This study is based on the importance of student’s understanding on simple past tense. The teaching of grammar is generally felt boring and even confusing for students at MA Yataba because it needs more analytical ability. The problem of this research can be stated as follow: the first, what does the implementation of Make a Match model to improve students understanding on simple past tense? And the second, what can Make a Match Model improve students’ understanding on simple past tense?
The objectives of this study are (1) to describe the implementation of Make a Match model to improve students’ understanding on simple past tense (2) to find out the improvement of students’ understanding on simple past tense after the use of Make a Match. This study is a classroom action research that was done in two cycles. Data collection is done using observation, documentation, and test. To analyze the data, descriptive quantitative and qualitative analysis is used. Result of the study shows that by using Make a Match, students’ understanding on simple past tense can be improved. This success can be seen from the result of students’ average score from the pre-test was 6.69, second cycle was 7.18 and the third cycle was 8.11. So that, there is an improvement before and after students get the teaching by using Make a Match. The main factor that affected this improvement was the students really interested in learning English through Make a Match.
Based on the result of the study, the writer suggested that the use of Make a Match can be an alternative way to teach the language learner, especially to improve the students’ understanding on simple past tense. This result hopefully would motivate language teacher to use Make a Match in teaching English in the classroom.