocabulary are
sure enough to confirm. So basically learning from third grade doesn’t assure you
to master English or at least to realize the correct grammar.
In detail, based on the writer’s observation of the Tenth Grade Students at
SMA Negeri 1 Tanjung Morawa on 03rd October 2015, then the writer got some
information about the students. First, the writer asked the teacher about the
students’ score and the minimum criteria mastery (KKM or Kriteria Ketuntasan
Minimum) for English lesson which counted as 75. Then, the writer asked the
teacher about the number of students in three classes that were taken as the
samples; those are X-7 : 36 students, X-8 : 36 students, and X-9 : 35 students also
about the curriculum applied on that school which referring to the Educational
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asked for the teacher’s permission to instruct the students to write a descriptive
text. And from the observation, the writer can accumulate the data as:
Table 1.1. The Percentage of the Tenth Grade Students’ Score in Writing
KKM <75 75 >75
Example of some errors found in students’ descriptive text:
a. Omission of verb inflection (marker -s/ -es)
1. *She like to lick her tail
The subject is third singular person, so we must add suffix –s after the
verb and the sentence must be:
She likes to lick her tail.
2. *Belang like to eat fish
The subject is third singular person, so we must add suffix –s after the
verb and the sentence must be:
Belang likes to eat fish.
3. *She also like tempe
The subject is third singular person, so we must add suffix –s after the
verb and the sentence must be:
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b. Error of misordering
1. *She is the sister very good.
The error is in word misorder, so the sentence must be:
She is a very good sister.
2. *It often is washed clean
The error is in word misorder, so the sentence must be:
It is often washed clean.
The data above led me to the conclusion that students’ ability in writing
was low. It was proved from the data that showed the numbers of students who
fulfilled and exceed the KKM were less than who did not pass the KKM. There
were still many mistakes found in their written product. Many students were
known as to literally write text by using English without understanding about
what they really wrote down. They just followed the instruction from the teacher
that asked them to write a text. They were hardly to express everything on their
mind into the form of text. Besides their basic in English like grammar and
vocabularies were limited so that they have difficulties to produce a good text.
One of the genres of text is Descriptive. In this genre the students were
asked to describe an object, it can be a person, animal, thing or else. The tense
used in this genre is simple present tense in which people use it often in daily
conversation. The problem was that the students still made mistakes in using this
simple present tense moreover when they were asked to write it down in a form of
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Response to this problem, the writer decided to conduct a research titled
An Error Analysis of Using Present Tense by the Students of Senior High School
in Writing Descriptive Text.
B. The Problems of the Study
Based on the previous discussion in the background of the study, the
problems of the study could be formulated as:
1. What are the types of grammatical errors made by the students in writing
descriptive text?
2. What are the causes of the students’ grammatical errors in writing
descriptive text?
C. The Objectives of the Study
Based on the problems which are stated above, the objectives of the study
are:
1. To find out the types of grammatical errors made by the students in
writing descriptive text.
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D. The Scope of the Study
The study deals with the error analysis. This study focuses on the error
made by students in using Present Tense in their writing descriptive text. This
study limits in using present tense.
E. The Significances of the Study
This research finding was expected to be useful for both theoretical and
practical perspective:
1. Theoretical perspectives
a. The findings of the study could be useful for teaching present tense in
descriptive text.
b. The findings of this study could be useful as a reference those who are
interested in doing the related study.
2. Practical perspectives
a. To the Teachers
The findings of this study expects become a reference and input for them,
also for showing that more exercises and correction about simple present tense
needed to improve students’ ability in writing and the teacher could rearrange the
way to share material effectively based on the curriculum and students’
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b. To the Students
The writer expects that the students could improve their ability in using
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
A. Conclusions
After analyzing the data, conclusions could be drawn as the following:
1. The four types of error were found in the students’ descriptive text. Those
were: (1) omission that is consisting of the absence of an item in using
verb, marker, and auxiliary verb. (2) addition that is containing of the
opposite from omission that is an appearance of some items which are not
needed in the sentence and in this research the type was only addition of
double marking . (3) misformation which consists of wrong selection in
using morpheme or structure in which the misformation of archi forms
was only type could be found in this research.. (4) misordering which is
wrong placement of words in a sentence that makes the sentence weird and
the sense of the sentence can be changed. . Total number are 457
occurrences found with Omission are 281 items (61.50%), Addition are 49
items (10.72%), Misformation are 61 items (13.34%), and Misordering are
66 items (14.44%).
2. The data findings showed that the most dominant type of errors made by
students was omission with total number 281 items (61.50%). Because in
omission the errors are categorized by the misused of verb, auxiliary verb
and also marker -s/ -es after the verb which dominates descriptive text
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3. The four causes of error in students’ writing descriptive text were (1)
interlingual transfer, (2) intralingual transfer, (3) context of learning, (4)
communication strategies. And intralingual transfer was the cause that
gave most impact to students error because their failure in creating correct
sentence in correct form by translating the word literally from source
language into target language.
B. Suggestions
In relation to the conclusions, the following suggestions are:
1. The teachers, it is better for them to understand not only the theory of
present tense but also the practice of that theory in daily such found in
descriptive text.
2. The students to improve the ability in using present tense starts from little
thing. It can be from daily conversation, practice it through writing and
helping each other with classmate to give correction and be brave to
express all things in mind to the communication case.
It is suggested for other researchers to make other research relate to the types of
error. They can do the analysis to the other subject and improve the development
of knowledge because in learning every single thing errors will always still be
found. This thesis would be place as the main references in order to make further
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