The correlation between the simple past tense achievement and writing achievement in recount text of the first-year students of senior high school

Grammar plays an important role in language skills, such as speaking, reading, listening and also writing. In speaking, grammar can help students to produce grammatical utterances. A second language speaker will not have a good performance in speech and will not be able to deliver his/her idea because of the lack of grammar knowledge especially in rules and tenses. The lack of grammar knowledge makes it difficult for students to express their ideas in writing appropriately. Thus, learning grammar is necessary for students to make their writing well understood. By learning grammar, students will be able to make a grammatically correct sentence in writing. However, in a real situation, the first-year students of senior high school who have learned the simple past tense still have difficulties in applying the tense to their writing composition that is recount text. It happens because they still do not understand and master the use of the verb form of simple past tense yet. As a result, they do not know how to change the infinitive form into the regular and irregular verb in positive, negative, and interrogative form. On the other hand, since the simple past tense is related with recount text, the students have to master the simple past tense itself; not only the rules but also the use of the simple past tense in writing context. If they make a mistake in using the simple past tense, it means that they are not capable in writing their recount composition. As a result, the readers may get confused while they read the composition and also they may have difficulties in understanding the content of the composition. Therefore, in order to master grammar which is the simple past tense and writing which is a recount text, the students need a lot of practice in their learning. In this study, the writer intended to see the correlation between one of writing components and the writing ability that is the students’ simple past tense achievement and their recount text writing achievement. This study is classified as correlation study since it describes the relationship between the grammar and writing scores. The subject of this study is the first-year students of YPPI I Senior High School Surabaya. The tests given were grammar test which was the simple past tense and writing test which was a recount text. The result of grammar and writing scores were computed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation formula. The statistical data analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between the simple past tense achievement and writing achievement in recount text. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. It happened because the total score of the grammar score was high enough and the total mean of each component in writing was also considered good.