A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF THE EIGHTH GRADE HIGH ACHIEVING STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT SMPN 1 BANYUWANGI

Abstract

This research dealt with the students‘ descriptive writing ability at SMPN

1 Banyuwangi. The objective of this research was to describe the eighth grade high achieving students‘ ability in writing descriptive text at SMPN 1 Banyuwangi. The researcher conducted a descriptive research in which the data were obtained from the students‘ descriptive writing scores. The students‘ descriptive writing scores consisted of separate scores of the five aspects of writing, i.e.: grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, content, and organization. Based on the interview in the preliminary study that was done with the English teacher of SMPN 1 Banyuwangi on 16th October 2015, the English teaching learning process of the eighth grade students at SMPN 1 Banyuwangi used the 2013 Curriculum. The descriptive text has been taught in this school based on the syllabus of the eighth grade. The researcher also got the information that the teacher never measure the students‘ writing ability by using analytic scoring. On the other hand, the teacher used holistic scoring method which they scored the students‘ writing ability without concern in some aspects of writing. As the result, the teacher did not know about the students‘ writing ability specifically. Thus, the researcher used analytical scoring for this research to measure the students‘ writing ability based on the aspects of writing.

Purposive sampling is used to determine the respondent of the research. The respondents of this research was chosen based on the five students who get the highest score in English subject, minimum score was 85. The population of this research was taken from the eighth grade students at SMPN 1 Banyuwangi in the 2015/2016 academic year. There are eight classes of the eighth grade students in SMPN 1 Banyuwangi. Each class consists of 36 students. The researcher took only five students who got the highest score in English subject, especially in writing descriptive text. The supporting data were collected through interview and documentation. The primary data were collected by giving writing test. Based on the data analysis, it was found that the students‘ mean score was

92.025 which meant it was in the range 85.5 – 93.4 or in the very good category. There were 19 students (47.50%) who were categorized as excellent, 14 students (35%) who were categorized as very good, 7 students (17.50%) who were categorized as good, and no student (0%) were categorized as average, fair, poor or very poor. It could be concluded that the eighth grade high achieving students‘ descriptive writing ability at SMPN 1 Banyuwangi was very good since the students achieved the scores above good category. Furthermore, the researcher also investigated the students‘ descriptive writing ability on five aspects of writing. It was found that the greatest score was in the category of content and the least score was in the aspect of grammar. It means that the students did not have any problems in developing their ideas about the story since most of the students‘ scores were categorized as excellent in the aspect of content. On the other hand, it was found that the students had some difficulties in the aspect of grammar. It is supported by the data which said plenty of the students achieved scores below the excellent category, i.e. there were 14 students who were categorized as excellent, 12 students who were categorized as very good, 10 students who were categorized as good, and 4 students who were categorized as average. It means that the most difficult aspect of writing that the students faced is grammar aspect.