An Error Analysis On Students’ Simple Past Tense In Their Writing Narrative Texts

Identification Errors in learning the English language are difficult enough cases to avoid, especially for tenses usage. Tenses are an important thing in studying English for every student. Students have to be able to use all kind of tenses while making sentences, and even they are speaking and talking with people in this world. In this study, the writer aimed to analyze student’s writing especially in their past tense usage based on their writing narrative text. The data assumed from the student writing test and the teacher’s interview. The study will be done at the ninth grade of SMP Islam Amalina Pondok Aren. The writer conducted the study under the title ―An Error Analysis on Students’ Simple Past Tense Mastery in Their Writing Narrative Texts. This study used the qualitative method, moreover this study used theories errors of Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982). Dullay (1982) classify the errors into 4 parts, they are the error of omission, the error of addition, the error of miss-formation, and the error of misordering. This study used Norrish (1983) theory to identify the causes of errors made by the students. In this study the results of the study were: The students mostly made errors in the misinformation errors, it was the biggest errors that made by students in writing the narrative text using simple past tense from 23 students in the ninth grade of SMP Islam Amalina, and the biggest factors that caused the errors made by the students were translation and first language interference. Keywords: Error Analysis, Narrative Text, Simple Past Tense.