This study investigated the use of past tense by students when they wrote recount text. The participants were the eighth grade students in a middle school on Mrebet, Purbalingga, with sampling method in total twenty students. The students were instructed to wrote a recount text with the topic available. The result of the research was found using descriptive quantitative method and Surface Taxonomy theory by Dulay et al. (1982) were used to count the total error the students made. In this research, the researcher found 49 total errors using the strategy. The error included, 14 errors of omission (29%), 17 errors of addition (35%), 15 errors of misformation (31%), and lastly the errors of misordering in a total of 3 errors (5%). With that data, the most dominant error students made was addition, and the least dominant error was the error of misordering.