An Error analysis of using present tense by the tenth grade students of senior high school in writing descriptitive text at MAN 2 Model Medan

Simple Present Tense is part of grammar that stated in tenses. It uses to express daily activities. Writer must use simple present when they will write about their activities. The data analysis was six steps through: errors detection, locating error, describing error, classifying error, counting error, and putting the result into table.it was conducted in MAN 2 Model Medan, especially Tenth Grade. The data by students Tenth Grade to write descriptive text by using present tense then their works was collected and analyzed to get the data as objective as possible, so they can be better in writing descriptive text by using present tense. After analysis all text, the researcher found some finding of the research. The types of errors made by the students on writing descriptive text are based on surface strategy taxonomy which are classified into omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. After counting the errors, the researcher found 121 total of errors consisting of 54 errors of omission, 30 errors of addition, 28 errors of misformation and 9 errors of misordering. From the data above, it can be seen that omission error was the highest number of errors made by the students. types of errors found in descriptive text in students writing of the tenth grade of MAN 2 Model Medan, the researcher can find some causes of errors. They are interlingual and intralingual transfer. Interlingual transfer is errors that are influenced by the interference of users’ mother tongue.The users still apply Indonesian pattern into English when they translate the sentences. Then Intralingual transfer occurs when students get difficulty learn the second language. They made errors is because of their mother tongue interference and logical thinking and not doing practice English well