AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ON THE USEOF SIMPLE PAST TENSE IN WRITING NARRATIVETEXT (A CASESTUDY OF THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF MA ASH-SHIDDIQIYYAHCIREBON)

ROSITA AMIRUL: AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ON THE USE OF SIMPLE PAST TENSE IN WRITING NARRATIVE TEXT (A CASE STUDY OF THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF MA ASHSHIDDIQIYYAH CIREBON) Based on the researcher’s experience while doing a preliminary observation, she noticed that the use of simple past tense often makes tenth grade students of MA Ash-Shiddiqiyyah Cirebon confused with its complexity, moreover when it is applied in a writing. Several kinds of errors occur. Error can be used to identify students’ learning progress therefore the writer decided to analyze grammatical errors on the use of simple past tense in students’ narrative text. The aims of the research are to find out the types of grammatical errors on the use of simple past tense in narrative text written by the tenth grade students of MA Ash-Shiddiqiyyah, to find out the most dominant of grammatical error on the use of simple past tense, and to find out the causes of the errors. The research is committed by 39 students of tenth graders of MA Ashshiddiqiyyah. As it is descriptive qualitative research, the data collected is in the form of words of pictures rather than number. The researcher conducts observation, interview, and triangulation as a technique for collecting data. The result of the analysis of research findings shows that the students made several types of grammatical errors on the use of simple past tense in writing narrative text, those are: omission errors, addition errors, misformation errors, and misordering errors. Misformation errors play the most dominant error of all. Those errors occurred because of lack of motivation, students’ attitude, environment, facility, method of teaching, first language interference, and translation.