Errors on the use of simple past tense in narrative texts of English Department students

This thesis was conducted to study the second semester students’ ability in understanding English as the international language. Therefore the author attempted to examine the students’ ability by analyzing the students’ writing works. The author focused on the Simple Past Tense because it was included in one of the simple tenses in English. The author decided to analyze the Narrative Texts because Simple Past Tense was the classification of Narrative Texts language features. \n\tThe research problem of this study was to find out the kinds of errors and the possible causes of errors on the use of Simple Past Tense in students’ Narrative Texts. He also categorized his analysis in the two classifications of Simple Past Tense which were the to be form and verb form. The author used some theories to analyze the students’ errors namely Surface Strategy Taxonomy theory, Intralingual Errors, and Interference Errors. Moreover, the author used the triangulation technique to confirm the author’s finding. \n\tThe findings of his study showed the kinds of errors on the to be form in four classifications: Errors of Omission (36,5%), Errors of Addition (3,1%), Errors of Misformation (57,3%), and Errors of Misordering (3,1%). The possible causes of errors on the to be form were classified in two categories: Interference Errors (30%) and Intralingual Errors (70%). In addition, the kinds of errors in the verb form were classified in four classifications: Errors of Omission (0%), Errors of Addition (13,4%), Errors of Misformation (85,2%), and Errors of Misordering (1,4%). The possible causes of errors in the verb form were classified in two categories: Interference Errors (15,2%) and Intralingual Errors (84,8%). The findings of his study showed the total errors in to be form (96 errors) and the total errors in the verb form (290 errors) therefore the total students’ errors were 386 errors.