Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal Volume 3 Nomor 1, Desember 2019 e-ISSN :2597-3819 p-ISSN:2597-9248 DOI : https://doi.org/10.31539/leea.v3i1.987 173 AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXTS Yusri Apriani Margaretha Turnip 1 Universitas Prima Indonesia Fransiska Vanny Guitara Marbun 2 Universitas Prima Indonesia Anita Lovia Girsang 3 Universitas Prima Indonesia Sri Ninta Tarigan 4 Universitas Prima Indonesia Yusriturnip28@gmail.com 1 Submit, 28-11-2019 Accepted, 21-12-2019 Publish, 28-12-2019 ABSTRACT The research was conducted aiming to an analysis of students’ ability in writing descriptive texts at the second grade SMP Swasta Talitakum medan”. The method used in this research is qualitative method. This research was conducted at the second grade focus on generic structure, characteristics, vocabulary. From the data analysis of 23 students, 43.48% of students had a low writing ability category, 34.78% had a medium writing ability, and 21.73% had a high writing ability category. The researchers found that students still had many difficulties in making paragraphs that used the correct generic structure. So students need a lot of practice both at home and courses. Keywords: writing, descriptive text, generic structure. INTRODUCTION At the present, English has become one of the bridges to communicate with each other and has been used by people all over the world. Therefore, English is known as an international language. In Indonesia, English has been part of the education curriculum since then 1945 and declared as the first foreign language taught at school. English is taught from the elementary level to university level students. The purpose of teaching writing is that students can write what is in their thinking creatively. Students can interact with academic writing, especially descriptive texts. In descriptive writing, students can master the generic structure, 2019. Linguistics, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 3 (1):173-179 174 language features, vocabulary and mechanics. Students are able to understand the function of writing. Writing is one of English language skills to express or to transfer thoughts and feelings. As Harmer (2004) stated, writing is a form of communication to deliver thought or to express feeling through written form. Therefore, it is important for students who study a language to learn writing in order to help them communicate in the written form. In junior high school, writing is leaning the types of texts including descriptive text. Reep (2009) states that “a paragraph achieves coherence when the sentences proceed in a sequence that supports one point at a time. For example, when a student wants to describe about his house, then he should have background knowledge about parts of his house, such as how many rooms that this student has?, what is the color of the wall?, how wide or how high the houseis. From the explanations above, the researcher conduct to research at SMP SWASTA Talitakum Medan, because the research has never conducted before in SMP. This research had previously been conducted by Hariyadi et.al (2018) from the research conducted by researchers found 18 students or 55% in the good category, 9 students or 27% in the excellent category, 5 students or 15% in the as satisfactory category, 1 student or about 3% in the unsatisfactory category. Researchers concluded that students' ability to write descriptive text at ten grade students of SMAN 11 Jambi is good. Another research conducted by Siahaan (2013), the results found by researchers some students have been able to write a semantic structure of descriptive text using appropriate linguistic features. But there are still students who are confused, so that it is needed to improve their skills to write descriptive text. To get the data in previous research obtained through the process of observation of how teachers teach descriptive text, the researchers immediately instructed research subjects to write descriptive text. However, in this research to get more valid data, the researchers did a little updating from previous research. That is obtained by observing the way the teacher teaches descriptive text first, then researchers conduct direct interviews with research subjects about what difficulties they experience in writing descriptive text, then researchers also directly explain what is the importance of writing, what is descriptive text, how to write descriptive text with true and finally the researcher asked the research subjects to write descriptive text and gave scores to determine students' abilities in writing descriptive text. 2019. Linguistics, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 3 (1):173-179 175 LITERATURE REVIEW One of the skills in English is writing. where writing is an activity carried out by someone to create work in the form of writing that can be read by the reader. Usually writing can take the form of books, articles, and many more types of writing. In the Indonesian education curriculum writing descriptive text is one of the lessons and students are required to be able to write descriptive text in the eighth grade of junior high school. According Sudarwati & Eudia (2005) against the background of students getting the teaching of writing descriptive text, students must be able to describe animals and places. But in reality there are very many difficulties experienced by English teachers in teaching writing descriptive text, as well as students having difficulties in writing descriptive text. So from the difficulties experienced by students to write text, the researchers think that research on the ability of students to write descriptive text is important. In general, difficulties experienced by students when they want to write descriptive text because students are not able to write using the generic structure correctly, students are also unable to organize ideas so that the contents of the writing are very confusing when reading. Rass (2001) argues that writing is a difficult skill for native and non-native speakers because in writing it will create content and make the main idea. This research was also previously conducted by Rasyidah's (2015) who conducted her research in early junior high school with her research subjects in the eighth grade academic year 2014/2015 where her research results showed that students' writing abilities were still at an average level. From the results show that in the identification section students get an average value of 55, 75 and in terms of describing 50.25 of the overall results then after averaging students get a value of 51, so researchers assume that the ability to write descriptive text students are still limited to average. Other research was also conducted by Rosidah (2011) at Gunung Sari 2 Junior High School in the academic year 2010/2011 with the aim of knowing students 'ability to write descriptive text, he collected data using descriptive text writing methods, from the results of his research he found that students' writing abilities were quite good where students able to achieve a value of 52, 75. RESEARCH METHOD The research method used is a qualitative method. The purpose of this research is mean to analysis the students’ ability in writing descriptive text made by the second grade students of SMP SWASTA Talitakum Medan. The subject of the research was second class which consisted of 23 students, consist of 14 male 2019. Linguistics, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 3 (1):173-179 176 students and the female students consist of 9. The procedures of collecting the data are observation, questionnaire, interview, documentation. In collecting the data the researchers, observing the conditions of how the teacher teaches descriptive text, and the second step questionnaire conducted research to get research result this is done at the endmeeting, and the third step is interview were conducted by researchers to find out what difficulties students experience when they are writing, and the last step is documentation, documentation is done to make it easier for researchers to check data collect. FINDING The Way Teacher Teach Writing Descriptive Text in the Class. The data generated by researchers through observing the way English language teachers teach the process of writing descriptive text and researchers get information on the condition and situation of students learning in class. Tuesday, November 12th, 2019, was tested 1 and 2, the researchers looked at the way the teacher taught the descriptive text, the first starting from the teacher asking students if there were any students who knew the meaning of descriptive text. Then the teacher stimulates students by giving questions about descriptive text. Then the teacher explains in detail the meaning, generic structure, characteristics, and gives several examples of descriptive text. The teacher also supports learning to be more effective and conducive by using power points. Gerot&Wignell, (1994:208) said the same ideas that descriptive text is a text which is intended to describe a particular person, place or thing. Descriptive text has two generic structures; 1) identification; give information about thing, place and people, 2) description; gives information in more detail to support theidentification. Henceforth Mr. WahyuStarGultom, S.Pd as a teacher of English studies in class second grade gave the researchers time in tested 4 lesson to continue their research, the researchers began by conducive the situation in the classroom. Then the researchers review the material that has been taught by the teacher in their field of study. To get da conclude the results of research conducted by researchers, the researchers gave the task to write a descriptive text in 20 minutes. With the topic of describing the teacher in his field of study, namely Mr. Wahyu Star Gultom, S.Pd. After 20 minutes, the researcher collects student work, then the researcher asks any difficulties and constraints in writing descriptive text. The Second Grade Ability in Writing DescriptiveText. The data generated by researchers based on analysis and assessment of scores on student worksheets after researchers collected the worksheets. Based on research conducted at the second grade students Regarding the ability of students to write descriptive texts with a total of 23 students and through 2019. Linguistics, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 3 (1):173-179 177 several stages ranging from observation to data collection, the researchers found three categories of students' writing abilities. The first with a low category is 43, 48%, the second with a medium category is 34, 78%, and the third with a high category is 21.73%. The researchers categorizes abilities based on assessments on student worksheets in writing descriptive texts, the things that are recorded by researchers in giving scores are, generic structure, charactierstics, vocabulary. The researchers found that students still had many difficulties in making paragraphs that used the correct generic structure. Table.1. The students’ score skill level DISCUSSION After doing everything that was done in the research, the question is “How is students’ ability in writing descriptive text?”. These questions can be answered based on the results of the analysis of all data obtained starting from observing how to teach teachers in class, the results of student interviews and the results of giving a score on the work of students writing a descriptive text. Based on the scores given on the student worksheets in writing descriptive texts, there are 10 students in the low category who score 0-59, 8 students in the medium category who score 60-74, and as many as 5 students in the low category. good category that gets a score of 75-100. According to Harris (1969) there are five standard deviations in giving values, namely: that they develop ideas, arrange ideas, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. He also discussed that in analyzing scores based on the central tendency (mean, average, median). A similar opinion was also expressed by Ismail (2018) who said that the scoring was racing in grammatical aspects, supporting aspects and aspects of preparation, and the scores were grouped on average per level. In his research he found students still had many difficulties in writing descriptive texts. This research also analyzes the students' ability to write descriptive texts. Which gives a score in this study through generic structures, charactierstics, vocabulary used by students in writing. In writing descriptive text the grammar Students Score Interval Categories 5 75-100 High 8 60-74 Medium 10 0-59 Low 2019. Linguistics, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 3 (1):173-179 178 used is present tense and simple adjectives. Present tense serves to describe actions and conditions while simple adjectives govern quality and function In this study, many students write texts but are not coherent between one sentence with the next sentence, so the conversation sentences taken by students have no meaning. 10% of students who are able to write appropriately, 13% of students who are able to write at a moderate level, and receive more than 77% of students fail to write about sapher coherence. Furthermore, the use of vocabulary used by the subjects in the study is very minimal and standard where vocabulary used is repeated. In general the selection of the use of vocabulary is needed to support the ideas of the sentence to be conveyed in the text. But in reality 85% of students still use vocabulary choices that are very minimal. The scoring in this study also considers the mechanical aspects of writing, namely the use of punctuation, capitalization and spelling. In this aspect, most students are able to put punctuation marks, capital letters and correct spelling. This aspect is also one of the aspects that really need to be considered in writing a descriptive text. So that with the use of bbaca signs, capitalization and correct spelling will make it easier for readers to understand the contents of the text written. The most important punctuation marks that are considered in writing are commas, periods, periods, semicolons, semicolons, apostrophes, quotes, hyphens. The use of capitalization is usually used in writing letters in sentences, titles, place names and so on. Based on the results of the study, the researchers concluded that there were still many students who had difficulty writing descriptive texts properly and correctly. Especially by using the correct generic structure, between one sentence and the other that is incoherent, putting the correct punctuation and the lack of vocabulary students have become one of the factors that causes students difficulty writing descriptive text. So students need to improve vocabulary and practice to write correctly not only in school but also outside of school. CONCLUSION From the results of the study there were three classifications of students' writing abilities, namely the low, medium and high categories. there are still many students who have difficulty in writing descriptive text in accordance with a good and correct generic structure so this should be a concern for teachers at school, and students also need to improve their vocabulary, as well as a lot of exercises to write descriptive text properly and correctly, not only at school but at home and other courses. 2019. Linguistics, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 3 (1):173-179 179 REFERENCES Harmer, J. 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