Students’ Difficulties in Using the Simple Present Tense in Writing Descriptive Texts among Tenth-Grade Students at State Senior High School 1 Simpang Empat in the 2025/2026 Academic Year

Abstract

The accurate use of the simple present tense remains challenging for English as a Foreign Language learners, particularly when they are required to construct grammatically appropriate descriptive texts. This study investigates the difficulties experienced by tenth-grade students in using the simple present tense when writing descriptive texts at State Senior High School 1 Simpang Empat during the 2025/2026 academic year. The study employed a descriptive qualitative approach with a case study design, involving 34 students from Class X-1 selected through total sampling. Data were collected through writing tests and interviews and analyzed using the surface strategy taxonomy of error analysis. The findings revealed two major grammatical difficulties: the use of the verb to be (is, am, and are) in nominal sentences and the addition of the suffix -s/-es to verbs with third-person singular subjects. Omission constituted the dominant error type (83.33%), followed by misformation (16.67%). These findings indicate that students’ difficulties primarily arise from linguistic limitations compounded by first-language interference, highlighting the need for more focused instruction on simple present tense structures in descriptive writing.