CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Study
English as an international language has an important role to develop science and technology. Many countries in the world use English as a medium of communication among people in different countries and also of writing many kinds of books in which those are spread in different countries. In Indonesia there are many kinds of foreign books written in English, whether they are medical, economical, botanical, or other books, they claim Indonesian students to be able to learn and to use English in schools or in society in order that the books they read can be applied in various fields so that the development of science and technologies in Indonesia can be obtained.
For many years, English has been the most important foreign language in Indonesia, which is taught from elementary school to university. However, in senior high school, English is taught as main subject in which the government has changed the curriculum into Competence-Based Curriculum 2004 to be KTSP in 2008. According to Departemen Pendidikan Nasional (2003: 36).
“The competence-basing language curriculum is a systematic draft and strategy which build the communicative competence or the competence of contextual. It means that it builds all the basis of competences themselves. They are like linguistics competences, social culture and strategies to make the benefit context.”
From the statement above, it is clear that Curriculum Based on competence 2004-2009 tries to develop and achieve the communicative competence or discourse competence and has perspective that is comprehensive to the discourse. The learners must be able to master the four skills, they are: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, also English components such as: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
Among the four skills above, writing is the most difficult one. Because it requires demonstrating the control of a number of variables simultaneously; they are control of content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation spelling, etc. Nunan (1989: 35) points out, “It has been argued that that learning to write fluently and expressively is the most difficult of the macro skills for all language users regardless of whether the language in question is first, second, or foreign language.” Another opinion comes from Heaton (1989: 138). He explain that the writing skills are complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also of conceptual and judgment elements. It means that ability to write needs a special skill and process in organizing language material by using learners’ own words and ideas and to be a good composition.
According to the results of the research done by the students of IKIP Budi Utomo Malang show that in learning English, most of the students find difficulties, especially in applying grammar in their speaking and writing. So, they will make mistakes and errors. It describes that learners’ ability in English is still poor and they need to be taught more effectively.
The learners often make mistakes and even errors in learning English, especially when they try to arrange sentences or use tenses in their writing. As a result, they will write sentences ungrammatically. Actually, ungrammatical sentences have great influence when the learners are writing sentences. That can be influenced by the first language which is different from the second language in written form. Therefore, the first language can interfere learners in the process of the second language. Abbort (1981: 216) wrote,
“For pedagogic purposes, teachers and others more likely to be concerned with the performances of whole groups and especially with the problems they have in commons. For these purposes, we need to ensure that the data comes from fairly homogeneous groups as regards mother tongue, age, previous teaching, and if possible, intelligence. Perhaps the most important of these factors is the mother tongue, particularly if phonological errors arte being studied
From the statement above, it can be seen that errors in learning a second language are caused by the interference of the learners’ mother tongue. In other words, errors made by the learners sometimes are caused by use of the first language.
Making Errors are a natural and unavoidable part of the process of learning English. Many kinds of errors arise when the learners write because they do not master the English structure well. Also, errors are the inability of the students in using rules of the components and elements of the second language. Brown (1987: 170) Said that ”second language learning is a process that is clearly not unlike first language learning in its trial and errors nature”. It means that the learners cannot avoid errors in learning second language. That statement is supported by Wiganti (2000: 11)
“Many linguist and researcher have found out that learners’ errors may account the process of learning a target language, in other words, making errors is considered to be natural to the learners. More extremely, they hypothesize that errors should not be viewed as problems to be overcome, but rather as normal and inevitable features indicating the strategies that learners use.”
So almost all learners must make errors when they are learning English because it is difficult to separate error in the process of learning English.
Students’ errors are very useful ways of showing what they have and have not learnt. Dubin F. and Olshtain E. (1986: 74) reported,: … , today errors are viewed as an integral part of the language-learning process from which we can gain very significant insight.” It tells that errors are important to study in order to understand the process of learning. A study of learners’ errors describes what problems the learners are having now and help the teacher to plan remedial work. In addition, the teacher should not see negatively as a sign of failure but see them positively as an indication of what the teacher still needs to teach. So, if the teacher tries to prevent students; errors, he/she never finds out what they do not know.
There are four standard competences in curriculum based on competences in Curriculum Based on Competence 2004-2009. One of them is writing. In writing students are hoped to be able to express many written meanings that have purposes in communicative, text structure etc. They can develop their writing in the forms of genre (kinds of text) such as: narrative, descriptive, recount, news items, etc as a means of communications.
One of genres is recount. Non-continuous tells something happening in the present time, like: brochure, label, biography, diary, report, personal letter, etc. As it tells some events, it usually uses sequence words such as: If, while, after, before, until, etc. Then, tense used in recount text is simple present tense, because it tells present events.
To make a good composition, the students must be able to master and apply the structure correctly, especially about tense used. In this case, the tense used is simple present tense. If they cannot do that, of course, errors will arise. Automatically their writing will cause misunderstanding for the readers, because the readers cannot receive the massage or expression of their idea well. Most of the students still find problems in using it, because of their limited mastery, especially the differences between regular and irregular verb. Therefore the writer wants to analyze the errors made by the students and tries to give solutions to overcome their problems. He chooses the title “An Error Analysis on the Use of Simple present Tense among the Ninth Year Students of SMPN 3 Pare.”
1.2. Statement of the problems
Based on the background of the study there are problems, which can be formulated after identifying the type errors, omitted among the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare
The problem can be stated as follows:
- What analysis is to be described on the use simple present tense among students of the ninth year SMPN 3 Pare?
- What analysis is to be described on the frequency occurrence of the errors made among the students of the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare on the use simple present tense?
1.3. Objective of the Study
This study has their objectives relating to the formulation of the problems above. They can be stated as follows:
- To describe what errors, made among the students of the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare on the use simple present tense.
- To describe the frequency occurrence of the errors made, among the students of the ninth year students of SMPN 3 Pare on the use simple present tense.
1.4. Limitation of the Study
In this study, the researcher used a test to find the students errors. She gave some material and the students all of them. The researcher only took Indonesian students who were in the ninth year students at SMPN 3 Pare.
The students did not concentrate on all structure/tense problems found in students doing, since the researcher limited her study in the problem of tense especially simple present tense.
1.5. Significance of the Study
The use of the result of the study has great sign finance:
1.5.1 For teacher:
- Teacher will know the errors that usually make among students on the use of simple present tense.
- Teacher will be able to predict the errors that probably will happen to the students so that he will be able to overcome the troubles.
1.5.2 For the students:
- The students will be able to study the simple present tense more easily.
1.6. Definition of key terms
To avoid misunderstanding of the concepts used in this study, some definitions are provided as the following:
- Errors are flowed side learned speech or writing they are those parts of conversation or writing that deviated from some selected of nature language performance.
- Mistakes are due to memory, lapses, physical static such as tiredness and psychological condition such as strong emotion of the language the learner is making errors are systematically made, it is due to do the learners still developing the knowledge of the target language rule system.
- Simple present tense; the simple present is the tense normally used for the relation of daily event, the simple present tense is used for actions completed in the present at a definite time. It is used for an action whose time now terminated, or occurred in period of time now terminated. It is also used for a present habit, and it is used in conditional sentences, type I.
- Native language, the learner’s first language or mother tongue, in this case Bahasa Indonesia.
- Target language, the new language the learners are learning, in this case English.
