THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS SIMPLE

PRESENT TENSE MASTERY AND THEIR ABILITY IN

WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT OF THE TENTHGRADE STUDENTS OF SMA N 4 PURWOREJO
IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF
2012/2013
DESY LIA KHOIRUNNISAK
Muhammadiyah University of Purworejo
Abstract

The objective of the study is to find out whether or not there is a

correlation between students mastery of simple present tense and
their ability in writing descriptive text. The population of this study is
the tenth-grade students of SMA N 4 Purworejo in the academic year of
2012/2013. The sampling process was administered by applying a
purposive sampling technique. To collect the data, the researcher used
test as the instrument. The result of this research showed that there is
a significant correlation between students mastery of simple present
tense and their ability in writing descriptive text. The result of the
correlation product moment was 0.712 and it was categorized as a high
significant level 5% the value of r table of product moment is 0.355. The
computation show that r value is higher than rtable that is 0.712 > 0.355.
The coefficient is positive and significant.
Key words : Correlation, Simple Present Tense, Descriptive and Writing.

A. Background
There are many languages in the world. One of them is
English. There are four basic skills that must be mastered by
English learners in learning English, those are listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. Four of them have to be mastered by
someone who teaches and learns English because it is a key to
interact with people in the world. One of them which is difficult to
understand is writing. As the one of English important skills,
writing becomes the most difficult skill experienced by Senior
High School students because it has close relationship with
English grammar and stucture. There are so many tenses should

be taught in Senior High School. One of them is simple present

tense. Writing descriptive makes the students are able to write
something which related with the students minds and they
should be able to master in simple present tense. But, factually
some of students in the Senior High School finds the difficulties in
their own simple present tense mastery. The researcher thinks
that simple present tense mastery is the aspect which is very
important to compose a descriptive text and the students have
to master about that all aspects if they want to write the
paragraphs in descriptive text.
Considering the importance of grammar in a text
construction, the researcher wants to conduct an investigation on
the correlation between simple present tense mastery and their
ability in writing descriptive text of the tenth-grade students of
SMA N 4 Purworejo in the academic year of 2012/2013.
B. Research Method
This research belonged to quantitative research. It was
conducted on May 10th, 2013 up to May 11th, 2013. This research
took 31 students as the sample. They were taken by using
purposive sampling. The researcher uses a test as instruments.
The first test is to know about the students mastery of present
tense. Then, to know their ability in writing descriptive text, the
researcher gives a test in the form of essay test based on the
instruction.
In this research, the researcher used descriptive analysis
and inferential analysis to analyze the data. The descriptive
analysis consists of the computation of mean, median, mode,
standard deviation, and variance. Meanwhile, the inferential
analysis consist of test of normality, test of linearity, and test of
hypothesis correlation product moment. The data was calculated
both by manually and by SPSS program version 16.

C.

Finding and Discussion

The highest mark of simple present tense achieved by the
tenth-grade students of SMA N 4 Purworejo in the academic year
of 2012/2013 is 95 while the lowest one is 60. The mean of
simple present tense is 75.81 and the standard deviation of it is
8.67. Based on the table frequency distribution, the mean is
included in the interval of 80 to 100. It means that the first grade
students of SMA N 4 Purworejo in the academic year of
2012/2013 have very good on mastery of simple present tense.
Moreover, there are 27 students who can reach the mark higher
than the mean score (>75.81). Besides that, there are 4 students
among 31 samples who still have fairly in mastery of simple
present tense (<75.81).
The highest score of ability in writing descriptive text is 86,
while the lowest one is 58. The mean of descriptive text is 70.74
and the standard deviation of it is 5.92. Since the mean is 70.74,
it means that they have a good score in writing descriptive text.
Also, there are 90 percent of the students in good category of
their English ability in writing descriptive text. Besides that, there
are 10 percent of the students among 31 samples who are still in
low ability in writing descriptive text.
The coefficient correlation between the two variables was
0.712, so the correlation between two variable is positive, and r
value is higher than r table, it is 0.712 > 0.355, so Ha is accepted
or it can be said significant. Since the correlation coefficient
value is 0.712, it is included in the high correlation.
D. Conclusion and Recommendation
Based on the reseach findings and discussion has been
discussed, the conclusion can be drawn that there is positive and
significant correlation between students simple present tense
mastery and their ability in writing dscriptive text achivement of

the tenth-grade students of SMA N 4 Purworejo in the academic

year of 2012/2013.
The calculation is that the mean of simple present tense test
is 75.81 and the mean of writing descriptive text test is 70.74.
Based on the product moment correlation (r) analysis, it can be
cancluded that there is a positive and significant correlation
between students simple present tense mastery and their ability
in writing descriptive text of the tenth-grade students of SMA N 4
Purworejo in the academic year of 2012/2013. The value of r is
0.712 and r-table is 0.355 (the level of significance is 5%), r
value is higher than r table (0.712 > 0.355). So it indicates that
the hypothesis is accepted.
Referring to result of the study, the researcher offers some
suggestions :
1. To the English Teacher
The teacher is expected to know the suitable method of
teaching, since he / she who plays a great role in teaching
learning process, motivates the students in order to help
the students understand the material easily.
2. The students
The students are more active during the teaching learning
process, so it can make the students interested and
motivated in learning English.
3. The Reader
The researcher believed that this thesis is far from being
perfect. So, the researcher will accept good suggestions
and constructive criticism to make this thesis perfect.
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