The background of the study is based on the phenomena that in MA Matholi’ul Huda Jepara students’ Arabic is more dominant then English. In fact religious lessons there use Arabic language more. Consequently, their Arabic understanding is higher than English. The researcher tries to facilitate the students’ understanding on grammatical pattern in English simple past tense by using contrastive analysis and English-Arabic combined task especially on English simple past tense and Arabic fi’il madhi.
The problem of this research can be stated as follow: Is English-Arabic combined task more effective than that of English only task to improve English-Arabic learner’s understanding on grammatical patterns of English simple past tense?
This research is an experimental study. The data is obtained by giving test to the experimental class and the control class after being given different treatments. The number of the subjects is 32 in each class. They are XB is the control class (the students who are taught using English uncombined task), XF is the experimental class (the students who are taught using English-Arabic combined task) and XA is the try out class. The instrument used to collect the data is test. There are two kinds of test. They are pre-test and post test. Before items of the test were given to the students, the writer gave tryout test to analyze validity, reliability and difficulty level of each item.
The result of the research: 1) the mean of task score of experimental class (the students taught using English-Arabic combined task) is 81. 44. The mean of task score of control class (the students taught using English uncombined task) is 75. 69. There is a difference in task score between students taught using English-Arabic combined task and those taught using English uncombined task. It is showed by the mean of experimental class is higher than control class (81. 44>75. 69). On the other hand, the test of hypothesis using t-test formula shows the value of the t-test is higher than the value of the t-table. The value of t-test is 2.44 while the value of t-table on = 5% is 1.66 (2.44>1.66). The hypothesis is accepted.
The result of this study is expected to be an information material for teachers especially English teachers in teaching grammar.