The Analysis of Students’ Ability in Using Past Tense of the Eight Grade students at SMP N 1 Buayan Kebumen in the Academic year of 2016/2017

Abstract

Grammar is essential as the rules of word to make the sentences to be meaningful. A sentence will be a grammatically correct if the sentence has right pattern. Tenses is the material of grammar. Especially in Junior high school,the students should mastersimple past tense in the eighth grade. They will learn the formula, the use, and the rules of simple past tense, butusually ability of students to deliver material of simple past tense in each other is different. Therefore, this research focus on analysis of students' ability in using pasttense in the Eight Grade at SMPN 1 BuayanKebumen in The Academic Year of 2016/2017. This objective of the study is to describe the students’ ability in using past tense andto find out the casual factor related to the students’ ability in using past tense. It is expected that the research would be useful for the teachers and students in language teaching and learning process. This research is qualitative research. The instrument of the researcher used is test to describe the students’ ability and quesionnaires to find out the casual factor of students’ abilty. There are 62 students who participate in the research. The analysis tehcniques of the data are 1). Coding the data 2). Counting the score of the students 3). Classifying the data 4). Describing the casual factor by the students in using past tense on the questionnaires5). Drawing conclusion and suggestion The result of this research in analysis the students’ ability in using past tense are 15 students (24.2%) categorized excellent, 12 students (19.4%) categorized good, 20 students (32.3%) categorized sufficent, 11 students (17.7%) categorized fairly sufficent and 4 students (6.5%) categorized low. There are 4 casual factor related to this students’ ability in using past tense. Those are 1). The students feel difficulty using verb in simple past tense. 2). The students do not understand about regular and irregular verb. 3). The students have difficulty in change sentences in the other formula to be simple past tense. 4). The students can not make interrogative sentences using simple past tense.