STUDENTS' ERRORS IN USING THE SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE

P-ISSN: 1978-8118

E-ISSN: 2460-710X

217

Lingua Cultura, 13(3), August 2019, 217-221

DOI: 10.21512/lc.v13i3.5840

STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN USING THE SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE

AT POLYTECHNIC ATI PADANG

Silvia Indriani

English Education Section, Language Education Program, Faculty of Language and Art, Padang State University

Jl. Prof. Dr. Hamka, Padang, Sumatera Barat 25171, Indonesia

[email protected]

Received: 30

July 2019/Revised: 21

August 2019/Accepted: 26

August 2019

How to Cite: Indriani, S. (2019). Students’ errors in using the simple present tense at Polytechnic ATI Padang.

Lingua Cultura, 13(3), 217-221. https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v13i3.5840

ABSTRACT

The research aimed at analyzing the errors in using simple present tense at Logistics Management of Agro-Industry of

Polytechnic ATI Padang. A qualitative method with descriptive approach was applied. The samples were 15% of 153

total students or 23 students. Data were collected through the writing test; namely, descriptive essay. The results show

that many students commit errors in using the simple present tense. The errors are classied into four types: omission,

addition, misinformation, and misordering. There are 107 errors with the highest number that is omission (61 errors or 57%).

Misinformation is in second place with 29 errors (27,1%). The error of addition gains 11,2 % with 12 errors. The lowest

error is misordering, which gains 4,7% with only ve errors. In conclusion, the most dominant error made by the students is

omission with 57% and misordering is the lowest one with 4,7%. Therefore, the lecturers are expected to improve the teaching

strategies in teaching simple present tense to reduce the numbers of students’ errors.

Keywords: error analysis, students` error, simple present tense

INTRODUCTION

As one of the international languages, English has

very important roles. It is used as a tool of communication

among people all over the world. It is also widely studied

and becomes one of the important subjects taught at school.

In Indonesia, English is considered as one of the foreign

languages and becomes a compulsory subject which is

learned by the students from junior high school level up to

college level. The government realizes that English is very

important to support the development of competencies of

students in this globalization era. Polytechnic ATI Padang as

a vocational college focusing on the industry also provides

English subjects to their students. English subject is taught

to the rst-year students at Logistics Management of Agro-

Industry (MLIA) department of Polytechnic ATI Padang

and is given in the form of theory and practice.

The students have been studying English since junior

high school level, and some have even studying it since

kindergarten. Based on this fact, it is shown that students

had studied English before they entered college. They have

learned English for six years on average. The length of a

person learning English does not guarantee he/she can use

English correctly. Even though they have studied English

for a long time, they still have difculties with grammar.

The grammar that takes a signicant role in English

skills provides information benecial to the learner’s

comprehension (Zuhriyah, 2017). However, most students,

especially at Logistics Management of Agro-Industry

(MLIA) department of Polytechnic ATI Padang, still have

difculties in understanding grammar. This will result in

students experiencing difculties in understanding other

scientic books or references written in English. One of the

difculties experienced by the students is in understanding

and using tenses. Tenses are one of many aspects discussed

in English grammar. They play a crucial role in the English

language. By understanding tenses, students can nd out

when the time of an event occurred, whether in the past (past

tense), ongoing (continuous), or in the future (future tense).

Learning English is started with learning tenses. One

of the basic tenses that are learned by the students is simple

present tense. The simple present tense is used to express

activities carried out routinely, state general facts, and state

daily habits (Azar & Hagen, 2017). The examples of using

the simple present tense in a sentence are “I get up at seven

every morning” and “The world is round”.

As a person who comes from a country that does

not speak English, it is natural for a student to make

mistakes in tenses, especially simple present tense. Based

on the researcher’s experience, there are many students

who committed errors in using the simple present tense.

This error is often found in their tasks. The example is “I

am go to school”. There is an error in that sentence; the

correct one is “I go to school”. Another example is “She

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LINGUA CULTURA, Vol. 13 No. 3, August 2019, 217-221

take a bus to school every day”. The correct sentence is

“She takes a bus to school every day”. One of the reasons

for this error is because in the Indonesian language the

verb does not change even though the subject and adverb

are changed, nevertheless, in English, the verb will change

based on the changing of subject and adverb especially in

the simple present tense. Thus, those examples are evidence

that the students do not understand the rules and the usage

of the simple present tense. English teachers must be aware

of this and take steps to avoid these errors. One strategy that

can be used is by analyzing errors in using the tenses made

by students.

Several researchers have conducted research dealing

with errors in using tenses. First, Abdullah (2013) has

conducted research seeking errors committed by TESL

college students in using the simple present tense and simple

past tense in writing essays. The ndings indicate that many

students commit errors involving grammatical items, such

as subject-verb agreement, tenses, parts of speech, and

vocabularies. Types of errors committed by the students with

regard to error analysis method are due to omission, addition,

misinformation, and misordering. Next, Silalahi (2014)

has conducted research seeking error on sentence writing

assignments by rst-year students in an IT university. It

reveals that the errors found are classied into 24 types, and

the top ten most common errors committed by the students

are article, preposition, spelling, word choice, subject-verb

agreement, auxiliary verb, plural form, verb form, capital

letter, and meaningless sentences. Then, Kusumawardhani

(2016) has studied the errors which have been made by the

learners in their English narrative composition. The errors

that have been found in the compositions are 30 items or

15% for errors of selection, 25 items or 12,5% for errors

of ordering, 115 items or 57,5% for errors of omission,

and 30 items or 15% for errors of addition. Finally, Kalee,

Rasyid, and Muliastuti (2018) have conducted research

seeking students’ error on the use of letters in Indonesian

papers written by Thai students. It reveals that the highest

frequency of errors is capital letters with 48%.

Although there are several pieces of research,

have been reported on the students’ error in using tenses,

but there is a few information about the error committed

by vocational college students. Therefore, this research

attempts to investigate the students’ error in using simple

present tense at Logistics Management of Agro-Industry

(MLIA) department of Polytechnic ATI Padang. Besides

that, this research is expected to provide information to

English teachers about the types of errors made by the

students so that it can be used to improve material and give

feedback to the teachers in teaching simple present tense in

the future.

In learning a language, it is common for students to

make a mistake and error because learning a foreign language

is considered different from learning the rst language.

Error making is a natural phenomenon in learning, and it

has pedagogical implication (Robinson in Katiya, Mtonjeni,

& Sefalane-Nkohla, 2015). Thus, the error is proof that the

student is learning, and committing error is a common thing

in the learning process.

The research of error is part of the investigation of

the process of language learning. Error Analysis (EA) is

an important topic in the second language (L2) acquisition

and a hot research issue in recent years (Wedell & Liu in

Cheng, 2015). There are some denitions of error analysis.

First, James (2013) has described that error analysis is the

process of determining the incidence, nature, causes, and

consequences of unsuccessful language. Such analysis

informs learners’ errors, and thereby, noties the competence

learners attained (Sinha in Karim et al., 2018). In addition,

Richards and Schmidt in Napitupulu (2017) have dened

error analysis as a technique for identifying, classifying,

systematically interpreting the unacceptable forms of a

language in the production data of someone learning either

a second or foreign language. This analysis is absolutely

needed to be the basis for providing feedback to the students.

Al-Haysoni in Mohammed and AbdalHussein (2015)

has argued that researchers in the area of EA are making

advantages with their studies’ outcome toward learners and

teachers at the same time. It is because their studies provide

vital information to the teachers on their students’ error so

they could correct these errors and improve their teaching

methods by focusing on these areas of deciency among

students. Moreover, Hasyim in Al-Ghabra and Najim (2019)

has explained the importance of error analysis to both

learners and teachers. He has said that with error analysis,

learners could know the difculty that they face in grammar,

and teachers could know if they are successful in teaching

the material in question. In sum, error analysis is a process

based on the analysis of learner’s errors in their process of

language learning.

According to James (2013), there are six steps in doing

error analysis. The rst is error detection. In error detection,

no more than a reasonably rm yes/no decision is called for.

It is using the sentence as the unit of analysis and asking the

informants to report their intuition. The second is locating

errors. Error location is not always so straightforward, and

not all errors are easily localizable in this way. Some are

diffused throughout the sentence or larger unit of text that

contain global errors. The third is describing errors. The

system used for a description of learner’s errors must be

one having two essential characteristics. At rst, the system

must be well-developed and highly elaborated because

many errors made by beginners are remarkably complex.

The fourth is error classication that not only entries on the

grammatical categories but also a lexical category.

The fth is error taxonomies or collections error

taxonomies. Taxonomy must be organized according to

certain constitutive criteria. Dulay, Burt, and Krashen

in James (2013) have suggested the surface structure

taxonomy. The surface strategy elements of a language are

altered in specic and systematic ways. Among the common

errors are omission errors, addition errors, misformation

error, and misordering errors.

Omission errors are characterized by the absence

of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance.

Language learners omit grammatical morphemes much

more frequently than content words, e.g. “English use many

countries”. It must be “English is used by many countries”.

Then, addition errors are characterized by the presence of an

item that must not appear in a well-formed utterance. Three

types of addition errors are; (1) double marking is an error in

which the learners fail to delete certain required components

and give more than one marking in constructing sentences,

for example, “she didn’t went back”. (2) Regularization, the

example is “eated for ate”, “childs for children”. (3) Simple

additions, the example is “the shes doesn’t live in the

water”. Next is misformation errors that are characterized

by the use of the wrong form of the morphemes or structure.

The types of errors are; regularization errors (the dog eated

the chicken); archi-forms (I see her yesterday; Her dance

with my brother); alternating forms (I seen her yesterday).

While misordering errors are characterized by the incorrect

219

Students’ Errors in Using .... (Silvia Indriani)

placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in an

utterance. e.g., “I don’t know what is that”.

Moreover, the last step in doing error analysis is by

counting errors. A further reason why errors are classied is

to allow the researcher to count tokens of each type. Based

on these explanations, the researcher follows the steps

that are proposed by James (2013) in analyzing the errors;

error detection, locating errors, describing errors, error

classication, error taxonomies, and counting errors.

Tense is key in foreign language acquisition, which

helps learners construct meaningful words or sentences

(Tomakin, 2014). The English language has three kinds of

tenses that are different from one another. The differences

happen in the forms of the used verbs and the time of verbs

action takes place. The simple present tense is one of several

forms of the present tense in English. In a particular time,

the simple present tense shows clearly that the English tense

is different in time.

According to Murphy (2015), the simple present

tense is used to talk about things in general, say something

happens all the time, or something is true in general. In

addition, the simple present tense says that something was

true in the past, is true in the present, and will be true in the

future (general statement of fact) (Azar & Hagen, 2017). It

is also used to express habitual or everyday activity. The

simple present is used with a non-action verb to indicate

something that is happening right now.

The simple present tense is used to show some

actions, such as habitual action, custom, fact, and future

action. The sentence that shows actual habit can be seen

from this example; “She works in the hotel.” For the

custom, it can be seen in this example; “Most Indonesian

eats rendang on Ied Day.” The next is the example sentence

that shows the fact; “The earth revolves around the sun.”

If a time reference is included, the simple present can also

be used to indicate future time. Future action can be seen

in this example; “The movie starts in ten minutes.” Based

on these explanations, it can be concluded that the simple

present tense is used to describe a routine activity, general

facts, and future time.

METHODS

This research applies qualitative method with

descriptive approach because its purpose is to describe things

like the way and analyze the interrelationship of the data.

It is conducted at Logistics Management of Agro-Industry

(MLIA) department of Polytechnic ATI Padang in April

2019. Polytechnic ATI Padang is located at Jalan Bungo

Pasang Tabing, Padang, West Sumatra. The participants of

this research are the students of Logistics Management of

Agro-Industry (MLIA) Department. Based on the syllabus,

the students have learned the simple present tense in the rst

semester. There are four classes that consist of 153 students.

These four classes are class MLIA 1A, MLIA 1B, MLIA 1C,

and MLIA 1D. They are taught by the same lecturer.

In writing descriptive research, the sample of 10%

is considered the minimum (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2012).

The researcher takes 23 students from total students as

the participant of the research (15% of the population=

23 students) because the researcher has limited ability in

analyzing the data. Since the population is homogeneous,

the sample is taken by using a simple random sampling

technique where the students are selected randomly.

Data are collected from the Logistics Management of

Agro-Industry (MLIA) department students based on their

written essay. The instrument of the research is a descriptive

writing test given to the students. Each student is required

to write a descriptive essay with 300-350 words. In this test,

the emphasis is given on the use of the simple present tense.

The formula is:

P = F/N x 100%

P = Percentage

F = Frequency of error

N = Number of the sample which is observed.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The results of this research provide information about

errors committed by the students at Logistics Management

of Agro-Industry department of Polytechnic ATI Padang in

using the simple present tense. The results are based on the

students’ writing test, which shows that 96% of the students

or 22 students commit the error of omission. By comparison,

30% of the students or seven students commit the error of

addition. Then, 19 students or up 82,6% committed the error

of misinformation. Finally, 21,7% or ve students commit

the error of misordering. The summary of the result is

presented in Table 1.

Table 1 Errors Committed in the Simple

Present Tense

No Types of errors Numbers

of students

committed

errors

1. Omission 22 96%

2. Addition Double marking 4 17,4%

Regularizations 1 4,3%

Simple addition 2 8,7%

3. Misinfor-

mation

Regularizations 13 56,5%

Archi-forms 4 17,4%

Alternating forms 2 8,7%

4. Misordering 5 21,7%

Based on Table 1, it is seen that most of the students

or 22 out of 23 students commit the error of omission,

and only ve students commit the error of misordering.

After analyzing the data, the total of errors committed by

the students at Logistics Management of Agro-Industry

Department is 107 errors. The recapitulation of the errors is

presented in Table 2.

The result in Table 2 conrms that the most errors

in using simple present tense committed by the students are

omission with 61 errors, and the percentage is 57%. This

nding conrms the result of Kusumawardhani (2016).

In her research, Kusumawardhani (2016) has noticed that

omission is the most dominant error. Next, the number of

misinformation error is 29 errors, and the percentage is

27,1%. Then, the number of addition error is 12 errors, and

the percentage is 11,2%. The smallest errors committed

by the students are misordering with ve errors, and the

percentage is 4,7%. This nding is generally in agreements

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LINGUA CULTURA, Vol. 13 No. 3, August 2019, 217-221

with the results of Abdullah (2013). He conrms that

misordering gains the lowest percentage. The frequency

distribution of students’ errors can be seen in Figure 1.

Table 2 The Recapitulation of Errors in

Simple Present Tense

No Types of errors Numbers

of students

committed

errors

1. Omission 61 57%

2. Addition Double marking 9 8,4%

Regularizations 1 0,9%

Simple addition 2 1,9%

3. Misinfor-

mation

Regularizations 23 21,5%

Archi-forms 4 3,7%

Alternating forms 2 1,9%

4. Misordering 5 4.7%

Total 107 100%

Figure 1 Frequency Distribution of Students’ Errors

As it can be seen from Figure 1, the omission is

the most dominant error, and the smallest amount error

committed by the students at Logistics Management of

Agro-Industry of Polytechnic ATI Padang is the error of

misordering. Based on the error analysis, there are four

types of errors in using simple present tense found in the

students’ essays; they are the omission, addition error,

misinformation, misordering. The summary of errors

committed by the students is shown in these examples.

For the omission errors, it can be seen in this

example; “My village ___ in Matur.” That sentence is an

example of the omission of auxiliary verbs. It is the kind

of omission error that is mostly made by the students. The

subject in the sentence is in the singular form, and it is a

nominal sentence; thus, the auxiliary verb ‘is’ has to be

added next to the subject. The revised sentence should be:

“My village is in Matur.” Another example is “My mother

work_ in the hospital.” That sentence is the example of the

omission of verbs inection (marker -s/-es). It can be seen

from the example that there is a lack of sufx -s after the

main verb ‘work’. Thus, the marker –s is added after the

verb ‘work’. Another reason is that the subject is the third

person singular. The revised should be “My mother works

in the hospital.” Alternatively, others example is “She ____

not have a boyfriend.” The subject in that sentence is the

third person singular, and it is in negative form; therefore,

auxiliary verb ‘does’ is added after the subject ‘she’. The

revised should be “She does not have a boyfriend.”

In addition error, there are double marking,

regularizations, and simple addition. The example of double

marking is “They are gather at Jalan Kampung Jawa Dalam.

In this sentence, it has two verbs. The auxiliary verb ‘are’ is

not needed in that sentence because the sentence ‘gather’ is

the main verb. The revised should be: “They gather at Jalan

Kampung Jawa Dalam.” Another example is “I’m always do

the best for my family.” Like the error in the rst example,

the sentence also has double verbs. It has ‘do’ as the main

verb. Therefore the auxiliary verb ‘am’ is not needed in that

sentence. The revised should be: “I always do the best for

my family.” While the example of regularizations is “My

parents have three childs.” This sentence proves that the

error happens when the students confuse about the use of

regular and irregular forms. The plural of child is irregular

form; children. The noun child does not have the addition

–s form. The revised should be: “My parents have three

children.” Next is a simple addition, for example, “I have a

friends. Her name is Lisa.” The error in the sentence is the

addition of the sufx –s. Since the object in the sentence is

‘a friend’, the ending ‘–s’ is not needed after the object. The

revised should be: “I have a friend. Her name is Lisa.”

In misinformation errors, there are regularizations,

archi-forms, and alternating forms. First is regularizations,

for example: “She don’t like rain.” In this example, the

subject in the sentence is the third person singular. It appears

that the form of the auxiliary verb ‘do’ does not work with

the subject ‘she’ in this sentence. The correct auxiliary verb

for the subject is ‘does’ not ‘do’. The revised should be: “She

doesn’t like rain.” Another example is, “Everyone have a

family.” It appears that the verb ‘have’ is incorrectly used

with the subject. For the subject everyone, the correct main

verb is ‘has’ not ‘have’. The revised should be: “Everyone

has a family.” For the example of the archi-forms can be

seen in “My second and three brothers work at the bank.”

The word ‘three’ in the sentence is actually in the form of

the ordinal number. Therefore, the correct one is ‘third’,

not ‘three’. The revised should be: “My second and third

brother work at the bank.”

The example for alternating forms is “…. dan I study

at Polytechnic ATI Padang.” The error in this sentence occurs

because the student uses his native language in the sentence.

The word ‘dan’ means ‘and’ in English. The revised should

be: “…. and I study at Polytechnic ATI Padang.” Another

example is, “My mother works in the home.” The error that

is found in this sentence is in the use of preposition ‘in’ and

the article ‘the’. They are not suitable to use in the sentence.

The correct preposition for the word ‘home’ in that sentence

is ‘at’. The revised should be: “My mother works at home.”

The last type of error is misordering, for example:

“Hobby Yovita’s is dancing.” The error happens because

the word ‘hobby’ is in the wrong position in the sentence.

The revised should be: Yovita’s hobby is dancing.

CONCLUSIONS

The result of this research reveals that the students

at Logistics Management of Agro-Industry Department of

Polytechnic ATI Padang make many errors in using the

simple present tense. There are four types of errors in using

simple present tense committed by the students. They are

omission, addition, misinformation, and misordering. The

221

Students’ Errors in Using .... (Silvia Indriani)

data shows that 22 out of 23 students or 96% of the students

commit the error of omission. 30% of the students or seven

students commit the error of addition. Then, 19 students or

up 82,6% commit the error of misinformation. Meanwhile,

only ve students or 21,7% of the students make the error

of misordering.

The ndings of this research also show that the most

dominant error made by the students is omission with 61

numbers of errors, and the percentage is 57%. The second

place is the error of misinformation that gains 27,1%. The

third place is the error of addition with a percentage of

11,2%. The error of misordering is the smallest amount of

error committed by the students, with a percentage of 4,7%.

This research is signicant because it provides

information to English teachers about the types of errors

made by the students so that they can be used to improve

material and give feedback to the teachers in teaching simple

present tense in the future. It tells to the lecturers something

about the effectiveness of their teaching materials and

their teaching techniques. In order to reduce the numbers

of errors, the lecturers have to make the teaching-learning

process more interesting and fun for the students. It can be

done by using various strategies in teaching simple present

tense. They also have to give more exercises for the students

to reduce the errors.

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