A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS' ABILITIES IN WRITING GUlDED NARRATIVE PARAGRAPH AT MAN 2 JEMBER IN THE 2002/2003 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

This study was intended to describe the students' abilities of writing guided narrative paragraph. The research was conducted at MAN II Jember in 28 December 2002. The respondents were 41 students of the second year students. They were taken by cluster random sampling with lottery from the homogeneous population. The primary data was conducted by using writing test while the interview and documentation were used to collect the secondary data. The collected primary data were analyzed by using the percentage formula I 00%, then they were classified based on the classification of the score level. The results showed that, on the average, the students' abilities of writing guided narrative paragraphs were more than enough (72,93%). Meanwhile, the results of each indicator were; the grammatical skill was enough (62,08%) and the organizational skill was good (83,78%). Specifically, the students' abilities of the simple present tense was poor (51 ,23%), the simple past tense was more than enough (72,93%), the unity was very good (94,63%), and the coherence was more than enough (72,93%). In addition, based on the frequencies of the students' score, it was found that the categories of the students' abilities in writing guided narrative paragraph were; 14,6% was very good, 24,4% was good, 29,3% was more than enough, 26,8% was enough, and 4,9% was poor. Based on the research results, suggestions were given to the English teacher to improve the students' abilities of grammatical skill mainly simple present tense by reminding the students about the pattern, principle, and the usage of simple present tense. On the other side, it was suggested to other researchers to conduct a further research such as action research to improve the students' abilities in writing by using the other topics of narrative paragraphs.