Teaching simple present tense to ninth grade by using substitution drills: A quasi experimental study at the ninth grade of MTsN 2 Lebak

Tense is important for students to understand and participate in English language teaching learning process, especially simple present tense, because it expresses their daily activity or habitual. In order to make students able to understand English in language class activity easily, teachers of English should know and apply a suitable method and technique to teach simple present tense. The use of an appropriate technique could help teachers of English to make students easier to reach the teaching learning objectives. The research was conducted at MTsN 2 Lebak. The purposes of this research are to find out (1) students’ understanding on simple present tense before implementing substitution drills, (2) students’ understanding on simple present tense after implementing substitution drills, (3) the improvement of students’ understanding on simple present tense at the ninth grade of MTsN 2 Lebak. This research used quantitative approach, specifically experimental study method. The experimental method consists of pretest, three-times treatments and posttest. A total number of population is 305 students and the sample taken is 30 students (class IX B). The sample is taught by using substitution drills. To collect the data, a pretest and a posttest were conducted in multiple choice. The tests aimed to find out the improvement of using substitution drills on students’ understanding in simple present tense. The data is analyzed by using statistical procedures. The result of analysis for students’ speaking ability could be seen from average score. The mean of pretest is 40 and the posttest is 69.3. It means that students’ speaking ability is increasing because of the use of humor technique applied by the teacher. The statistical research showed that tcount, 15.9>t¬table, 2.66, which means that the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. It says that the using of substitution drills affects students’ understanding on simple present tense. While the null Hypothesis (Ho) was rejected. It also mentions that the students’ understanding on simple present tense is lower before being given treatments. Finally, teaching simple present tense by using substitution drills could improve students’ understanding