Errors in the use of the simple past tense in a recount text made by the eighth grade students of a Junior High School in Surabaya

English has a great influence on all aspects of human life, especially for students nowadays. The importance of English is due to the fact that communication in English becomes a necesstity. Teaching English for Junior High School is expected to help them in expressing their ideas and feelings verbally with correct grammar. Students` rich past experiences remain memorable, and students are encouraged to express them. Simple Past Tense is one part of grammar, which expresses something that happened in the past. Past verb are divided into two kinds: regular and irregular. A regular verb is a verb which a normal inflection –d or –ed. An irregular verb is a verb which does not have a normal inflection of –d or –ed to the infinitive form. Based on the reality, the writer is interested in researching and learning more about the students` errors in the use of the Simple Past Tense in a recount text made by the Eighth grade students. The writer conducted this thesis as Qualitative – Descriptive research. The instrument was used from the students` assignments of writing a recount text using Simple Past Tense with the topic “My Holiday”. The writer got 96 students` paper as the sample of the study. The result of the study shows that the total errors made by the students were 919 errors; misformation errors 592 (64,45%), omission errors 273 (29,71%), and addition errors 54 (5,88%). For this study, those errors made by the students were due to some possible causes of errors which are; (1) Interference of the mother tongue, Overgeneralization and Ignorance of rules restriction, (2) Overgeneralization, and Ignorance of rules restriction, (3) Ignorance of rules restriction and Incomplete application of rules, and (4) False concepts hypothesized and Ignorance of rules restriction. Concerning that the students still committed many errors in the use of Simple Past Tense in the process of learning the target language, the teacher is expected not only to be a motivator but also to be a coach to work together to find the best solution in overcoming the students` difficulties. The great success of the target language teaching is getting students to deal with their habits or to minimize them in committing errors as the influence of their mother tongue. It should be better to give them more exercises in using the Simple Past Tense both in spoken and written language