Increasing Students’ Understanding of the Simple Past Tense Using Discovery Learning at VII grade students of SMP Negeri 4 Doloksanggul in Academic Year 2017/218

The purpose of this research is to know whether students' understanding of the simple past tense could be increased by discovery learning. This research was conducted at VII grade students of SMP Negeri 4 Doloksanggul in Academic Year 2017/218.which consisted of 36 students as respondent. This research used Classroom Action Research (CAR) method in solving the students' problem in understanding of the simple past tense. The researcher used the Kurt Lewin's model that consists of four phases, planning, acting, observing and reflecting. There are two kinds of data in this research, namely quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data can be derived from the test result. Besides, the qualitative data can be derived from the observation, interview and field notes. In analyzing the data, the researcher used descriptive analysis and statistic analysis to know the result of the implementation the Classroom Action Research (CAR) to the students. The result of this study showed that the students' progress during teaching and learning process using discovery learning to increase the students' understanding of the simple past tense was good. It was proved by three data results, first, from the observation result, it showed that the students were more motivated, active and interested in learning simple past tense in the classroom. Second, from interview result, it could be seen that students' skill in understanding of the simple past tense has improved than before in which suitable with interview result with the English teacher. Last, from the test result. It consisted of three tests, namely pretest, posttest 1 and posttest 2. There was found 22.78 point of improvement of students' mean score after using discovery learning. The mean score of the pre-test was 48.19. There were only 8.33% of the whole students who could pass Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal (KKM). Then the mean score of posttest 1 was 59.86. The percentage of students was 33.33% who could get the score above Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal (KKM). Next, the mean score of posttest 2 was 70.97. In this test, there were 77.78% students who got the score above Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal (KKM).