Pontential Problem with Tenses

2           Many learners have  considerable difficulty with the English tense system. As other areas of the grammar, difficulties may arise  from the nature of the system it self or from differences between English and the learners’ mother tongue. English insists on marking every finite verb group for absolute tense, whether or not the time orientation would be clear without it. Many other languages, however, often do not require such marking of the verb group where the time location is either unimportant or is clear from context. This many partly explain why some learners of English tend, for example, to use Past tense only sporadically when writing narratives (Lock, 1996:163).

     Risnawati (1998) reported that Indonesian faced difficulties in writing a composition because of the differences of grammar of sentences  between English and Indonesian language. Indonesian learners got difficulties in using appropriate verb that must be corresponding to the allocation. In Indonesian language the verb form never change. Below are examples she made:

Indonesian language	English
Andi pergi ke sekolah	Andi goes to school
Andi sedang pergi ke  sekolah	Andi is going toschool
Andi pergi kesekolah kemarin	Andi went to school yesterday
Andi telah pergi kesekolah	Andi has gone to school

Table 3.The difference between Indonesian and English in verb change

     The mistakes that students made in learning English as target language, which focussed on English tenses can be classified  into three types

(Yulianita, 2005):

1.      Wrong  form

     Thomshon (1980) says tha there are four forms of verbs should be mastered in English Tenses : the form of present tense, the form of past tense, the form present participle and the form of past participle.

     This is the use of wrong verb, generally relates to the irregular.The changing of  verb from the infinitive another form that does not involve adddition or omission.

Example,

                  Incorrect: She did not told me what happened.

                    Correct: She did not tell me what happened.

2.      Additional of unnecessary item

     Possible cause of the mistake is overgeneralization. Richards (1971) says that overgeneralization happens because the students’ failure to observe the boundary of such rule.

This is the extra  use of such grammaatical item.

Example:   Incorrect: They were  graduated two years ago

                    Correct: They graduated two years ago.

3.      Omission of necessary item

     Long (1989) says that omission of be from a language with no such verbs as example of mother tongue interference.

This is the omission of such grammatical item, that actually needed.

Example:

      Incorrect: He handsome

        Correct: He is handsome..