The Correlation between Students Mastery of Simple Present Tense and Their Ability in Writing Descriptive Text

The Correlation between Students Mastery of Simple Present Tense and Their Ability in Writing Descriptive TextHilda Meidya Astuti (2011-36-019)Background

Facts of the students practical writing descriptive text in the schoolMost of students face some problems as they are in the process of learning writing and descriptive text such as;Lack of vocabulary.Difficult to write something. (descriptive text)Difficult in arranging descriptive text.Do not understand about descriptive text.Theory of writingWriting is the one of the English four skills that is learnt by students in the school. According to Nunan (2003:88) Writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to a reader. In other words, writing is a way to express ideas, feelings, or experiences. It is a tool to communicate with others by record of spoken language.Theory of descriptive textDescriptive text is one of genre that is taught to the senior high school students. It is a text with says what a person or a thing is like. Its purpose is to desribe and reveals a particular person, place, or thing. It is clear that descriptive text only shows the fact.Theory of writing descriptive text abilityThe students who have writing descriptive text ability, means the students have a good English mastery. According to Hornby (2000: 2) Ability is the mental or physical capacity, power, or skill required to do something. In other hand, writing descriptive text ability is the skill to express ideas and thought (in this case for descriptive text) in written symbols to make others understand of the way students describe something.

Therefore, based on the all explanation before, the researcher conduct a correlational research method to find out the relationship between students mastery of simple present tense and writing ability especially in terms of a descriptive text which entitles The Correlation between Students Mastery of Simple Present Tense and Their Ability in Writing Descriptive Text

Facts of the students practical simple present tense in the school.Most of students get confused when they try to make a simple present tense sentense to arrange descriptive text.They found a difficulty in arrange sentence using simple present tense.The concept of simple present tenseThere are 16 tenses of English tense. One of the tenses is simple present tense. According to Azar (2005: 60) Simple Present Tense is generally used to express event or situations that exist, always, usually, habitually. It is the most popular tense using since it is the basic tense of the most academic writing. Simple present tense is necessary to write a descriptive text. The concept of simple present tense masteryThe mastery of simple present tense is important and a must, since it is a basic tense. The mastery is necessary in order to write accurately especially for descriptive text. It also help students use the target language in communication either written or spoken forms. By mastering simple present tense, students will be able to express the idea of descriptive topic appropriately at the present time.