An Analysis of the Second Year Students’ Ability in Writing Passive Sentences Using Simple Present Tense at the English Department of Bung Hatta University.

Abstrak

Writing is one of important skills to be mastered because it helps people to share opinions in written form. To support the four skills, the students should also master language components: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and so on. According to Thornbury (1999:1), grammar is partly the study of what forms (or structures) are possible in language. Without learning grammar, the student can not write well starting from writing sentence, paragraph, and then essay. In writting sentence, there are many kinds of sentences to write. One of them is active and passive sentence. The passive voice refers to sentences in which the verb acts upon a noun or subject which receives instead of initiates the action. Passive voice indicates subject focus. Generally, the students of higher education still feel confused in writing passive voice in simple present tense, present continuous tense, simple past tense, past continuous tense, present perfect tense, present perfect continuous tense, past perfect tense and past perfect continuous  tense. Passive voice is generally difficult to understand because of its rule and formula which are dissimilar to active voice.

The design of this research was descriptive design, the purpose of this research was to describe the second year students’ ability in writing passive sentences using simple present tense at the English Department of Bung Hatta University. This research was designed wits descriptive method. The population of this research was the second year students at English Department of Bung Hatta University. The total number of population was 24 students, and they were grouped into one class PING A. To collect the data, the researcher used writing test. The researcher asked the students to write passive sentences using simple present tense. The researcher only measured the ability of the second year students in writing passive sentences using simple present tense in the form of affirmative, negative, and interrogative by considering four components of writing (meaning, grammar, vocabulary, mechanics). In analyzing the data, the researcher did the following steps. The first, she  presented the score of each sample  that had been given and converted by first scorer and the second scorer. Then she classified the students’ ability  into very good, good, moderate and low ability based on Bung Hatta University criterion.

Based on the results of data analysis, it was concluded that the second year students’ ability in writing passive sentences using simple present tense at the English Department of Bung Hatta University in general is very good. It was proved by the facts that 79% of them could write passive senteces using simple present tense. Specifically, 87.5% students had very good ability to write passive sentences in affirmative form,  87.5%  students had very good ability to write passive sentences in negative form, and 83.24% students had very good ability to write passive sentences in interrogative form.  

Based on the results of the research, it can be concluded that the second year students’ ability in writing passive sentences using simple present tense at the English Department of  Bung Hatta University was very good. Relating to the conclusion, she suggests lecturers to increase the level of exercise. Students are suggested maintain their ability and improve it by studying passive sentences using simple present tense.

Keywords : Ability, Wrating Passive Sentences, Simple Present Tense, Descriptive Method.