AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENT’S WRITING SKILL IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXT

IN SMA 11 PEKANBARU

Muliani Mahara, Pretty Patricia Putri Arjan, Rahmadyta Audya, Silvina

English Literature, Faculty of Languages & Art
UNIVERSITAS NEGERI MEDAN

Abstract

This research was conducted by searching for data and information from senior high
school students, and this research was conducted to provide an overview of the problems in
making descriptive writing, especially in English. However, in making descriptive writing, apart
from requiring a lot of vocabulary, you must also pay attention to grammatical besides that
according to the data we found there are several other problems such as difficulty finding topics
or ideas, and not having any interest in English.the design of this research was quantitative
method. The subject of this research was the second grade students of SMA 11 pekan baru, the
data of this research were collected by using online questionnaire
Key word:Descriptive, problem, writing, English

Introduction

Language is an important tool for communication, everyone can express what they feel
with language of course, and in this day and age we know, English is very important language that
we should be able to use. Because English is an International Language, the language used widely
in the world to communicate, and also plays an important role in the world of economic, education,
and so on. therefore Indonesia as a developing country also determines that English is the first
foreign language to be applied as learning from high school to university level. Given the
importance of the English language, of course students must be given adequate English, both orally
and in writing form.
Furthermore, as we know that there are 4 basic skills in English, that are : reading, speaking,
listening and finally is writing, where seeing the order above writing is one of the most difficult
skills for students to understand. Because when writing students must express their ideas, thoughts,
feelings as well as writing text. One of the fields of writing in high school is making descriptive
text, report text, recount text and narrative text. When we are talk about descriptive, this is a
functional one that is difficult for students to learn. Descriptive text is a form of writing that
provides an overview, or we can say it describes places, people, objects etc.
According to wardiman: 2008 description text is a text that describes parts of a person, something,
and a certain place. After seeing the meaning of the description we really hope, that students are
able to understand the type of this paper and also be able to develop their abilities in descriptive
writing. And descriptive text its really very different with kinds of texts other. Descriptive text is
the text that describes something. Wyrick (1987:227) states, “The writer of description creates a
wordpicture of persons, places, objects, and emotions using a careful selection of detail to make
an impression on the reader.” This study only focuses on the problems faced by students when
writing descriptive writing. And the problems like how to get the topic / idea, not interesting with
English, and doesn't have a lot of vocabulary
So to collect the data of this research we used a questionnaire, by sharing it online with 10
students at PekanBaru senior high school, they all sat in second grade, 6 girls and 4 boys, the
questions we asked were only 2, that are; (1) do they faced any difficulties when writing descriptive
text, and; (2) what are the difficulties that they face when writing. So after we got the data, we
make it in the table and we group the result of the research according by their opinion. For example
second from them choosed if grammar is the most difficult, so we make the table and we make the
difficulties after it we put checklis in grammar table. After it all, we make the percentages of the
difficulties they are faced in diagram, so here we know what the most difficult in make descriptive
writing.
So from the data above the gap are , the first is the student not interested in English, haven’t
many vocabulary, and difficult to find the topic and we proposing the solution ,that are: to give
new way to learn like we ca learning by watching the movie it will help them interested in English,
and order them to listening music and find new word from the music, and order them to read more.
It can help to improve their vocabulary, and how to make the students get the idea, so for the first
step the teacher can give them the topic then you can bring them to the outside the classroom like
learn in the garden or library, it will help them to get many idea, because the student has new
circumstances and new place .

Materials and Method

The purpose of this research is to investigate the students difficulties in writing descriptive
text and the factors that made students have some difficulties in writing descriptive text. This
research is using descriptive quantitative research. The purpose of the research is to gain
information about phenomena in order to describe existed condition in the field. Descriptive
quantitative research involves collecting numerical data to test hypotheses or answer questions
concerning current status conducted either through self-reports collected, through questionnaires,
through interviews or through observation. Quantitative descriptive or survey research involves
collecting data in order to answer questions about the current status of the subject or topic of study
and obtain information about preferences, attitudes, practices, concerns or interest of some group
of people. In this study the researcher analyzed the students’ difficulties in composing descriptive
text. Then the researcher examined the problems that they face. This research contained deep and
reaches description and it was more concerned with process than specifying outcome or product.
Then the data were analyzed inductively to provide meaning, where the researcher worked to
collect data and to find the relevant information and get the conclusion.
The research was conducted from SMAN 11 Pekanbaru in December 1st 2020. The
participants of this research were the representatives from second grade students of SMAN 11
Pekanbaru. The total respondents of the representatives students of second grade was 10 students.
This research was conducted from questionnaires online where there were data of students enrolled
as active students. In this case they focused in fill the form regarding to difficulties or problem that
they faced when writing descriptive text.

Result

Based on the research, the researcher found that the high percentage of the answered
statement in “yes” and “maybe” concluded that the students frequently faced some problems in
writing the descriptive text. The researcher also found that the frequent general problems that the
students faced in writing descriptive text were difficulty to organize the idea, grammar, finding the
topic, and lack of vocabulary.
Developing ideas is the most important thing to the students in writing descriptive text. By
developing the ideas, the students can make a good writing text and develop their ideas clearly in
each paragraph. In organizing ideas, students have to identify the name of place and describe the
detail of the place in the supporting paragraph. Unfortunately, organizing the ideas is one of the
problems that students faced when writing. Many of the students failed to organize the idea and
text well. It was related to the use of coherence of descriptive writing. They must compose the
writing by applying the correct coherences, so the students can bring the real situation to the
writing works. The students in the other hand always felt that they only had a little time to think
and organize their ideas in their writing and always wrote their essay without well preparation.
This condition makes the students produced a poor writing because they only had limited
time in writing the writing and didn’t make some preparation, so they will write what was across
in their minds without compare whether their writing contents were quite good or not or whether
their ideas were has a reference or not. In other cases, some students find grammar is the problem
that they usually faced when writing is because learning and using grammar correctly is so difficult
as there are so many exceptions to every rule. Students are also ignorant of the basic rules and
structural patterns which they are supposed to have learnt at the lower level. As for topic,
sometimes the topics that were given to the students when writing were considered unfamiliar by
the students. The unfamiliar topics that were given to them will affect their writing as they do not
truly understand what the topic is. They cannot develop their ideas because they stuck at the
unknown topic. However, they will be able to write good writing if they feel familiar with the
topic. They can easily develop the topic into a good paragraph. From the research, it is also found
that student faced problem in vocabulary. Some of the students had poor choice of words. The
ideas of the students sometimes were too general. It might be because the students did not know
many vocabularies in English, lack of practices and faced difficulties in learning English. It means
that the students have to enrich their vocabularies. The students only got the vocabulary input when
the teacher explains the material write down for them. The result of the research are presented in
the table and graphic below.

Table 1. Problem That The Students Faced When Writing Descriptive Text.

Participants Finding Topic Developing Ideas Vocabulary Grammar

Student 1 ✓
Student 2 ✓
Student 3 ✓
Student 4 ✓
Student 5 ✓
Student 6 ✓
Student 7 ✓
Student 8 ✓
Student 9 ✓
Student 10 ✓
Total 10% 40% 10% 40%
 Graphic 1. Problem That The Students Faced When Writing Descriptive Text.

Problem in Descriptive Writing

45%

40%

35%

30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%
Finding Topic Developing Ideas Vocabulary Grammar

The result of the research has deal with the students’ skill of descriptive writing. First, these
research imply the teachers should use an effective strategy in teaching descriptive writing in order
to get good results for the students. Second, students who weak in finding the topic and lack in
vocabulary implies that their writing are not good, because their difficult to develop and organize
the idea well. Third, the teacher must be give the students chance to practice their writing skill,
especially for descriptive text.

Discussion

This research approach uses a quantitative approach because using numbers, starting from
data collection, interpretation to the data, as well as the appearance of the results. And described
in a manner deductions that depart from general theories, then with observations for testing the
validity of the theory's validity draws conclusions. Then described descriptively, because we will
direct the results to describe the data obtained and to answer the formula. Descriptive quantitative
research is used to describe, explain, or summarize various conditions, situations, phenomena, or
various research variables according to the events as they are who can be photographed,
interviewed, observed, and who can expressed through documentary materials.
This study is also related and similar like an analysis by Lailatul Husna, Zainil, and Yenni
Rozimela. In writing a descriptive text, the students often found some difficulties although they
have been guided by their teachers to write it. There were some difficulties that students face
during writing the descriptive paragraph. First, the problem in developing the ideas. Some students
wrote many main ideas in one paragraph; the idea of the paragraph was still ambiguous.
Sometimes, it is also found that some paragraphs were written in one sentence only. The idea of
the paragraph was still not clear. Second, the problem in organizing the ideas to write a descriptive
text. A paragraph needs more than a unified point; it needs a reasonable organization or sequence.
The students have to organize their ideas into good paragraphs; the students have to make their
writing readable. To write a descriptive paragraph, the students can organize their ideas by
identifying the topic and give the descriptions about the topic. Third, the students found difficulties
in grammar. Grammar difficulties will influence certain patterns of how words are put together to
form the correct sentences. It will make the ideas do develop well. Fourth, when students proceed
writing something, many problems could be found. Some students are lack of vocabularies and
they also have difficulties in developing their ideas related to their topic.
Each student has different problems when doing descriptive text research. Many of them
have problems in developing ideas and grammar. Why does this happen? What keeps them from
developing ideas and why is their grammar not good? The first problem is dealing with developing
ideas. They confessed that they familiar with the topic, i.e the place. They already wrote the object,
but in their writing there were only a small number of ideas presented. They were able to compose
a good topic sentence. However, they were unable to develop it into a good paragraph. For example
in the first test found some uninformative text. So, the readers did not catch the idea of the writing
text. The students admitted that this problems was due to the difficulties of transforming the ideas
from the mind into written text. The second is Grammar which includes errors in the use of verbs,
nouns, articles, sentence formation and text organization. Grammar mistakes are usually because
they don't pay attention to what the teacher teaches, or they are confused about putting what is at
the beginning or in the middle of a sentence. This is supported by a lack of writing practice and a
lack of reading literacy. This can be overcome by studying hard about grammar because it is
important to write a grammar sentence that must be good and correct.
In this study, researchers have limitations in conducting research to focus more on what is
the goal and find solutions and solve them. Of the many problems faced by students in writing, the
researcher asked about the difficulties in writing descriptive text. This can tell the researcher what
problems students face when writing descriptive text. The researcher asks two questions so that
students are not confused and can focus on what they cannot face when writing descriptive text.
The purpose of Acknowledge the limitation is (1) Limiting (choosing one or two) problems to be
studied; (2) Confirming the meaning; (3) Presenting data that provides a more detailed description
of the students' problems; (4) Provide easy and fun solutions to train students to write descriptive
text well in the future.