Identfying the Vocational School Students’ Difficulties in Writing Descriptive Text

Abstract

In learning English, all students at all levels learn two language skills, namely productive skills and receptive skills. Productive skills include writing and speaking since they involve in the production of language, while receptive skill consists of listening and reading because they involve in receiving messages (Sharma, 2015; Harmer, 2001). According to Phuket and Othman (2015), writing is considered to be the most difficult skill to master, especially for students who are not native and study English as a foreign language (EFL), which is one of the reasons why English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students often make mistakes in the writing process. The mistakes that are often made by students, especially students who study English as a foreign language (EFL) in writing, are because they have difficulty fulfilling several important aspects that must be fulfilled in writing English. The important aspects referred to have been conveyed by Brown (2004), such as organization, content or logical development, grammar, mechanics and vocabulary mastery. Thus, this research aimed to find out the students' difficulties in writing descriptive text at one of the vocational schools in Bondowoso. The research design used was a descriptive quantitative research design, which was carried out at SMK Negeri 3 Bondowoso. Participants in this research were one class of tenth-grade students of SMK Negeri 3 Bondowoso that consist of 20 students who were chosen from the purposive sampling technique. The technique used to collect data was a writing test on the topic of famous tourist spots in Bondowoso. The data analysis by Sudjono (2001) was used to analysed the data from the students' descriptive text writing. Furthermore, the data were summarized to identify the students’ difficulties in writing Descriptive text. The results of this research in identifying students' difficulties in writing descriptive text in order from the most difficult to the easiest category were difficulties in mechanics with 100%, difficulties in grammar with 100%, difficulties in vocabulary with 55%, difficulties in organization with 45%, and difficulties in content with 30%. Based on the results, mechanics and grammar were the most difficult category for students in writing descriptive text at that school because there were lots of mistakes identified in the students' writing with the most common difficulties in capitalization, especially in proper nouns and also in the first letter of a sentence, punctuations, and spelling. Meanwhile, the most difficulties identified in grammar were difficulties in run-on sentences, fragments, and subject-verb agreement. The researcher hopes that this research will be useful for future researchers to find the best and newest solutions or ways to increase student awareness in the application of mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc.) and grammar in writing in English. That way, students will be able to produce better writing in the future. The teachers are also expected to be able to teach and guide students on how to write in English well, especially in increasing students' awareness of lowerlevel skills in writing, especially in mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc) and increasing the student’s confidence and motivation in learning grammar.