| dc.description.abstract | Indonesian students learn English as a foreign language. Ellis (1996:12) states
that the process of learning English as a foreign language is a language learning that
takes place in setting where the language plays no major role in the community and is
primarily learnt only in the classroom.
The different language system is one of the factors towards students’ writing
error. The negative interference from the students’ native language that is different
from English language rules overwhelmed them in applying the structure and the
words used.
The problems also happen to the students’ descriptive paragraph writing of
SMP Islam 1 Kalibaru. The teacher told the researcher that the students made some
errors in their writing, both the generic structure and the language features. They got
difficulties in developing good generic structure and applying the language features,
especially simple present tense.
This research was intended to analyze the patterns of the generic structure and
language features of descriptive text writing written by the high achievers of the
eighth grade students of SMP Islam Kalibaru who got score 80 or higher on semester
exam. This research subjects were the high achievers of the eighth grade that was
determined purposively. The researcher chose all of the high achievers as the research
participant.
The method to collect the main data was administering a writing test.
Interview and documentation were used to collect the previous scores of semester
exam from the English teacher. In the test, the high achievers were assigned to write
descriptive text with the topic “Famous Person” in 40 minutes. The writing test was
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not to take the students’ scores but only to collect the students’ works by analyzing
the aspects of generic structure and language features of the compositions.
In the aspect of generic structure, the results of the research revealed that all
the high achievers had fullfilled the requirements of identification which was
reflected from the existence of the phenomenon which was stated in the
identification. The research also revealed that the high achievers still had not be able
to write a good description. They had difficulties in developing main idea into
paragraph and did not understand the paragraph parts that should be written in
descriptive text.
In the aspect of language features, the research revealed that high achievers
were able to apply simple present tense correctly in writing identification of
descriptive text. Meanwhile, most of the high achievers got problem in applying
simple present verbs, subject agreement, and “be“ in writing description of
descriptive text.
The result showed that the high achiever students of the eighth grade of SMP
Islam Kalibaru were able to organize identification of descriptive text, but they still
had problems in organizing description of descriptive text and applying simple
present tense. Then, it was suggested to the English teacher to improve their way of
conveying knowledge of organizing description and the use of simple present tense to
the students. | en_US |
