Improving students’ understanding on simple present tense by using Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT) (a classroom action research with (8th A) grade students of SMP Islam Al-Khoiriyah Pemalang in the academic year of 2010/2011)

The background of this research is focused on the grammar especially simple present tense. The teaching of grammar is generally felt boring and even confusing for students at SMP Islam Al-Khoiriyah because it needs more analytical ability. This research is aimed to find the answer to the following research questions: 1. How does the implementation of TGT type improve students’ understanding on simple present tense? 2. How good is students’ understanding on simple present tense after being taught by using TGT? The objectives of this study are (1) to explain how the implementation of TGT type to improve students’ understanding on simple present (2) to identify the improvement students’ understanding on simple present tense after being taught by using TGT. This study is a classroom action research that was done in three cycles. Data collection is done using observation, interview, documentation, and test. To analyze the data, descriptive quantitative and qualitative analysis is used; it is to present result of the study in the form descriptive explanation. The implementations of TGT are class presentation, team, game, tournament, and team recognition and this success can be seen from the result of students’ average score from the pre-test was 55, 25, the first cycle was 61, 5, the average of students’ test result in the second cycle was 70, 25, the average of students’ test result in the third cycle was 85, 5. So that, there is an improvement before and after students get the teaching by using TGT. The main factor that affected this improvement was the students really interested in learning English through TGT. Based on the result of the study, the writer suggested that the use of TGT can be an alternative way to teach the language learner, especially to improve the students’ understanding on simple present tense. This result hopefully would motivate language teacher to use TGT in teaching English in the classroom, especially when teaching grammar to the level of Junior High School students