CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Research

Writing is one of the most important language skills. Students have to
master writing skill because writing skill is used throughout daily life or for
academic purpose. According to Nunan (2003) writing is the process of thinking
to find the ideas thinking about how to express to make a good writing, and
arranging the ideas into statement and paragraph clearly, it indicates that the
learners are expected to explore the ideas and make them into good paragraph.
An ability to write in English is important for English language learners,
more particularly in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Through
writing, English language learners are able to convey a message to the readers
across places and time using a written form of EFL. All students are expected to
be able to develop their communication ability not only in the oral form but also
in the written form.
For the students of junior high school, writing is one of the language skills
that must be learned at junior high school. The teaching of writing is aimed at
enabling students to master functional text and monologue text or paragraph.
Based on basic competencies (Kompetensi dasar) in Curriculum 2013 the students
should be able to convey information and instructions with various expression of
the facts correctly in the form of short functional text in the form of
announcements, invitations, short messaging, advertising, and labels in written

text and based on curriculum 2013 monologue text that students should learn are
recount text, narrative text, procedure text, and descriptive text.
In writing descriptive text the students should master several things. First,
the students should master the generic structure in descriptive text. The generic
structures in descriptive text are identification and description. In identification
the students should identify the things that the students will describe, and then in
description the students can give clear description about the things that the
students want to describe. Second, the students should master the language
features in descriptive text. The language features are used in descriptive text are
the used of specific participant, the used of simple present tense, attributive and
identifying process, and the used of epithets and classifier in nominal group.
Actually there is no found study examining the features of descriptive text,
except for one research that analysis about the features in the difference genre of
text that is narrative text, the research study about an analysis of narrative text
features in a short story was done by Indra Bayu Segara (2013).
Based on the explanation above, the researcher thinks it is worthwhile to
investigate the features found in students writing descriptive text. In this research,
the researcher will choose students on eighth grade of SMPN 11 Jambi. In this
research the researcher would like to analyze the generic structure find in the
students writing descriptive text and the language features that students use in
writing descriptive text.

1.2 Research Question

The problems of this research were:
1. What are generic structures found in descriptive text made by eighth
grade students at SMPN 11 of Jambi City?
2. What are languages features used in descriptive text made by eighth grade
students at SMPN 11 of Jambi City?
1.3 Purpose of the Research
The purpose of this research are to identify the generic structure and
identify the language features that used in descriptive text written by eighth grade
of SMPN 11 Jambi.
1.4 Limitation of the Problem
The research is aimed to investigate the features in writing descriptive text.
This research is not to give an assessment of student writing task but in this
research, the researchers only analyze the features in descriptive text written by
eighth grade. The eighth graders of SMPN 11 Jambi will be selected as the
participant in this research, because students in eighth grade has learned about
descriptive text, then the language features and generic structure will be analyzed
in this research. This research only describes a group of eighth grades students of
SMP 11 Jambi.

1.5 Significance of the Research

This research is expected to contribute theoretically and practically.
Theoretically this research is expected to be useful for the next researcher to
provide useful information about an analysis of features in wiring descriptive text,
because there is no study has examined the analysis of features in writing
descriptive text, so this study is expected to be a reference for the next researcher.
Practically, this study hopefully help teachers at SMPN 11 Jambi to know
the generic structure and language features that the students used in writing
descriptive text and the teachers can develop their teaching strategies in teaching
writing descriptive text.

1.6 Definition of the Key Terms

It is imperative to define the terms used in this study particularly the terms
which enable to have many interpretations with the intention that they are vivid
and understandable. The terms are writing and narrative.
Writing is a combination of processes and product. It means at the time of
collecting their ideas that create the text that can be read by readers who is a
product of the activities undertaken by the author. (Linse. 2005)

Descriptive Text is a kind of text with a purpose to give information. The context
of this text is the description of particular thing, animal, person, or others, for
instance: our pets or a person we know well. (Gerot & Wignell, 1995)
Generic Structure of text is the way in which elements of a text are arranged to
match its purpose. This structure can be observed by readers, and writers will use
this knowledge to structure their writing, depending on their purpose for example
in discussion text, explanation text, instruction text, narrative text, recount text,
report text. (www.standardssite.dfos.gov.uk)
Language feature of text is the features of language that support meaning (for
example, sentence structure, noun group/phrase, vocabulary, punctuation,
figurative language). Choices in language features and text structures together
define a type of text and shape its meaning. These choices vary according to the
purpose of a text, its subject matter, audience and mode or medium of production.
(www.australiancurriculum.edu.au)