<![CDATA[Abstract: Negative and interrogative forms are the important elements of Englishgrammars that have to be mastered by SMP students. The learners need to havesubtantial capability of English grammar in order that they are able to speak andwrite correctly.Therefore, the objectives of this research are (1) to identify the frequencies ofoccurance of the students’ grammatical errors based on surface strategy taxonomyfound in their sentences, (2) to identify the frequencies of occurance of students’grammatical errors based on developmental category that are found in theirsentences, and (3) to find out which types of errors were mostly made by thestudents. Descriptive method was used in this research, where the data were takenfrom the students to draw conclusions. This research was conducted at SMPNegeri 8 bandar Lampung. The subject of the research was class VIII.H consistingof 34 students. The data gained were further analyzed based on surface strategytaxonomy and developmental category.Having analyzed the data, it is found that the students commited four types oferrors based on surface strategy taxonomy and developmental category, thehighest frequency of error types based on surface strategy taxonomy ismisformation error (63,17%) followed by misordering errors (23,36%), additionerrors (11,34%) and misordering errors (2,27%). While based on thedevelopmental category, the errors are: pre-systematic stage (44,75%), systematicstage (33,14%) and post-systematic stage (22,09%).The result shows that the highest number of errors occured is misformation. ThisIndicates that students have more serious problems in using grammar especiallytenses in present tenses. They might also be influenced by Indonesian grammar.And based on developmental category the most frequent errorr occured is presystematicstage. This might be due to the students’ lack of knowledge aboutgrammar. The errors students produced were possibly caused by some factorssuch as insufficient grammar mastery, lack of knowledge of present tenses andlack of awareness. In line with the result, it is suggested that English teachersshould not ignore the errors made by them. The teachers can give remedialteaching for the students and provide some tasks or exercises which enable themto practice using tenses.Key words : Students errors, present tenses sentences, negative and interrogative2]]>
