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Error Analysis on Simple Present Tense of Students' Sentences

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Error Analysis on Simple Present Tense of Students' Sentences The 10th NOSLLTL 2021 The 10th National Online Seminar on Linguitics, Language Teaching and Literature ERROR ANALYSIS ON SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE OF STUDENTS’ SENTENCES Erni Susianti Nainggolan Universitas Pamulang [email protected] Learning English nowadays is very important for students. Knowing the patterns of English is important as well. It is essential because it can assist students in order to write a good sentence. Teacher or lecturer has a responsibility to help the students to improve their writing, especially in present tense sentences. Teacher or lecturer should know and try to correct the mistakes that the students have done. This research is related to error analysis done by students when they made sentences in the class. It has to do with the use of Simple Present Tense that exist in students’ answer sheet. The purpose of the research is to analyze the error on students’ sentences when they made sentences by using Simple Present tense, especially students of Universitas Pamulang. First of all, lecturer asked students to write sentences by using simple present tense. After doing it, the research done identify based on the pattern of sentence. Third, as the last step the researcher analyzed the students' sentences. The data of the research were collected by asking students to make sentences in Simple Present Tense. Then the sentences were analyzed by using Surface Strategy Tax0nomy by Dullay (1982). The research’s result was presented descriptive qualitative. Based on the result, the most errors were about omission of auxiliary verbs and omission of inflection. Keyword: Simple present tense, pattern, error analysis. INTRODUCTION English is the universal language used and studied by countries all over the world. It is as an International language has been existed in The National Curriculum of Indonesia. The main objective of English language learning for learners is to be the competency of language competence that is an indicator of 70 the success of a language learner. In general, it is an ability that includes the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors that learners must have in relation to the ability to use English. When someone has just learned English, he may be confused in understanding verbs in English. Verbs in English language have a verb definition. Just like in Bahasa Indonesia, in English there the name of verbs. A sentence has one verb definitely. Because the condition of sentence is at least consists of subject and verb. There is a subject and there is a verb (verb or activity) performed by the subject. Learning about part of speech is the first step in grammar research such as learning letters is the first step to be able to read and write. From studying part of speech we are beginning to understand the use or function of words and how words are joined together to make meaningful communication. To understand what part of speech is you should understand the idea of placing something similar into one group or category. Then the most important thing is learning tense. A tense in English is important because all events or acti0ns submitted must match to the time of occurrence. Some people who learn English have difficulty with the tense. They are lack of a deep understanding of the tense. Tense is essentially a form of time used to declare when an event occurs. The occurrence of such an incident can be known from a change in the form of time, which is the present time, past and future. That's where there will be changed to the verb used. Tense is part of grammar. Grammar is a rule of language in which there is a structure of words in English. Thus the tense is important in English language learning, aiming to form a good sentence. The pattern of sentences in a tense differs from each other. Each one has its own sentence pattern according to the time of its use. According to Frank as quoted by Indra, Y (2012:251), tense is special verb ending or accompanying auxiliary verbs signaling the time an event takes place. Hornby citied Indra, Y (2012:251) stated defines tenses as any of the forms of the verb that may be used to indicate the time of the acti0n or stated expressed by the verb. In other words, the tense requires a sentence pattern, where the verb can change according to 71 its pattern and timing. We know that English and Indonesian language are not same. They don’t’ have a similarity structure in sentences. For instance, Indonesian language we have, don’t know about the form of verb but in English we need to know about the form of the verb itself based on the tenses. There is n0 change of verb form in Indonesian but not in English. English needs tense in order to show or indicate the time of speaking or happening. No wonder, students or people have a little bit trouble when they are using it. As it is stated by SetiyadI (2003:22), he points out that English usually is very difficult to be learnt in Indonesia because English has different grammar from Indonesian language which might be difficult for language learners to understand the system of target language. It can be inferred that English uses different kinds of grammar and tenses. It has many tenses (e.g. present tense, past tense, future tense, perfect tense, etc.) that should be dominated by students, but because of the differences between Indonesian language and English, it gives the difficulties for Ind0nesian students in learning English tenses and using the tenses in speaking and writing. Murcia (1995:4) said that teaching tense is one of the most difficult area of English grammar for non-native speaker. We realize that it is not easy to absorb all tenses for Indonesian students as non-native speakers. Sometimes students make grammatical errors. They often produce incorrect utterances. According to Dullay et.al.(1982:138), errors are flawed side of learning speech or writing. They are those parts of conversation or composition that diverge from selected norm of mature language performance. Therefore, it is possible for students to make errors unconsciously when they were writing. The reason was that the students were not familiar with English structure such as the form of verb, because they did not find such rules in Indonesian. However, making error is fundamentally human in process. Here, the researcher would like to conduct a research entitled “Error Analysis on Simple Present Tense of Students’ Sentence. 72 REVIEW OF LITERATURE Simple Present Tense Activities or events that take place at any time in the past, present, and future are expressed in the form of Simple Present (Betty Azar, 2002). Here are the definitions and patterns in the Simple Present Tense as written in the book by Effendi Rahmat (2017): 1. This activity or event can be a proven fact or certainty, for example: The rising sun from the east. 2. Common habits, abilities, and circumstances, for example: This rice is very expensive. 3. Commands and requests, for example: Get out Of Here! Sentence simple form is prepared based on the following provisions: 1. By the subject of plural noun or pronoun: I, you, we, they. Subject + Verb + Adverb. Example: I/You/We/They sing beautifully. Red Dogs run fast. Sisil and Dita live happily. 2. With the subject of a single noun or pronoun: he, she, it. Verbs get the addition of the letter S/ES. Subject + Verb + Adverb. Example: He/She lives in Jakarta. A bat flies at night. 3. With the subject of a single noun or pronoun: he, she, it. Verbs get the addition of the letter S/ES. Subject + Verb + Adverb. Example: He/She lives in Jakarta. A bat flies at night. 4. If the predicate is "to be", to be must be adjusted to the subject. For the subject of plural noun, the to be used is is. For the subject of the pronoun; You, we, or they, to be used Are and for the subject of the pronoun he, she, it, to be used Is. As for the subject I, to be used is Am. Subject + Verb (Be) + Complement. 73 Example: I am happy to be with you. She/He is a student. They/We /You are here. 5. In general verbs only require the addition of ' S ', but some verbs get the addition of ES. For example: Type of basic word verb after addition: • Verbs that end in -Ch. -S, -Sh, -X and -Z. For example: Catch-Catches, Pass-Passes, Push-Pushes, Box-Boxes, Buzz-Buzzes. • Verb ended by the letter -Y after consonant. For example: study- studies. • Verb spoken by -Y after vocals. For example: Play-Plays. • Verb is ended by -O.Example: Do-Does, Go-Goes. Pattern of Simple Present Tense. A. With Auxiliary Verb (do/does). Subject + Verb1 (s/es) + Object + Adverb. Subject + do/does + not + Object + Adverb. Do/does + Subject + Verb 1 + Object + ?. B. With Auxiliary Verb ( To Be) Subject + Be (is/am/are) + Adjective/Noun/Adverb. Subject + Be (is/am/are) + Not + Adjective/Noun/Adverb. Be (is/am/are) + Subject + Adjective/Noun/Adverb + ?. 74 Time Signal (Adverb) in Simple Present Tense Adverb of Frequency in Simple Present Tense are always (selalu), usually (biasanya), sometimes (kadang-kadang), never (tidak pernah), ever (pernah), often (sering), rarely (sangat jarang), seldom (jarang), frequently (sering), at night (pada malam hari), once a week (sekali sebulan), twice a month (dua kali sebulan), 7 hours a day (tujuh jam per hari), etc. Example: I go to campus every day. Adverb of Time in Simple Present Tense are every day (setiap hari), every week (setiap minggu), every month (setiap bulan), every year (setiap tahun), every night (setiap malam), every Sunday (setiap hari minggu), in the morning (pagi hari), etc.
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