ABSTRACT

Raudah, Siti. 2020. The Ability and theProblems of the English Language Education Study Program Students of Lambung Mangkurat University Banjarmasin Batch 2018 in Writing Narrative Paragraphs. Sarjana’s Thesis. English Language Education Study Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, LambungMangkurat University, Banjarmasin. The first advisor: Dr. Cayandrawati S., M.A., the second advisor: Prof. Dr. Fatchul Mu’in, M.Hum.

Keywords: ability, problems, writing, narrative paragraph

Writing skill is one of the important skill in English, and narrative is one of the focus materials in English subject that should be learned at any level of education. Based on the researcher’s experience making narrative writing was still hard and some studies revealed that there were many students having low ability in writing a narrative paragraph. Therefore, this research was aimed to find out the ability and also to describe the problems in writing a narrative paragraph of the English Language Education Study Program students of ULM Banjarmasin Batch 2018.

The researcher used descriptive research with a quantitative and qualitative approach to describe the ability and the problems in writing a narrative paragraph. The population of this research was 98 students of the English Language Education Study Program Batch 2018, and 51 students were taken as the sample using cluster random sampling, they were from Intermediate Writing Course. A written test and interview were used as instruments.

The result showed that students’ ability in writing narrative paragraph were 6 students (12%) in the excellent category, 8 students (16%) in the good category, 19 students (37.25%) in the fair category, and 18 students (35.29%) in the poor category. The average score of the English Language Education Study Program students of ULM Banjarmasin Batch 2018 in writing narrative paragraphs was 57.8 which classified as a fair category. Furthermore, the problems faced by the students were they have limited vocabulary, they have grammar errors in applying grammar such as in tenses, prepositions, and articles, they also made some errors in mechanics such as capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. Based on the findings, the researcher suggests the students to improve their vocabulary, grammar involving tenses, articles, prepositions, and the aspect of mechanics. Students can enrich their vocabulary by reading more books to find new vocabulary and knowledge then practicing writing so they can develop their ability. Students can use games as method or technique to practice their grammar. In addition, the students need to be aware in mechanics and keep practicing.