Keywords: students’ ability, writing and recount text

The objective of this research is to find out students’ ability in the eighth
grade in writing recount text. This research uses descriptive method with
qualitative approach. The population of this research is students in eighth grade of
SMPN 5 Banjarmasin in the academic year of 2016/2017. This research uses
cluster random sampling and students in class VIIIB is the sample of this
research.
In this research, students’ ability in writing recount text was interpreted to
six criteria: excellent, very good, good, fair, poor, and very poor. The finding of
this research shows that 1 student or 3.2% of total sample got very good criteria,
20 (64.5%) students got good criteria, 9 (29%) students got fair criteria and 1
(3.2%) student got poor criteria. Students ability in writing recount text classified
as good because 20 students or 64.5% of total students included to this criteria.
According to the finding, the researcher suggests to teacher to give more
writing task to practice and increase students’ ability in writing. It is also
suggested to the students to give full attention to the teacher explanation in
teaching and learning activity and practice the writing. For the next researcher, it
is suggested to prepare the instruments and the subject of the research well before
doing the research, collect enough information from the books and the previous
studies related to the topic.