KAMPUS AKADEMIK PUBLISING

Jurnal Ilmiah Penelitian Mahasiswa

Vol.2, No.6 Desember 2024
e-ISSN: 3025-5465; p-ISSN: 3025-7964, Hal 259-264
DOI : h ps://doi.org/10.61722/jipm.v2i6.546
AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN
DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY THE SEVENTH GRADES
STUDENTS OF SMP HUTAMA BEKASI IN THE ACADEMIC
YEAR 2017/2018
Poppy Guswita
Pascasarjana MIPA, University of Indraprasta PGRI
Korespondensi penulis : poppy.guswita@gmail.com

Abstract The seventh grades students have to learn descriptive text. It means that they also have
to learn simple present tense as a tense they used in writing descriptive text. But writing is no
easy for them. They have some errors in they written especially in taxonomy structure, such as
omission, addition, misformation, misordering. Using descriptive text written by the seventh
grades students of SMP Hutama Bekasi, as many as 21 students, this study analyzes the types of
errors in the use of simple present tense. In this research, researcher uses qualitative method by
using descriptive qualitative approach that Researchers find that misformation (48,96%) is the
most error which students made in their written. The misformation of alternating form is the
dominant error and it shows that students lack of English grammatical mastery especially in
selection pronouns.
Keywords: Error Analysis, Simple Present Tense, Descriptive Text

INTRODUCTION
In wider communication, language has taken an important role as an instrument for people to
communicate. Language is one of the many systems of signs that humans use to communicate
with one another, and since language is systematic, we can ask systematic questions about the
different choices that we make when we talk with one another (Deckert and Vickers, 2011). Thus,
how the students think and act affected by the words they use to describe things to ourselves and
others. That’s remind them that anything can be happen in all kinds of situations and that’s related
to teaching and learning of languages. Languages do not have a relationship between form and
meaning, language must be learned cause words and objects would not automatically associate
with one another.
Many countries have been using English as a second language or a foreign language. On the other
hand, English, in Indonesia, is still considered as a foreign language. English as a foreign language
(EFL) is used for non-native English speakers and they don’t used English for main of official
language. They learn English in order to use it with any other English speakers in the word-when
the students might be tourist or business people. English is a very important language in Inter-
national relations both formally or informally. Therefore, many people use English as a colloquial
language. They realized that the people who use English as a colloquial language will be different
from people who master the English but do not use English as a colloquial. English is also, of
course, a mother tongue, for many people in the world, though, as we shall see, such ‘native
speakers’ are increasingly out-numbered by people who have English as a second or third
language and use it for international communication (Harmer, 2007).

Received Agustus 30, 2024; Revised Oktober 31, 2024; Desember 02, 2024
* Poppy Guswita, Poppy.guswita@gmail.com
 AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY
THE SEVENTH GRADES STUDENTS OF SMP HUTAMA BEKASI IN THE ACADEMIC
YEAR 2017/2018

The students can say that the art of writing is different from the art of speaking because the art of
writing deals with the symbols of the language of writing. According to Finegan (2008), writing
is a system of visual symbols representing audible symbols. So, writing is an art of non -verbal
communication. Writing can develop social relationship and social expectation because writing
is one of the tools in communication. For example, we can feel the situation from information that
we received from our friend by e-mail or online chat.
Writing is making a hand writing where the one who write offers a form for everything what the
students thinks and what the students feel. Their writing is flow down as water. The students do
not need to think what they should write about their feeling. Making a contribution for their
written product, trust to their ability and being a thinker. It can be concluded that writing is a
process of organizing ideas in which the students are demanded to perform creativity in using
the language skills to produce a written.
Pardede and Mustofa (2014) explain that a paragraph of list of characteristics describes a person,
place, thing or event by exposing certain characteristics. Based on the explanation, purpose of
descriptive text is to describes a particular place, person, thing or event. In addition, a good
descriptive is like a ‘word picture’, the reader can imagine the person, object, or place in his or
her mind.
Richards and Schmidt (2010) stated that tense is the relationship between the form of the verb
and the action or state it describes. It means that a verb tenses in English to indicate the time to
discuss the events happening now, future or tomorrow, and past. Students use simple present tense
when they write about their feeling, opinion, relation, repeated actions, an instant action, verbs of
reporting, etc.
According to Saville-Troike (2006), errors are thus a sign that the learner is (perhaps
unconsciously) exploring the new system rather than just experiencing ‘interference’ from old
habits. The students’ errors in writing present students’ development in learning grammar rules.
Their existence is a very significant indicator to know the progress of every student in learning
the target language.
Actually, errors and mistakes are different. Norrish in Hasyim (2002) explain that a mistake is an
inconsistent deviation that is sometimes the learner ‘gets it right’ but sometimes wrong. It means
that students can make a mistake because they understand the rule, but they haven’t committed
the form to memory. All those mistakes are not committed by the native speakers or writers
intentionally. The make mistakes because of tiredness, stress, inattentiveness, etc. Mistakes is a
deviation caused by student’s performance factor. Based on the explanation, mistakes made by
native speakers and errors made by non-native speakers.
In learning process, especially in learning how to write in English, the students frequently make
some errors. It happens because the limitation of student’s knowledge on grammatical sentence
in English and vocabulary, ignorance of restriction, less understanding on the English structure
and influence of t=mother tongue. It also happens because the students are not interested in
English.
In this study, researcher used surface strategy taxonomy to analyze the kinds of errors on the use
simple present tense in descriptive texts written by seventh students of junior high school. The
errors will be classified into 4 types, omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. And add
blend error as the category of surface strategy taxonomy.
Based on the circumstances above, the researcher would like to conduct the research with the title
“An Error Analysis of Using Simple Present Tense in Descriptive Text Written by the Seventh
Grade Students of SMP Hutama Bekasi”.

260 JIPM - VOLUME 2, NO. 6, Desember 2024

 AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY
THE SEVENTH GRADES STUDENTS OF SMP HUTAMA BEKASI IN THE ACADEMIC
YEAR 2017/2018

METHOD
The sample was selected by purposive sampling. The researcher decided, the seventh grades
students as the sample in this research. They have studied about descriptive text and the language
features of descriptive text in this semester. Writing descriptive text is certainly something that is
still hot to be discussed with them. This research used qualitative method by using descriptive
qualitative approach to analyze kinds of simple present tense errors in descriptive text written by
seventh grade students in SMP Hutama Bekasi. This method can describe the phenomena
associated with how the student’s ability in writing descriptive text.
In collecting data, researcher give a review about writing descriptive text and asked the students
to write a descriptive text with one following topics in 1 hour. The researcher analyzed the errors
of the student’s writing and classified the errors based on the surface taxonomy strategy by James
(2013) such as omission, addition, misformation, misordering and blend. This research will
describe the classification of error based in the types of error in the simple present structure by
using table and descriptive analysis with short explanation, presented with table number of errors
and percentage that described in the form of bars.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on data collected by researcher, after data was analyzed, the researcher concluded the
researcher findings and the researcher found a lot of grammatical errors of using simple present
tense in descriptive text written by seventh grade students of SMP Hutama Bekasi. The types of
error made by the students are showed by recapitulation type of errors table and pie chart as
follows:
Frequency of
No. Types of Errors
Errors
1. Omission
 Omission of subject 3
 Omission of preposition 3
 Omission of article 0
 Omission of auxiliary verb 5
 Omission of -s/-es in the verb form 12
 Omission of -s/-es in the plural form 4
TOTAL 27

2. Addition
 Double Marking 1
 Regularization 0
 Simple addition 5
TOTAL 6

3. Misformation
 Regularization 1
 Archi-forms 15
 Alternating forms 31
TOTAL 47

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 AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY
THE SEVENTH GRADES STUDENTS OF SMP HUTAMA BEKASI IN THE ACADEMIC
YEAR 2017/2018

4. Misordering 4
TOTAL 4

5. Blend
 Preposition choice 1
 Article choice 1
 Diction 1
 Misspelling 9
TOTAL 12
Table 1.1 Recapitulation Type of Errors

Percentage of Error Analysis on the Use

Simple Present Tense in Descriptive Text

13%
4% 28% OMISSION
ADDITION
6% MISFORMATION
49% MISORDERING
MOSFORMATION

Chart 1.1 Percentage of Error Analysis

Based on the data information and data description above, the result of error analysis of using
simple present tense in descriptive text written by seventh grade students that were classified
based on the surface strategy taxonomy by James (2013) are:
1. Omission
The table shows that 27 errors or 28,13 % from Total Frequency of Errors in omission.
Researcher interprets that the reason of omission in descriptive text written by seventh
grade students is interlingual transfer or interference by first language. Students ignored
or omitted even some elements in their essays, such as omitted -s/es in verb form and
plural form or auxiliary verb. As James (2013) stated, a high omission rate leads to a
truncated IL with features similar to those found in pidgin languages, and is typical of
untutored learners in the early stages of learning.
2. Addition
By the error calculation of addition percentage is 6,25 % or 6 errors. Researcher interprets
that addition in descriptive text written by seventh grade students of SMP Hutama Bekasi
occurs due to lack of grammatical mastery. James (2013) stated, this manifestation of

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 AN ERROR ANALYSIS OF USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITTEN BY
THE SEVENTH GRADES STUDENTS OF SMP HUTAMA BEKASI IN THE ACADEMIC
YEAR 2017/2018

error, Dulay, Burt, and Krashen suggest, is the result of all-too-faithful use of certain
rules.
3. Misformation
There are 48,96 % or 47 error in misformation. Type of this errors have been the mostly
found in student’s essays. Researcher interprets that misformation occurs due to lack of
vocabulary and grammatical mastery. It’s also happened cause interference of mother
tongue or first language. As James (2013) states that, “it is not, no more than that is a
‘misformation’ of this. What the learner who produced this error has done is not miss-
form but miss-select, and these should be called miss-selection errors”.
4. Misordering
This error is the least frequency errors that made by seventh grade students of SMP
Hutama Bekasi in their descriptive text. The total errors are 4 or in percentage is 4,16 %.
Researcher interprets that the students already understand about the pattern of word order
in English writing. However, they still made errors. The error caused they carelessness in
understanding the materials then they do translation word by word. James (2013) stated,
as Dulay, Burt, and Krashen observe, misordering is often the results of learners relying
on carrying out word-for-word translation of native language surface structures.
5. Blend
Figures error of blend is equal 12,5 % or 12 errors that have been made by the seventh
grades students of SMP Hutama Bekasi. This error caused by lack of vocabulary like
blends of misspelling or preposition choices. James (2013) states that the speaker does
not know that the two parts cannot be combined, at least not in the way he combines them.
Ignorance is the problem.

CONCLUSSION
The researcher concluded that is quite a lot of error on the use simple present tense in descriptive
text written by seventh grade students of SMP Hutama Bekasi. The seventh grades students of
SMP Hutama Bekasi wrote two hundred and thirty-eight (238) sentences of descriptive text with
the number of errors are ninety-one (91) sentences or 38,24 %. Researcher found that ninety-six
(96) of grammatical errors from the sentences. The number of errors show that writing descriptive
text is not easy. Lack of English grammatical mastery, interference student’s first language
(mother tongue) till carelessness to learning English are the factors that influence the student’s on
writing descriptive text. The errors happened on descriptive text written by seventh grades
students in this research are misformation of alternating forms (31 errors), misformation of archi-
forms (15 errors), omission of -s/es in the verb forms (12 errors) and blend of misspelling (9
errors). As a suggestion, teacher can pay more attention in productive skills of students such as
writing by increasing the intensity of practice in making essays, be a good motivator, create a
comfortable and interesting learning environment to improve student’s ability in writing essay,
especially using simple present tense in descriptive text.

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YEAR 2017/2018

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