CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This chapter consists of background, problem statement, objective, significance, and scope of the research. A.

Background Writing is one of the productive skills. It is a language skill that is essential to academic success. Pincas (1987) says that writing could not be separated from human life. It is an instrument of both communication and self expression. There are several reasons why people learn writing. It is used to communicate with other people in society and also to express feeling, ideas, opinion, and knowledge. Writing well is not just an option for English learners. It is a predictor of academic succes and basic requirements for participation in civic life and in the global economy (Silvernail, 2002). Writing improves a persons ability to think concisely and clearly. Students learn to organize their ideas in a cohesive and flowing manner. Unfortunately, writing is not an easy skill. Writing is admitted as the most complete skill that learners over do either in foreign language or in their native language. This is supported by Nuraida (1992:1). She stated that in learning English, the foreign language learners often find it difficult in writing a text. They often make errors in the choice of tense, errors in the verb form, errors in noun or pronoun form, and sometimes they realize these errors but they cannot correct

them. Furthermore, Sarathon (1997) also stated that whether we speak or write, we must arrange our words in certain pattern if we want to be understood. By analyzing the structure of word and sentence, linguistics can begin to discuss the speakers or writers who are trying to communicate and how they do so. The result of the research done by Basiru (2008) shows that in learning English, most of the students find difficulties in applying grammar, especially in speaking and writing. It describes that the students ability in applying grammar is still poor and they need to be taught more effectively. The learners often make mistakes in learning English, especially when they try to arrange sentence or to use English tense especially in written English form. There are various ways to organize the sentences in a piece of writing. One of them is recount text. Recount text is the form of text that aims at retelling events for the purpose of informing or entertaining. In the recount text, the sentences are usually organized according to time order or chronological order. One thing happens and then another thing happens, and the events are told in the same order. The lexicogrammatical features of recount are focus on specific participants, use of past tense, use of material processes, circumstances of time and place, and focus on temporal sequence. In composing a good writing, it is not only for grammar in general but also tenses as well. Tenses play a very important role and one of the important things in constructing English sentence. Without using good tenses, our speech and writing will not be understood by the people. In English, a sentence always contains a tense. Without knowing English tenses, we will never master English

language correctly. According to Badulu (1997:7), tense is a verb form or a verb phrase used to express a time relationship. Peck (1984:55) found that tenses are basically past, present, and future. According to the definition above, the writer concludes that tense has a very important role in English language. It is difficult for the students if they have not known it in making English sentence, especially in making a recount text. In this research, the writer chose past tense form because recount text uses the past tense on its structure. Based on the explanation above, the researcher puts interest on conducting a research under the title The Correlation between Students Mastery of Past Tense Form and Their Achievement in Writing Recount Text. B. Problem Statement The problem statement of this research is based on the researchers experience in writing class. Most of the students in the classroom failed to make a correct recount text. The problem was that they were using simple present tense instead of using past tense on their writing. Furthermore, when given a task on composing a recount text, they seem to compose a text in a wrong grammatical order. Based on this, the researcher formulates one research question which is: Is there any significant correlation between the students mastery of past tense form and their achievement in writing recount text?

C. Objective of the Research Based on the problem statement that has been stated above, this research aims to find out the significant correlation between students mastery of past tense and their achievement in writing recount text. D. The Significance of the Research The results of the research are expected to have practical and theoretical contributions. In term of practical significance, the result of this research is expected to provide a helpful contribution as references for teaching and learning process in order to increase students achievement, especially in writing recount text. The result of this research is expected to be a contribution and recommendation for English teacher in order to achieve the objective of teaching writing recount text itself. It is also expected to provide useful information for the students in order to consider the importance of the mastery of past tense that can influence their achievement in writing a recount text. As for theoretical significance, the result of this research is expected to be an additional guide or reference for the later researchers who want to conduct a research about the same issue in the future.

E. The Scope of the Research This research is under discipline of Applied Linguistic. By content, this research concerns on the students mastery of past tense and their achievement in writing recount text in term to examine the correlation between those two

variables. The writing achievement in this research is limited to one of five components in writing by Jacobs (1981), which is language use. The reason of this limitation is its based on the element of language uses itself which involves correct language and point of grammar. By activities, the students will be asked to work on the past tense test in form of multiple choices and to compose a writing recount text. Essentially, the research is limited to the correlation between the students mastery of past tense and their achievement in writing recount text.