Abstract:
Writing ability is the ability of the students to arrange the idea from one
paragraph to others and make efforts to connect the idea cohesively and
coherently so that it becomes meaningful. Many students write text, but some of
them are not able to write the text based on the correct structures and features of
the text itself. Therefore, the teachers are expected to be able to guide the students
when they study to write, especially to write text. Descriptive text is a kind of
genre in writing which has social purpose to give an account of imagined or
factual events.
The objective of the study is to know the students’ ability in writing
descriptive text and to identify the students’ difficulties in writing descriptive text.
In this research the researcher uses descriptive qualitative. The research was
conducted in MAN Purworejo. The population is the tenth grade students. The
researcher took 1 class as sample. The sample of this research consists of 31
students. The research was conducted on 23rd and 27th April 2014. The researcher
uses test as an instrument to get the data.
The result of this research showed that the students’ ability in writing
descriptive text of MAN Purworejo in the academic year of 2013/2014 is good
(66-79) and the mean is 74. The result of the test from 31 students as follows: 6
students (19.35%) are classified into very good category, 21 students (67.74%) are
classified into good category, 3 students (9.68%) are classified into fair category,
1 student (3.23%) classified into poor category. There is no students get score
classified into very poor category. The result of students’ difficulties as follows:
there are 10 students (32.26%) who made many errors belonging to omission in
writing descriptive text, there are 2 students (6.45%) who made errors belonging
to addition error in writing descriptive text, there are 15 students (48.39%) who
made many errors belonging to misformation error in writing descriptive text, and
there are 2 students (6.45%) who made errors belonging to misordering error in
writing descriptive text. Hopefully, this study will be useful for the teacher in
teaching writing especially descriptive text and also the students who are
concerned with writing subject.
