| dc.description.abstract | Writing is a complex skill which requires both knowledge and critical
thinking as well as the strategy of writing. It can be more complex when we try to
write in another language, for example English. It must be a bit harder when we
try to express our ideas and thoughts in the written form using English. English
and Indonesian language certainly have different rules either linguistically or
culturally that we should understand first before we start writing. Unfortunately,
people tend to write in English following the rules of Indonesian language instead
of English. Therefore, the result of their writing are not satisfying in the sense of
English. The fact shows it takes time and process to produce a good writing. We
cannot judge a writing work by the final outcome only, because writing is not as a
product but as a process. In the process of writing in English, Indonesian students
usually face various problems caused by some factors such as linguistic factor,
cultural factor, and psychological factor. Moreover, the objectives of this research
is exploring the psychological factors that cause problems. It deals with the
students’ feelings, interest, motivation towards English. The researcher tried to
dig deeper information about what on students’ mind actually while they are
writing in English.
The design of this research is qualitative research whereby the quantity of
data gained from the respondents becomes the crucial point rather than the
quantity of the respondents. The sampling technique used in this research was
theoretical sampling which the researcher’s belief is the most crucial thing to start
collecting data. This research was done in SMPN 3 Jember which involved the
eighth grade students especially the students of class 8A as the research
participants. There were four data collection methods applied in the process of
gaining data, those were questionnaire, writing instruction, in-depth interview,
and observation. The important thing that should be pointed out is that writing
instruction was used just as a bridge to gain the main data whereby the researcher
did not take any score from the students’ writing. After all the data had been
collected, then the researcher did 6 steps for analysing the data. those 6 steps
were, rearranging the data, reviewing & exploring the data, coding the data, constructing description, building themes & testing hypotheses, and reporting &
intepreting the data as the final step of the analysis data
The results of the research showed that almost all the research participants
have negative perceptions towards English that often hamper them in English
paragraph writing activity. There were 7 psychological problems hampering the
students in English paragraph writing activity. Then, 10 students of 12 students
very often experienced difficulties while they were writing, and the difficulties
caused by more than one psychological factors. Based on the result of the data
analysis, the most prominent psychological problems hampering the students in
English paragraph writing activity were doubt, anxiety, shyness, and
discouragement.
Therefore, the researcher hopes that the data about students’ difficulties in
English paragraph writing activity can be beneficial as important source of data
for English teachers to determine and to decide what appropriate methods and
materials for better improvement of students’ writing skill in the future. Aside
from that, for the future researchers who desire to undergo such this research, it is
expected for gaining more data dealing with psychological problems that hamper
students while they are writing in English. | en_US |
