AN ANALYSIS OF DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT FACED BY THE STUDENTS AT SMP NEGERI 12 DENPASAR

ABSTRACT

AN ANALYSIS OF DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT
FACED BY THE STUDENTS AT SMP NEGERI 12 DENPASAR

Nirma

English Education Department
Faculty of Dharma Acarya

I Gusti Bagus Sugriwa Denpasar State Hindu University
E-mail: nirma.sumarorong@gmail.com

This research aimed to find out the difficulties, and the factors underlying them,
faced by seventh grade students in writing descriptive text. The researcher used content
analysis, tests, and interviews. The participants in this research were six students of 7th
G grade students at SMP Negeri 12 Denpasar. The technique used were data reduction,
data display, and conclusion, drawing/verifying. The result showed that there were
three kinds of difficulties: (1) linguistic difficulties: lack of vocabulary causing
difficulty to translate, difficulty in remembering, difficulty in think about the
vocabulary; second, language use causing confused formulas and often forgetting how
to use in a sentence. (2) Psychology difficulties include feeling insecure about ideas,
taking a long time to think, being hesitant to write sentences, afraid of being wrong. (3)
cognitive difficulties: organization caused the required vocabulary is very difficult to
explain more fully and disability incapability to distinguish between identification and
description meaning. Second, mechanics caused difficulty to write words, still
confused about applying punctuation and capital letters for their writing. From those
difficulties, there are two factors underlie the difficulties such as; first, internal factors
include motivation, personal practice, student habits, and attitude. Second, external
factors include teacher influence, students’ factors, and facilities and infrastructure.
Keywords: Students’ Difficulties, Writing Skills, Descriptive Text.