AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ PAST TENSE VERB ERROR IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXT AT THE TENTH GRADE OF SMAN 4 KOTA SERANG ACADEMIC YEAR 2016/2017

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to identify the frequency of errors and to describe the causes of the error on using past tense verb in writing recount text made by the tenth grade students of SMAN 4 Kota Serang. This study was a case study which involved 35 students of the tenth grade of social science 6. In this research, the researcher used two instruments, namely: students’ writing assignment and open-ended questionnaire. The collected data were identified, classified, and analyzed based on the types of error by using Corder’s theory. The result of this research showed that the students mostly made the error of selection (178=72.95%), omission (54=22.13%), addition (10=4.10%), and ordering (2=0.82%) from out of the total errors (244). The errors made by the students were influenced by interlingual and intralingual transfer. Thus, the causes tended to be related to the differences of the structural verb-forms between English and their native language. Finally, this research is expected to be used as a reference to the English teacher to minimize the students’ errors and to the other researcher to make a solution for this problem.