AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN USING SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT THE FIRST SEMESTER OF THE ELEVENTH GRADE OF SMA NEGERI 1 MESUJI TIMUR IN 2017/2018 ACADEMIC YEAR

This research was conducted based on the phenomena happened in the school. The students have low score in their descriptive text. They get difficulty in constructing sentences by using simple present tense. Therefore, this thesis discussed the error analysis in using simple present tense in writing descriptive text. The purpose of this reseach is to classify the types of errors made by the students and to describe the proportion (frequency and percentage) of errors made by the students in using simple present tense in writing descriptive text at the eleventh grade of SMA Negeri 1 Mesuji Timur in 2017/2018 academic year. The research methodology used in this research is descriptive qualitative research. The researcher focused on the students’ errors in using simple present tense in writing descriptive text. The errors was classified the types of errors based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy. Then, the researcher calculated the proportion (frequency and percentage) of errors. The researcher took one class, XI IPA which consisted of 30 students, it was considered by using purposive sampling technique. In collecting the data, the researcher used students’ English task books and took one assignment to identify the students’ errors in using simple present tense based on Surface Strategy Taxonomy. From the analysis, the researcher found that there were 105 items errors made by the students based on surface strategy taxonomy. The most common types of errors made by the students in writing descriptive text was misformation errors. From the calculation, the highest errors based on surface strategy taxonomy was misformation errors that were 66 items or 62.85 %. The second position of errors was omission errors that were 28 items or 26.67 %. Addition errors took the third position that was 8 items or 7.62 %. Misordering errors took the lowest position that was 3 items or 2.86 %. Thus, misformation error was the highest errors committed by the students. Keywords: Error Analysis, Simple Present Tense, Surface Strategy Taxonom