AN ERROR ANALYSIS ON SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE USED BY THE

EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT

AT SMP RADEN FATAH BATU

Nuril Khaesaria Hernidita

University of Muhammadiyah Malang

ABSTRACT
The objectives of this research are: 1) to know the types of errors made by the
eighth graders in using Simple Present Tense in writing descriptive text at SMP
Raden Fatah Batu, and 2) to know the way how the teacher helps the students to cope
with the errors in using Simple Present Tense in writing descriptive text.
In this research, the researcher used descriptive qualitative research. Data
collection techniques used were interview and document. Instruments used to collect
the data were interview guideline, tape recorder, and students’ writing task. The
subject of this research was the eighth-graders of SMP Raden Fatah Batu as many as
32 students.
Based on the research results, it can be concluded that there were 81 errors found
from 32 written products made by the students in writing descriptive text. The highest
frequency error was misformation as much as 47 errors. Then, omission errors as
much as 20 errors, misordering errors as much as 13, the last was addition error as
many as 1 error. In addition, there were three ways to cope students errors: 1)
evaluating students’ error after they wrote in the form of paragraph, 2) having various
activites to motivate students in the learning process, and 3) writing daily activity to
build up their paragraph.
Keywords: Error, Error Analysis, Simple Present Tense, Writing, Descriptive Text

INTRODUCTION
English plays an important role in all aspects of national relationship with other
countries such as diplomatic, social, cultural, and also education. In education,
English has an important role. It could be seen that language has been learned in any
levels of education. In Indonesia, English is considered as a foreign language. English
has been taught from elementary level up to the Universities. Almost books in the
libraries of universities are written in English, such as journals, and articles for any
fields are written in English.
 There are four skills which students must be learned. All of which are
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. From all of the four language skills, writing
is very important skill. Writing aims to tell and to express the feeling to the reader.
Writing can also be defined as both physical and mental activity that is aimed to
express and impress (Nunan, 2003:88). It is categorized as the physical activity
because the writer must act of committing words or ideas like typing an e-mail into a
computer. As a mental work, the activities of writing focus more on the act of
inventing ideas, thinking about how to express and organize them into statements and
paragraphs that enable a reader in understanding the ideas of the written work. The
differences between writing and speaking sometimes are considered as easier because
the grammatical pattern in speaking is not necessary as long as the audience gets the
ideas during the communication. Meanwhile, writing has only one chance to convey
some information as meaningful as possible for the readers. Thus, teaching writing in
an appropriate way is required to facilitate student’s second language acquisition.
One of the types of writing taught in Junior High School is descriptive text.
According to Boardman and Frydenberg (2002:6), descriptive text is a text that
describes about some particular looks, such as person, or thing in detail. The purpose
of descriptive text is to give an information of what is being described for the reader.
Hammond (1992) also indicates that there are two generic structures of descriptive
text. All of which are:
a. Identification of phenomenon to be described
b. Description of parts, qualities, and characteristics
Furthermore, Hammond (1992) says that the language features of descriptive
text include:
1. Using Simple Present Tense
2. Focusing on specific participants
3. Using action verb
4. Verbs of ‘being’ and ‘having’ or ‘relational process’. For instance, “my
mother is beautiful, she has long hair.”
5. Using figurative language such as hyperbole, symbolism, and personification
 This material will be helpful in daily life for them. Descriptive text is a text
which presents information about something. It is as a result of systematic
observation and analysis. The information given in a descriptive text is very general.
It gives information about a subject as the topic of the text, but students have some
difficulties in learning this material. The students usually do not know about kinds of
topics that can be chosen and how to develop them to produce a descriptive text.
When writing a descriptive text, students must be able to understand about the
grammar.
Nunan (2003:153) states that grammar is a set of rules specifying the correct
ordering of words at the sentence level. According to Richards, Platt, and Weber in
Nunan (2005:2), grammar is a description of a language and the way in which units
such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language. From
this definition, it seems that grammar plays an important role in combining units of
language to form sentences. The sentences are acceptable or grammatical if they
follow the rules of grammar. Since communicative purpose and function of language
are reflected in grammar, it is a must that the students have to acquire good grammar.
It should be admitted, good mastery in grammar will enable people easily to express
information, feelings, and ideas in their thought to others. In other words, it can be
said that communication failure will happen if people do not master the grammar
because the purpose of communication cannot be reached. From that statement, it is
clear that grammar is important to be mastered by the students in order to be able to
express their feelings, emotions, and to be able to use English appropriately.
The importance of grammar is also due to the fact because grammar of the
language makes it is possible for us to talk about language. Resulting from grammar
which has complete components in English, it is very common for the students to
make an error. The new website of Academic Skills Office includes the useful
information on common errors in writing. It says that one of the common errors
which students made in writing process is tenses. According to Prayitno (2002:91),
“tense refers to the form of verb used, for example: He eats (Simple Present Tense),
he ate (simple past), he has eaten (present perfect tense), etc”. Another definition is
from Azar (1990:891), that the word “tenses” stands for a verb form or series of verb
used to express time relation. Tense may indicate whether an action, activity or state
is in present, past, or an activity in future or in progress over a period of time.
In the learning process, especially learning language as a second language, error
is a natural part of language learning. Learning the second language is a process
unlike learning the first language. In this new system of language, learners will
directly connect with such a new vocabulary, grammatical pattern and foreign
pronunciation which differ from their first language. It will always occur although the
best effort has been done. Therefore, when they try to speak or to write the target
language, it is inevitable to them to produce many errors.
Errors are found in writing and speaking. Learning process is a fundamental
where human beings or learners aim to get any knowledge or information. However,
that learning process still involves any mistake, misjudgment, miscalculation, and
erroneous assumption (Brown, 2007).
In order to analyze learners’ error in a proper way, it is necessary to make a
distinction between error and mistake. According to Bose (2005), mistake is
deviation due to performance factors such as memory limitation (e.g : mistakes in the
sequence of tense). According to Brown (2007:270), mistake refers to lack of
performance in applying a known system accurately.
According to this definition, a native speaker could make mistake in his/her
native language. Error, on the other hand, is problem that a native speaker would not
have. The students mostly do not know why and how they can make error. Therefore,
the students cannot correct their own error by themselves. On the other hand, mistake
is unsystematic deviation, such as speak of mistake because of fatigue, emotion, and
so on. Mistake lies on performance, while error lies on competence which is a
consistent and systematic deviation and describes learners’ capability at a certain
phase.
Errors occur due to many causes. One strategy to prevent students from
making the same errors anymore is by looking at the causes of error itself. In
discussing about causes of errors, Norrish (1983) claimes that there are three major
causes of errors that arise in second language learning. They are carelessness, first
language interference and translation.
a. Carelessness
Carelessness is often closely related to lack motivation. Many teachers will
admit that it is not always the student’s fault if she or he loses interest; perhaps,
the materials and/or the style and presentation do not suit them.
One way of reducing the number of carelessness errors in written work is
to get students to check other’s work. It will involve students in active search for
errors and English can be used for a genuine communication while discussing
these errors in class.
b. First Language Interference
First language interference is the result of the language habits that has been
established in the students’ native language. When the students use English, they
usually bring or use the native language habits in the target language they have
been learnt.
c. Translation
Translating word by word of idiomatic expression in the first students’
language can produce error in this type. It usually happens due to the situation,
when a learner is asked to communicate something but does not know the
appropriate expressions or structures.
When the researcher did Internship III in SMP Raden Fatah Batu and observed
the eighth-grade classroom, there were some cases about study tenses in SMP Raden
Fatah Batu. Students were confused in how to apply tenses in particular Simple
Present Tense. Simple Present Tense is important as the basic rule for the students to
make and to use into the sentences to communicate in daily life and to write a
descriptive text. Students did not understand especially in using subject-verb
agreement, and usage. They could not use the subject-verb agreement and usage; it
was known that the ability of the students in using Simple Present Tense was low. It
was found that many students often did not understand of why some sentences used
auxiliaries; is, am, and are instead of auxiliaries; do and does. Moreover, some
students were confused in differentiating which subject used auxiliaries; do or does.
All the problems above arose since the students did not understand the right rule of
Simple Present Tense. Simple Present Tense is used to show action that happens all
the time, for it looked at the finite verbal group without auxiliaries. Based on Bourke
(2003), Simple Present Tense talks about official schedule or timetabled events, e.g.
train timetables. The action can be a habit, a hobby, a daily event, a scheduled event
or something that often happens. It can also be something a person often forgets or
usually does not do.
Doing the analysis of student’s error is needed. Error analysis involves the
analysis of error patterns to identify difficulties that students may have with facts,
concepts, strategies and procedures. Identifying the type of error allows the teacher to
address learner needs more efficiently. From this study, teacher also understands what
the students’ need. A number of previous research provided different definitions for
‘error analysis’. Error analysis is a type of linguistic study that focuses on the errors
which learners make. It consists of a comparison between the errors made in target
language (TL) and within that TL itself. For Crystal (as cited in Seitova 2016), error
analysis in language teaching and learning is the study of the unacceptable forms
produced by someone learning a language, especially a foreign language. In addition,
according to Brown (2007) error analysis means a reality that the learners make
errors, and these error’s can be observed, analyzed, and classified to acknowledge
something of the system operating within the learner. In agreement, Richards and
Schmidt (2002:184) indicate that error analysis are identifying strategies which
learners use in language learning; classifying the causes of learners’ errors; acquiring
the information on common difficulties in language learning as an aid to teach or to
prepare teaching materials.
Driven from this phenomenon, the researcher is interested in conducting an
investigation about an analysis of students’ error in descriptive text faced by the
eighth-grade students at SMP Raden Fatah Batu.
 In line with the research question formulated in this present study, the researcher
intends to:
1. Know the types of errors made by the eighth-grade students in using Simple
Present Tense in descriptive text at SMP Raden Fatah Batu
2. Know the way how the teacher helps the students to cope with their errors in
using Simple Present Tense in descriptive text at SMP Raden Fatah Batu.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In conducting this research, one of the important elements of research is
research design. Creswell (2010) claims that research design is the plan and the
procedure for research that spans the decisions from broad assumption to detailed
method of data collection and analysis. This research used descriptive qualitative
design because there was no control and treatment group. Descriptive research is a
research which does not need hypotheses in conducting the research (Tarigan
1992:106).
The subject of this research was students task in the eighth graders in writing
descriptive text of Simple Present Tense. This school was choosen as the place to do
the research because the writer ever did an Internship III. The problem when the
researcher found was the students were still confused how to apply tenses in
particular Simple Present Tense. They did not understand how to use subject verb-
agreement, and its usage. Therefore, the researcher can conclude that their ability in
Simple Present Tense was still low.
In this research, the researcher used some techniques to collect the data. Those
were:
1. Interview
According to Ary et al. (2010), interview is used to gain data about
certain situation from people directly based on their opinions, beliefs, feelings,
and experience to reveal a phenomenon under study. The aim of interview is to
explore the views, experiences, beliefs and/or motivations of individuals on
specific matters. Interview is believed to provide a 'deeper' understanding of
 social phenomena (Stewart et al., 2008, p.204). In this study, the interviewee
was an English teacher of eighth grade in SMP Raden Fatah Batu. The
researcher used semi-structured interview in collecting the data.
The writer also implemented some tools to get the data information.
Those were tape recorder and interview guideline. Tape recorder is needed in
conducting the interview. Then, the aim is to anticipate something which is
missing in transferring the data. Interview guideline was used while doing an
interview process. There were some questions in the form of list to ask the
questions to the interviewee.

2. Document
In this research, the documentation was students’ writing task of the
eighth graders at SMP Raden Fatah Batu. The task was made by the researcher.
Students had studied about this material before. So, it is possible to conduct this
task based on the students’ experience in learning this topic. The researcher
asked the students to describe something, such as person, animal, or thing
arround their life. The topic was decided by the students to make more
creativity in their thinking.

FINDING AND DISCUSSION

From the data collection, there were 81 errors found from 32 written products
of the students. The errors found were analyzed by using surface strategy taxonomy
proposed by Dulay et al. (1982). Thus, the errors were classified into errors of
omission, errors of addition, errors of misformation, and errors of misordering. This
reseach only focused on the analysis of errors in Simple Present Tense, while the
other errors which were not included in Simple Present Tense were ignored.
However, the whole data were not presented in this chapter and only described by
some representative data. The table of the frequency of errors were as follows:
 Table 1: Total Errors in Using Simple Present Tense in Descriptive Text
Types of Errors
Omission To be 15
-s/-es 3
Others 2
Addition Double marking 1
Regularization ---------------
Simple Addition ---------------
Misformation Regularization ---------------
Archi Forms 47
Alternating Forms ---------------
Misordering 13
Total Frequency of Errors
Omission Addition Misformation Misordering
20 1 47 13
TOTAL : 81 Errors

Based on Dulay et al. (1982), surface strategy taxonomy is used to analyze

errors in the research. Surface strategy taxonomy focuses on the ways that learner
may omit essential items or add inessential ones; learner may misform item or
misorder them. Based on the surface strategy taxonomy, errors are classified into
omission error, addition error, misformation, and misordering.
As a matter of fact, the researcher found that most of the students in the eighth
graders did not use tenses, especially Simple Present Tense properly. As we know
that Simple Present Tense is used to show an action that happens all the time. Based
on Bourke (2003), Simple Present Tense talks about official schedule or timetabled
events. The action can be a habit, a hobby, a daily event or something that often
happens. Furthermore, Azhar (1989:2) states that Simple Present Tense expresses
events or situations that exist regularly and habitually.
 It was accordance with the previous research conducted by Kusumawati
(2013). It was found that the students still made a lot of errors in processing the
Simple Present Tense which was the basic tense. Moreover, the researcher found that
the students made some errors in descriptive text. Indeed, it showed that many
students faced difficulties in writing due to its complexity.
In this research, errors found were analyzed by using surface strategy
taxonomy proposed by Dulay et al. (1982). Surface strategy taxonomy focuses on the
ways that learner may omit essential items or add inessential ones; learner may
misform item or misorder them. Thus, the errors are classified into errors of omission,
errors of addition, errors of misformation, and errors of misordering. This is in line
with Dulay (1982) who says that there are most common errors that is usually done
by the learner namely omitting gramatical morphemes, double marking a semantic
feature, regularizing rules, archi forms, using two or more forms in random
alternation, and misordering.
The first was error of omission. This was in relation with the previous
research. Kusumawati (2013) said that the omission error made by the students
occured in forms of verb be (is, am, are), final –s/-es for a singular noun or third
person singular pronoun, and omission of subject. The students omitted the verb be
for gerund and forgot to put final s/-es for singular subject.
From the result of this research, it was found that omission errors had as
much as 21 of all errors found in students’ desriptive writing. These omission errors
were dominated by omission of auxiliary verb (be). The next type of omission errors
was the omission of verb inflection (marker –s/-es). Since Simple Present Tense
needed to add marker –s/es, the verb should be added with –s/-es marker for
particular subject. The last type of omission error was the other omission error which
was omission of subject. There were two omissions of subject. Since subject was
important in order to make meaningful sentence, it should be gramatically correct.
There should be subject, predicate (verb), object, and/or adverb in a sentence.
The next was addition errors. In the previous research, Falinta (2015) found
that there were four sentences of addition errors in marker “is” and “verb-s” which
was used in the same time. On the other hand, in this research there was one addition
error occured in form of double auxiliary verb (is and are) for one subject. It
happened because the students were still confused in using the appropriate auxiliary
verb related to the subject.
The third type of error was misformation which was the highest occurrence
frequency. There were three types of misformation errors, namely regularization, over
generalization or archi-form, and alternating error. Misformation of archi-form
appeared as the only type of error found in misformation error. These errors happened
because the students did not realize that the sentence had plural object. The other
possible reason was that the students might still be confused in distinguishing the
usage of is and are. This might be because there were many verb forms in English
which were not found in Indonesia structure.
The last type of error was error of misordering. In relation with the previous
researcher, Falinta (2015) said that Bahasa Indonesia was different from English
pattern. Students still used the pattern of Bahasa Indonesia as their first language.
There were differences in constructing the phrase between Bahasa Indonesia and
English. So, there were some students who made wrong phrase in constructing the
sentence.
Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that the highest errors
was in misformation errors as much as 47 errors. The second highest frequency was
omission that appeared as much as twenty from 81 errors in students writing task. The
next was misordering with thirteen errors followed by addition which made up very
little compared to the others with only one from 81 total errors in students writing
descriptive text.
This research was not accordance with the previous researcher. Kusumawati
(2013) found that the highest frequency of error was omission with the total number
of error was 13 errors or 66,67% . Then, addition error was three or 16,67%, and the
last type of error was misformation as much as two or 16,67%.
Moreover, this research also was not in line with the previous researcher.
Falinta (2015) found that the highest error was omission error with frequency of error
as much as 17 or 50%. The second error was misformation as much as ten or 29,41%,
addition was four or 11,76%, then the last types were syntax and morphology,
semantics and lexicon, and global errors as much as 1 error or 2,94%.
According to Norrish (1983), there were three major of errors that arised in
second language learning. Those were carelessness, first language interference, and
translation. Based on the research result, the possible sources of errors were first
language interference and translation.
In omission, addition, and misformation, students did erros due to the
interference of first language. When the students used English, they usually used the
native language habits in the target language they have been learnt. Their first
language or Bahasa Indonesia does not have a structure of tenses to do
communication with others. Therefore, their sentences were grammatically errors. On
the other hand, in misordering errors, students did errors due to the translating word
by word. As we know that we cannot translating word by word from source language
to the target language. But, students did this because they did not know or they were
confused to use the appropriate expression or sturucture.
Based on the interview process with the English teacher of the eighth-graders,
the teacher said that students were difficult to implement Simple Present Tense
correctly in writing descriptive text. It happened due to the different system of
language between Bahasa and English. In Bahasa, there is no tense, but English has,
for instance in using Simple Present Tense, in Bahasa people can say “Ibuku suka
buah apel” and “Mereka suka buah jeruk”. On the other hand, English language
should be said as “My mother likes apple” and “They like orange”. As we know that
there are plural and singular for noun in English language. Therefore, the students
should pay attention in the subject which is singular or plural.

CONCLUSION
The result of the study showed that there were four types of errors and the
factors that influenced Simple Present Tense in writing descriptive text. First, it was
found that there were 81 errors found from 32 written products made by students in
writing descriptive text. They were twenty errors of omissions included omission of
verb, omission of marker –s/-es, and omission of subject, then one error of addition,
47 errors of misformation, and thirteen errors of misordering. The highest frequency
of error found in descriptive text made by the eighth graders of SMP Raden Fatah
Batu was misformation errors. Second, in omission, addition, and misformation,
students did errors due to the interference of first language which was Bahasa
Indonesia. On the other hand, in misordering errors students did errors due to
translating word by word.
The teacher had three ways to cope with the students’ errors in Simple Present
Tense implemented in writing descriptive text. Those were: 1) evaluating students’
error after they wrote in the form of paragraph, 2) having various activites to motivate
students in the learning process, and 3) writing daily activity to build up their
paragraph, in particular Simple Present Tense.

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