AN ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTS ERROR IN USING SINGULAR

AND PLURAL VERB OF SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN WRITING

DESCRIPTIVE TEXT
A Journal
By:
Sholihah
NPM 10050009
Study Program : English Education

SEKOLAH TINGGI KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN

MUHAMMADIYAH PRINGSEWU - LAMPUNG (STKIP MPL)
2014

Title

: AN ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTS ERROR IN

USING SINGULAR AND PLURAL VERB OF
SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN WRITING
DESCRIPTIVE TEXT

Students Name

: Sholihah

Students Number

: 10050009

Major

: Bahasa dan Seni

Study Program

: English Education

APPROVED:
The Chairman of English Education Program Study

Fitri Wulandari, M.Pd.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTS ERROR IN USING SINGULAR

AND PLURAL VERB OF SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN WRITING
DESCRIPTIVE TEXT
By
Sholihah
Email : sholihah68@yahoo.co.id
Sekolah Tinggi Keguruan Dan Ilmu Pendidikan
Muhammadiyah
Pringsewu - Lampung (STKIP MPL)
Abstract
English is really important, because it is an international language in the world.
English is introduced as a compulsory subject to be taught from elementary school
to university. In learning English the students should be able to master four
language skills, they are: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The objectives
of this research are: to find out the students difficulties in using singular and
plural verb of simple present tense in their writing descriptive text and to find out
the percentages of students error in using singular and plural verb of simple
present tense in their writing descriptive text. There are some problems that found
at the seventh grade students of SMP N Purworejo in the academic year of
2013/2014. It is based on the writer preliminary research in SMP N Purworejo.
Most of the students are lack of grammar especially in using singular and plural
verb of simple present tense. So, this research is focused on the students error in
using singular and plural verb in their writing descriptive text.
In this research the writer used descriptive qualitative method; the writer
described, analyzed and presented the error of singular and plural verb in their
writing that were done by the students. The population of this research is 217
second grade students of SMP N Purworejo. The writer used simple random
sampling because the students have the same chance to be sample. The writer took
10% from 217 populations of second grade students of SMP N Purworejo. So, the
sample is 22 students. In this case, the samples were asked to make a paragraph
descriptive text using singular and plural verb. To analyze the data, the writer used
the formula as follow:
X 100%
The result of students test, the writer got 127 total sentence and the writer found
94 sentences errors based on surface taxonomy errors by Dulay. The errors are
classified into omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. There are 50
sentences of omission errors or 53,19%, 31 sentences of addition errors or
32,97%, 8 sentences of misformation errors or 8,51%, and 5 sentences of
misordering errors or 5,31%. From these errors, omission is highest occurrence
than the others (addition, misformation, misordering) that is 53,19%. Meanwhile,
the total students grammatical error is 74,01%, therefore the students
grammatical errors are high.
Keywords : error analysis, grammar, subject verb-agreement

Introduction

Discussion

English is an international language in

the world. In learning English, the
students should be able to master four
language skills, they are: listening,
speaking, reading, and writing, also
English components such as: grammar,
vocabulary,
pronunciation,
and
punctuation. Among the four language
skills above, writing is the most
difficult one.

According to Betty (2003:165) A

singular subject takes a singular verb,
while a plural subject takes a plural
verb. If the subject is singular, the
verb must have an-s/es. If the subject is
plural, the verb does not have an -s/es.
Singular verb is formulated; S
(she/he/it) + Verb I + s/es and plural
verb is formulated; S (I/You/ We/They) +
Verb I (without added s/es).

According to Heaton (1989:

138) For examples:
Writing skills are complex and
sometimes difficult to teach, requiring 1. Singular Verb:
mastery not only of grammatical and
rhetorical devices but also of
She goes to market.
conceptual and judgment elements. It
She holds the orange fruit.
means that ability to write needs a
special skill and process in organizing 2. Plural Verb:
language material by using students
own words and ideas and to be a good
I walk to the market.
composition.
They buy oranges fruits.
In composing a good writing, we
should notice some aspect. Grammar is
one of important aspect who they
should be mastered in order to make a
structure writing well. Writing in
different language is not always as easy
as writing in our own language since
there are some different rules in the
writing system and these differences
sometimes make us make errors. It
means to able to write, the students
have structure grammar ability because
they will make errors in their writing if
they lack of structure or grammar
ability.
Brown (2007:259) says that error
analysis is the fact that learners make
error and these errors can be observed,
analyzed, and classified to reveal
something of the system operating
within error, led to surge of studying of
learners error.

In fact, most of the students grammar

ability is low, especially in using
singular and plural verb of simple
present tense in their writing
descriptive text. It can be proved by
interviewing with the English teacher
in SMP N Purworejo. Basically the
students have not understood yet about
singular and plural verb of simple
present tense, the students have
difficulties in how to use tense in
writing descriptive text, and how to
make the good sentences in writing
descriptive text.
Based on the problem above, the writer
wants to analyze students error based
on surface strategy taxonomy by
Dulay, et al (1982:154-163). They are
Omission, Addition, Misformation, and
Misordering.

a. Omission
Omission errors are characterized by
the absence of an item that must
appear in a well-formed utterance,
although any morpheme or word in a
sentence is potential candidate for
omission.
b. Addition
Addition errors are the opposite of
omission. They are characterized by
the presence of an item which must
not appear in well-formed utterance.
c. Misformation
Miformation errors are characterized
by the use of the wrong form of the
morpheme or structure.
d. Misordering
Misordering errors are characterized
by the incorrect placement of a
morpheme or group of morphemes
in an utterance.
Conclusion and Suggestion
Conclusion
After finding out the result and analysis
the data, the writer concluded the
discussion as follow:

be seen that the students grammatical

error is high that is 74,01%.
Suggestion
Some suggestions are needed by the
English teacher in order to avoid the
students of making the same error and
hopefully they are worthwhile. The
suggestions are given below:
The teachers should pay attention
to the material of singular and
plural verb of simple present tense.
The teacher should give and
explain the material very detail.
The teacher should try some
teaching methods that are suitable
for the students, so, they do not feel
bored.
The teachers should create a good
atmosphere in the class in order to
get students attention as well as
their interest too.
The teacher should give the test as
much as possible even though the
students still make errors, they will
find a new case and it will be very
worth for them.
The students must be active in the
class to avoid misunderstanding the
material that has given to the
teacher.
The students have to try to
improving their knowledge about
English from many sources such as
internet, book, or another media.
The students must be practice and
practice to make they are easy to
learn English.

There were 94 sentences errors of

singular and plural verb that were made
by the students of SMP N Purworejo
from the127 total sentences of singular
and plural verb. There were 50
omission errors and the percentage is
53,19%, there were 31 addition errors
and percentage is 32,97%, there were 8
misformation and percentage is 8,51%, References
and there were 5 misordering and
percentage is 5,31%. From the result Brown, H. Douglas. (2007). Principle
above, the total
of students
of Language Learning and
grammatical
error
is
74,01%.
Teaching. Longman: America
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