ABSTRACT
This thesis mainly aims at determining students’ mastery in using simple present tense in descriptive writing and finding out the dominant errors because the students often find difficulties in using this kind of tense especially in descriptive writing. This study was conducted under the consideration that simple present tense plays an important role in writing a descriptive text. This thesis has two objectives. First, it is aimed at finding out various kinds of errors on simple present tense in descriptive writing made by the eighth year students of SLTP N 2 Ungaran. Second, it is aimed at finding the dominant errors.
The population of this study was the eighth year students of SLTP N 2 Ungaran in the academic year of 2005/2006 which consisted of seven classes; they were VIIIA, VIIIB, VIIIC, VIIID, VIIIE, VIIIF, VIIIG class. The total number of the population was 276 students; out of which 35 students were chosen as the samples. Cluster proportional random sampling was used to collect the data because the population consisted of several groups and the samples were taken proportionally to represent each of the groups, so that they were all well represented. The samples were taken 12.5% from every class to collect the data. The instrument the writer used is a written test consisting of an outline in writing a descriptive text. The students’ errors in using simple present tense in their descriptive writing were classified and they were also counted to finding out the dominant errors.
The students’ errors were classified into three categories. Those were be verb errors, non-be verb errors, and adverb of frequency errors. Be errors were divided into 3 types of errors, they were omission of be, wrong form of be, and double be. Non-be errors were divided into 4 types of errors. Those were the use of auxiliary be (be before verb), the use of to before verb, -s form errors, and other errors related to verb. Another kind of error was related to adverb of frequency. The numbers of those errors in percentage were as follows: be verb errors 36.38%, non-be verb errors 48.33%, and adverb of frequency errors 15.29%. It is concluded that the dominant errors lies on the use of non-be verb in their descriptive writing.
Based on the results of the research, it is suggested that the eighth year students of SLTP N 2 Ungaran should be given intensive exercises on non-be verb in their writing. It is quite necessary for the eight year students and the teacher of SLTP N 2 Ungaran to be informed about the results of this study, so that they can improve their teaching learning process.
