THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ RECOUNT TEXT WRITING ABILITY AT SMP NEGERI 1 TEMPEH LUMAJANG

Abstract

Learning English as a foreign language requires the students to learn the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Unfortunately, from those all four skills, most Indonesian students experience that writing is the most complex and difficult skill to learn. Neglecting that fact, the English teachers force their students to be able to write various types of text at schools. This happens due to the implementation of Genre Based Approach in the two recent curricula applied to teach English. In other words, this approach actually requires the students to do an extra job, understanding the characteristics of all types of the text learned. Moreover, the very limited time to practise writing also comes up as another crucial problem that may affect the students’ writing performance. It is no wonder that most of the students find writing as a frustrating skill to be mastered. Dealing with the problems above, this research was conducted to describe the students’ recount text writing ability based on the five aspects of writing (content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics); the students’ score distribution based on the classification of score levels; and the aspect of writing which was poorly achieved. The population of this research was the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Tempeh Lumajang in the 2014/2015 academic year. In order to be able to obtain more representative data, the researcher decided to apply proportional random sampling method by taking 10% of the total population from each class. Thus, there were 36 students taken as the respondents, consisting 4 students from nine classes of the eighth grade level in SMP Negeri 1 Tempeh Lumajang. To obtain the data the researcher administered a recount text writing test on April 11th, 2015. In this test, the respondents were required to write a short and simple recount text that consisted of 75-100 words in 60 minutes in the topic of “My Best Holiday Ever” or “My Worst Holiday Ever”. In assessing the students’ recount text writing ability, the researcher used analytical scoring rubric by considering the five aspects of writing: content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. The researcher used means score formula to analyze the students’ recount text writing ability in general. Next, the students’ score distribution in recount text writing was analyzed based on the classification of score levels. The last, to figure out which aspect of writing that the students poorly achieved, the researcher used percentage formula adapted from Ali. The result of the analysis showed that the students’ mean score in writing a recount text was 59. It meant that the eighth grade students’ recount text writing ability at SMP Negeri 1 Tempeh Lumajang was poor. To be more detailed, there were 4 students categorized as fail, 12 students were categorized as poor, 11 students were categorized as fair, 7 students were categorized as good, and the last, there were 2 students categorized as excellent. Meanwhile, talking about the aspect of writing that the students poorly achieved, it was revealed that the students’ lowest score was in the aspect of grammar. The percentage of students’ ability in the aspect of grammar was only 13.8% compared to the other aspects of writing and their mean score was 40.6 which could be categorized as poor. Based on the brief explanation above, it could be concluded that the eighth grade students’ recount text writing ability at SMP Negeri 1 Tempeh Lumajang was not yet satisfying. The result of the research shows that the students’ recount text writing ability was still in poor category. Therefore, the researcher hoped that the English teacher of SMP Negeri 1 Tempeh Lumajang would wisely use the result of the research as a reflection for the method and the lesson plan applied in teaching writing. Hopefully, the result of the research could also be used as a trigger to find out the best new method which could help the students overcome their problems in learning writing.