AN ANALYSIS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITING BY STUDENTS OF SMA
INTRODUCTION
In learning English, guidelines of School based Curriculum (KTSP) which is applied for all school levels in Indonesia lead the students to have real life skills. This implies that teaching English stated in KTSP in particular is to enable students to master the four language skills, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All of these skills are expected to be mastered by the students. Reading and listening are passive skills, it means that the students only receive the material. Whereas speaking and writing are active skills, the students will produce something in their learning.
In writing, the students still have hesitancy about grammar. Since, grammar is the basic elements of an area of knowledge or skill, or it is a set of prescriptive notions about correct use of a language. According to Murcia (1995:4) grammar is essentially about the systems and patterns we use to select and combine words. By studying grammar we come to recognize the structure and regularity which is the foundation of language and we gain the tools to talk about the language system. Grammar must be learned by the students who want to learn about language. It will be more effective to produce utterance based on the basic structure which they know (Nichols, 1993: 78). Moreover in writing skill, the grammar is>?????????????