A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT THE TENTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMA N 1 KARANGANYAR KEBUMEN IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2012/2013

Abstract

The objective of the study is to know the students’ ability in using simple present tense in writing descriptive text at the tenth grade students of SMA N 1 Karanganyar Kebumen in the academic year of 2012/2013. This research is presented in qualitative method. The subject of this study is the tenth grade students of SMA N 1 Karanganyar Kebumen in the academic year of 2012/2013. There are 279 students. Because of the limitation of time, the researcher only choose one class and the subject of the study consist of 32 students. The researcher uses descriptive method in analyzing the data. The result of this research showed that the students’ ability belong to good category since the mean is 77.87. There are 5 students belong to fair category, 10 students belong to good category, and 17 students belong to very good category. The percentage of omission error is 34.52% done by 9 students, addition error is 7.74% done by 1 student, misordering error is 7.74% done by 1 student, and misformation error is 51.19% done by 21 students. In conclusion, the most error made by the students is misformation error done by 21 students.

Keywords: Students’ ability, Simple present tense, descriptive text, error analysis.