ABSTARCT

Desi Natalianti. 2016. The Writing Ability in Descriptive Text by the Eighth grade Students of SMPN 3 Tanjung Palas Utara in academic year 2015/2016. English Department. Mulawarman University. Samarinda. Advisor I: Dr. Y. Yohansyah Arifin, M.Si., Drs and Advisor II: Iwan Setiawan, S.Pd, M.Pd.

Writing is one of four English skills. Pincas (1998:56) states that writing is a way of communicating a message to a reader for a purpose. The purposes of the study were to find what the writing ability in descriptive text and what problem faced by the eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Tanjung Palas Utara in academic year 2015/2016.
The design of this study was descriptive quantitative which describes and figures out the ability of the students in writing description text. The sample of this study was 43 students of the eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Tanjug Palas Utara in academic year 2015/2016.
The result of writing ability showed that the mean score of students’ descriptive writing ability was 63.75. Based on the data analysis, of the students’ ability in content is good with average score is 77.6, in organization area is good with average score is 63.9, in grammar area is average with average score is 48.0, in vocabulary area is average with average score is 57.8, and in mechanic area is good with average score is 62.2 . Then, the result of difficult aspect of students showed that the students confront difficult in Grammar and Vocabulary. The first difficult aspect of students is Grammar. Most of students got difficulties to arrange sentences based on Grammar and to produce their writing well about grammatical. And, second difficult aspect is Vocabulary, causes of difficult aspect of students because students seldom read material, students were reluctant to memorize the vocabulary and students did not know how to use the words correctly in a sentence.