This study aimed to find out the errors of students in writing simple tenses
so that the encountered difficulties could be obtained. In addition, the underlying
causes of students‟ difficulties would be found. The subject of this study was the
students of eleventh grade of welding department 1 of SMK N 2 Banyumas. This
class was taken by seeing the chosen problem, because this class had lowest
competence in learning English as well as in writing simple tenses than other
classes. While the technique of collecting data used were test, observation, and
interview.
From the analysis of the obtained results were as follows: there were still
many students who made errors in writing simple tenses in which the average
value of students in writing simple present tenses was 68 (26 students who di
omission, 26 students who did addition, 17 students who did misformation, 4
students who did misordering, 23 students who did error in tense. While the
average value of students in writing simple past tense was 60 (17 students who did
omission, 7 students who did misformation, 6 students who did misordering, 25
students who did error in tense). Then, the average value of students in writing
simple future tense was 57 (16 students who did omission, 4 students who did
addition, 8 students who did misformation, 7 students who did misordering, and
18 students who did error in tense). For doing each simple tenses, many students
still faced difficulties in grammar and vocabulary mastery, so that the
improvement of writing simple tenses was not maximized and they usually made
error in the form of omission, addition, miss formation (selection) and a few of the
student did miss ordering. Among the underlying causes of the students‟
difficulties were limited time of studying in the class, the students‟ writing skill
still influenced by L1, the lack of practice/learn to write simple tenses, and lack
of interest in learning English, thus it caused them to have less knowledge of
grammar and lot of English vocabulary.