Difficulties Faced by the Students of English Education Study Program in Learning Present Perfect Tense

Abstract

The purposes of this research is to find out the difficulties and the factors affecting the difficulties faced by the third semester students of English Education Study Program at Universitas Muhammadiyah Palu in learning Present Perfect Tense. This is a descriptive research. The subject is the third semester students of English Education Study Program at Universitas Muhammadiyah Palu. The number is seven students taken from one class by using total sampling technique. The data of the research were collected by carrying out an interview, questionnaire, observation and test. The result of this research indicates that the students faced several difficulties which include 1) Difficult to use regular and irregular verb/change Verb-1 to Verb-3; 2) Difficult to differentiate the correct auxiliary have/has; 3) Difficult to distinguish between Present Perfect Tense and Simple Past Tense; 4) Difficult to use correct formula or problem in forming affirmative, negative and interrogative; Furthermore, the factors affecting the difficulties include 1) A lot of tenses in English; 2) The differences between English structure and Bahasa Indonesia ; 3) The interference L1 (mother tongue) and 4) Lack of practice and repetition.