The Correlation Study Between Students’ Mastery of Past Tense and Their Ability in Expressing Past Activities in Writing at The Eleventh Grade of SMA 1 Tamiang Layang Barito Timur Regency Central Kalimantan in Academic Year 2010/2011

Mustika Agustina. 2012. The Correlation Study Between Students’ Mastery of Past Tense and Their Ability in Expressing Past Activities in Writing at The Eleventh Grade of SMA 1 Tamiang Layang Barito Timur Regency Central Kalimantan in Academic Year 2010/2011. Advisors I : Drs. H. Ahdi Makmur, M.Ag, Ph.D, Advisor II : Dra. Andi Irlina, M.Hum\ud This study describes the correlation study between students’ mastery of past tense and their ability in expressing past activities in writing at the eleventh grade of SMA 1 Tamiang Layang Barito Timur Regency Central Kalimantan in Academic Year 2010/2011. The purposes of this research are to find out the students mastery of past tense and the students ability in expressing past activities in writing, and also to find out whether or not there is a correlation between the students mastery of past tense and their abilities in expressing past activities in writing.\ud In this study, there are three problems should be answered; they are (1) How do the eleventh grade students of SMA 1 Tamiang Layang in academic year 2010/2011 master the past tense in English? (2) How is the students’ ability in expressing past activities in writing English? (3) Is there any correlation between the students’ mastery of past tense and their abilities in expressing past activities in writing? \ud The population of this study are the eleventh grade students of SMA I Tamiang Layang in the academic year of 2010/2011. There are 138 students of the eleventh grade and the writer take 30% or 41 students as the sample.\ud The data are collected through observation, writing test and documentary. Then, the data are processed through editing, coding, scoring and tabulating. The data are analyzed by using quantitative descriptive method and inductive method to make conclusion. \ud The result of this research showed that average of students mastery of past tense is 58,83 and average of their ability in expressing past activities in writing is 55,90. Their mastery of past tense and their ability in expressing past activities in writing students still get in low level. Nevertheless, there is a significant correlation between the students’ mastery of past tense and their ability in expressing past activities in writing. This result is obtained from the computation of the correlation between the students’ mastery of past tense and their ability in expressing past activities in writing, that is 0.596. For 41 df rtable in 5% the significant is 0,304 and rtable in 1% is 0,393. It means that the result obtained from the computation is greater than its table degree of correlation, 0,596 > 0,304 or 0,596 > 0,393. The hypotheses null (H0) is denied and the hypothesis alternative (Ha) is accepted. The writer conclude that the correlation between the two variables above is positive and in fair level