Investigating EFL Students’ Struggles with Tense Mastery in Recount Text Writing

Abstract

Numerous scholars globally have conducted research on English writing skills, focusing on identifying optimal strategies or methods for writing. However, investigations into the challenges encountered by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students when employing English tenses in textual recounts remain scarce. Consequently, this study seeks to explore the obstacles confronted by students in utilizing tenses within text recount compositions. The this study was applied in qualitative descriptive method. The data collection was done by requiring a total of 20 EFL students of English Department, who are in the third semester, participated in this research. They were asked to write a recount text on the topic “The Past Life in Senior High School” in a minimum-200-word text.   The technique of data analysis was employed by using qualitative content analysis. That is the data were analyzed and categorized into certain types of errors. Then after the text was analyzed, the results of the study shows that EFL students faced difficulties in determining the choice of tenses that were in accordance with the time context of the writing. Errors in the sentences used were also found. Later, it was also found that students faced difficulties in understanding the selection of tenses that were relevant to the time context of events in the text recount writing. The competence of students in tense mastery is also an obstacle to produce error-free English writing. Good understanding and use of English tenses and practice of using tenses in writing should lead to better improvement in the EFL students' writing skills.