A CORRELATIONAL STUDY BETWEEN THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS’ SIMPLE PAST TENSE MASTERY AND THEIR ABILITY IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXT AT SMAN 1 TIMPEH DHARMASRAYA

Abstrak

Abstract

The background of the problem of this research was the students at SMAN 1 Timpeh,Dharmasraya still got difficulties in writing recount text. It happened because they did not understand and master grammar, especially simple past tense. Therefore, this research was aimedat finding out the correlation between simple past tense mastery and the ability in writing recount text.To analyze the data, the researcher used the Pearson Product Moment Formula and calculated the data by using Microsoft Excel and manual calculation. After analyzing the data, the researcher found that the value of r- counted was .65 and the value of r- table was .36. It means that r- countedwas higher than r- table. Therefore, the relationship between two variables, simple past tense mastery and the ability in writing recount text was significant. Learning from the result, it can be concluded that the correlation between simple past tense mastery and the ability in writing recount text of the first year students at SMAN 1 Timpeh, Dharmasraya was high. Based on the conclusion, in selecting teaching material for writing class, especially in writing recount text, the teacher should consider the complexity of simple past tense. In order to improve their ability in writing a recount text, the students should make efforts to increase their mastery in simple past tense since the complexity of a text is partially caused by the grammatical structures used to construct a text.

Key words: correlation, past tense, writing recount