ABSTRACT
AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT THE ELEVENTH GRADE OF SMAN 1 TONGKUNO
By
HASRIDA
A1D2 14 015

The objective of this study is to analyze the students’ difficulties in writing descriptive text at the eleventh grade of SMAN 1 Tongkuno, therefore, the design is descriptive method.The population was all students at eleventh grade in the academic year of 2017/2018 classes MIA.The samples are the students MIA A, the total number of students are 31. Besides, the instruments of the study are writing test and interview guade.Result of writing test, mean score of writing ability particularly in writing descriptive text was 67.44 and it was considered as the fair to poor level of skill. The high score of student is 86 that also still categorized excellent to very good, and the lowest is 51 categorized as very poor. The high problem in the study is grammar with 42.44%. It is followed by mechanics with 39%, while developing idea is 34.03%, organization is 27.7% and the lowest one is vocabulary with 20.65%. The writing difficult related to the linguistics, cognitive and physiology problems (grammar, mechanics and developing idea) was the most difficult compare to the cognitive and linguistics problems (organization and vocabulary).From the data presentation, it can conclude the writing descriptive text of the eleventh grade students’ of SMAN 1 Tongkuno was difficult. The suggestion, teachers have to give explain and more exercise in writing to improve students’ writing ability especially in writing descriptive text. The recommendation, the researcher thinks it would be better if the next researcher will investigate about writing, especially difficulties in writing with different sample, or correlate it to other variable.

Key words: Writing, Descriptive Text, Difficulties of Writing