A CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ MASTERY OF SIMPLE PAST TENSE AND THEIR ABILITY IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXT (A Correlation Study on the Tenth Grade Students of SMK Negeri 1 Dukuhturi in the Academic Year of 2020/2021)

JIHANUDIN. 2021. 1617500004. “A Correlation between Students’ Mastery of Simple Past Tense and Their Ability in Writing Recount Text (A Correlation Study on the Tenth Grade Students of SMK Negeri 1 Dukuhturi in the Academic Year of 2020/2021)”. Research Project. Strata 1 Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Pancasakti University Tegal. The First Advisor is H. Sumartono, M.Pd., and The Second Advisor is Anin Eka Sulistyawati., S.S., M.Hum. Key words : Simple Past Tense, Writing, Recount. This research is aimed to find out whether or not there is a correlation between students‟ mastery of Simple Past Tense and their ability in writing Recount text on the tenth grade students of SMK Negeri 1 Dukuhturi in the academic year of 2020/2021. In this research, the research question is there any correlation between students‟ mastery of Simple Past Tense and their ability in writing Recount text at SMK Negeri 1 Dukuhturi. The writer conducted a correlation research which was in area of quantitative. The number of sample was 36 students which were taken using purposive sampling technique. Test was used as the instrument of this research. There were two test forms to gather the data, multiple choice test to get the data of students‟ mastery of Simple Past Tense and essay test to get the students‟ ability in writing Recount text. The writer used Pearson Product Moment Correlation by assisted SPSS 26 version. The obtained r value was 0.887, while the critical value with α = 0.05 or 5% and df=34 is 0.329. Since the r value is higher that critical value, the correlation between both variables is said to be significant. It means that there was positive correlation between students‟ mastery of of Simple Past Tense and their ability in writing Recount text on the tenth grade students of SMK Negeri 1 Dukuhturi in the academic year of 2020/2021. The writer has some suggestions that would be helpful for the teachers, they should understand the components of language and know the ability of their students. They also should give the motivation, stimulation, and give more chances to the students in teaching learning process in order to make the students get significant improvement grammar and writing. For the students, they should study harder, they still need to learn about components of language