EXPLORING THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS ABOUT ENGLISH THAT TRIGGER PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN THEIR ENGLISH PARAGRAPH WRITING ACTIVITY AT SMPN 3 JEMBER

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.