PROBLEM FACED AND STRATEGY USED BY STUDENT OF

SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL IN WRITING SKILL

Reiza Fitria Indah Avrillia

Universitas Borneo Tarakan
avrilliaaa18@gmail.com

Abstract
The purpose of this research is to look at students' writing problems that impede their writing
abilities. It also contains some helpful suggestions for improving students' writing abilities.
Writing is regarded as one of the most productive skills, and while it is difficult for students to
master, it is regarded as an essential skill for good language production. Writing well is
recognized as an art that contributes to student academic success. Writing in English has become
a significant issue for students. Writing can improve one's focus, making it easier to communicate
in daily life and explain things clearly. Writing can also be used to educate and inform. Writing by
a student, including how he presents it in the form of papers, essays, and so on, is a form of
creativity and knowledge. Writing skills are extremely valuable not only in school but also after
college, whether you want to continue your studies or work. The study's findings show that
students' main writing problems are caused by a lack of mastery of tenses, grammar, syntax, and
vocabulary. This study is expected to assist students in developing appropriate writing
techniques and reducing their writing difficulties.

Keyword: Writing Skill, problem faced and strategy, senior high school

Introduction
English is the primary language of communication that unites people all over the world,
and it is very easy to come across English in everyday life. As a result, English must be taught from
an early age because many items in English are critical to their abilities. Listening, speaking,
reading, and writing are all skills in English. Writing is an important language skill in our lives.
We can inform others, conduct transactions, persuade, irritate, and express ourselves through
writing. However, we know that writing or learning to write, especially in a second language, is
not simply a matter of "writing things down." It is one of the four fundamental skills that are
extremely complex and difficult to master. Writing is an important skill in English teaching. It has
always been a part of most English language courses. According to Meyers (2005:2), writing is a
way to produce language, which you do naturally when you speak. Writing is a form of verbal
communication with others. Writing is also an action that involves discovering and organizing
your thoughts, putting them on paper, and then reshaping and revising them.

Writing is more than just putting words on paper; it is the result of a thought process, which
makes writing the most difficult skill for students, according to Richards and Renandya (2002),
because some students are confused about what they should discuss in writing and how to convey
ideas into sentences and organize them. As a result, one of the skills that students must master is
writing. Because, in addition to learning to write, students have learned to construct sentences
and short essays. However, many students are still unable to write paragraphs effectively. This
could be because students do not read and practice enough, causing them to struggle with
providing information and developing it because they have limited creativity and knowledge.
According to Krashen (2016), we learn to write by reading rather than writing. It means that
reading and writing are inextricably linked, both concurrently and longitudinally. For starters, at
the secondary school level, free volunteer reading activities in their schools improved their
reading comprehension, writing style, vocabulary, spelling, and grammatical development (Arndt
& Woorw, 2018).

Writing is the process of putting ideas together into a coherent text in order to provide
information to readers. Writing development requires strategy. "Writing strategies," according to
Raoofi et al. (2017), are techniques and operations that students use to write more effectively or
produce better writing. To produce good writing, students must plan their writing. Planning a
paper necessitates the use of appropriate techniques and strategies to keep students from making
technical errors like unconnected paragraphs and grammatical errors. As a result, effective
writing strategies improve students' writing. Raoofi et al. propose five strategies in their paper: a
meta-cognitive strategy, a cognitive strategy, a social strategy, an effort management strategy,
and an affective strategy. Meta-cognitive strategies refer to students' global skills, which reflect
their level of understanding and motivation. Cognitive strategies, on the other hand, are
individual strategies that students employ to process and transform information. The goal of
social strategies is to raise awareness and empathy for others. This includes actions that students
take to interact with their peers or to assist them in overcoming learning challenges. The Writing
Strategy Scale now includes a strategy management effort to assess how students strategically
manage their writing effort and how much control they have over their writing skill. "Affective
strategies serve to regulate emotions, motivation, and attitudes," according to the definition (e.g.,
anxiety reduction and self-motivation strategies).
Review Of Literature
The Definition of Writing
`Writing is a form of communication in which written symbols are used to represent a
language. It is thought to be a very productive skill; various writers express their creative ideas
and thoughts through written forms. Writing gives students numerous opportunities to
experiment with new ways to express themselves in a foreign language (Rao, 2017). In the context
of language learning, English language skills are equally important and interconnected. Although
each of the four language skills is important in its own right, writing is the most important because
it is used in all aspects of life. Writing is a method of connecting people. Writing is regarded as a
necessary skill for good language production. It is regarded as an important skill, particularly in
the content of English as a second language, and the majority of students face numerous
challenges when writing. Learners, particularly elementary students, struggle with English
writing because they lack a strong vocabulary and adequate reading comprehension of English
language passages. Writing is only considered a component of the learning and teaching of syntax
and grammar; poor mastery of these skills diminishes the value and importance of student
creativity. Writing gives human ideas and thoughts proper form and structure. Not only is it
beneficial for people to write down their thoughts, facts, creative ideas, and experiences on paper,
but it also contributes to the preservation of each country's past in written form. Writing is
perceived as a process and a product, and the writing process generates a collection of various
thoughts and ideas in the minds of students. According to Setiawan, Rohayati, Sari, and KUSUMA
(2014), writing is a perception of ability that involves grammatical rules, vocabulary, and various
sentence formation concepts. Writing success necessitates the writer's exploration and
categorization of prior knowledge. Writing transforms an individual from ignorance to
knowledge. This explains the significance of writing, as someone who does not know how to read
and write is referred to as illiterate and stupid (Khan & Khan, 2020). According to Andrew (2019),
students face a variety of writing challenges at various levels of their studies; these challenges are
typically classified as cognitive, psychological, linguistic, and pedagogical issues. According to
Napitupulu (2017), students' writing difficulties stem from using inappropriate words and
incorrect word structures because they tend to express their ideas in their mother tongue, which
has no similarities in structure and context to English. According to Gbollie and Keamu (2017),
motivation is important in improving students' learning outcomes. Teachers could motivate
students by using simple motivational phrases such as "Good job!" "Good try!" "Keep it up!" and
so on. Positive reinforcement will motivate students to progress in their learning.

Problem In Writing Skill

When learning a second language, writing is one aspect of the language that has always
posed problems among the other language skills (i.e., reading, speaking, and listening). It is not
only for the learners who are learning it but also for the teachers who are teaching it (Kustati &
Yuhardi, 2014). According to Jeremy Harmer (2004), one of the difficulties students face in the
writing process is an organizational problem caused by students' cognitive inability to form,
language structure, and grammar, all of which play an important role in effective communication
in writing. Other difficulties encountered by students include the use of grammar, according to
research conducted by Latupeirissa and Sayd (2019), which claims that most Indonesian students
make mistakes in using group verbs, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions, the latter being the
application of the subject-verb agreement. Many researchers believed that writing improved
one's language skills. Writing, according to Boals (2012), is a process of meaning making and a
series of related text-making activities such as generating, arranging, and developing ideas in
sentences, drafting, shaping, rereading the text, editing, and revising (Gould, DiYanni, & Smith,
1990). Writing is also known as the creative process because it is the process of searching for and
discovering one's thoughts. A good piece of writing necessitates standard forms of grammar,
syntax, and word choice, not to mention good mechanics, paragraph organization, and content.
The writer's process and goal should be to communicate ideas in a clear, fluent, and effective
manner (Raimes, 1983).

Factors Influencing Writing Difficulties

Alfaki (2015) identified several factors that contribute to writing difficulties. They are
listed below.

The Characteristics of the Writing Process

Writing is a difficult process that requires students to master grammatical devices,
conceptual thinking, and judgmental elements (Byrne, 1988 & Heaton, 1990, as cited in Alfaki,
2015). According to Abu (2001), writing is a difficult skill for both native and non-native
speakers because they must fulfill writing components such as content, organization, purpose,
audience, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, and mechanics. As supported by Al-Khairy (2013),
that "the major problems comprise grammatical errors, the inappropriate choice of vocabulary,
irregular verbs, and incorrect punctuation and spelling". The best reason is that writing skills play
an important role in communicating with and entertaining readers.

Learners' Motivation Is Low

The topic is one of the most important aspects of writing. Students are often bored and
have difficulty writing due to unfamiliar topics. Students will be encouraged and motivated to
write because they are interested in the topic, according to Davies (1998). Allowing students to
choose their topics, according to Silva (1997), can increase their motivation to write (as cited in
Thomsan, 2003). Students are allowed to choose their own topic in the hopes that it will improve
their writing quality. Aside from that, Zamel (2017) stated that writing classes should take into
account the purpose of writing itself.

Insufficient Time
According to Guantum and Chakraverty (2002), writing is one of the most important
aspects of language learning because it requires a significant amount of thought time. It was
discovered that students frequently miss deadlines because they must brainstorm ideas, organize
ideas, draft, and re-read their writing during the writing process (Hedge, 1988, as cited in Alfaki,
2015).

Inadequate Practice
Writing, like other language skills, required students to practice the languages they had
learned. Knowledge is meaningless if students only learn the skill without practicing it. Grabe and
Kaplan (1996) believed that writing does not come naturally; rather, it requires effort and
practice. The more students practice, the better they will become at the skills.

Feedback from teachers

While reviewing their writing, some students become perplexed by the teacher's
feedback. Some teachers may provide students with brief or ambiguous feedback. According to
Zamel (1985), teacher feedback can be more effective than examiner feedback in responding to
students' writing because some students are afraid or concerned about their own writing (as
cited in Alfaki, 2015). Moreover, Can (2009) states that "conflicting feedback provided by
instructors from different departments in an institution might lead to the lack of students'
confidence in their writing skills."

Method
A. Research Desain
In this research, the researcher describes problems faced by students and strategies used
by students in senior high school based on the research findings from some articles published in
national and international journals. According to Williams (2007), descriptive research is a
research method that can determine the situation of a current phenomenon. According to Nassaji
(2015), the goal of descriptive research is to describe and categorize the phenomenon.

B. Setting and Participant

The setting is the place where the researcher conducted the research. This research was
conducted in high school. The object of this research was an English document article that talked
about problems faced and strategies adopted by the students at senior high school.
C. Research Instrument
The research instrument used in this study is to collect data in the form of documents
from articles published by national and international journals. In conducting documents,
researchers provide articles, journals, books, and others.

D. Technique of Data Collection

Data is information that has been gathered through research. To obtain reliable data, the
researcher must employ a number of techniques. Because research aims to obtain data, data
collection techniques are an important step in retrieval. Data can be collected in any setting, from
any source, and from anywhere. There are five methods for gathering data. Observations,
interviews, questionnaires, documentation, and triangulation are examples.

According to Sugiyono (2008: 225), the fundamental methods used by qualitative researchers for
information gathering are participation in settings, direct observation, in-depth interviews, and
documentation review. As a guide, researchers in this study used documentation reviews
supported by articles from national and international journals. The documentation method
served to validate the observational or interview research. The documentation researcher served
as a lesson in this study.
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