Keywords: students’ ability, writing, descriptive paragraph
This research was aimed to describe the ability of the students in writing descriptive paragraph at the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 9 Banjarmasin. The design of this research is descriptive quantitative. The subject of this research was the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 9 Banjarmasin academic year 2016/2017. There were 280 students which divided into eight classes. The sample was taken by using cluster random sampling technique and the sample are 70 students from VIII G and VIII H who participated in this research. The instrument of this research was writing test that given twice in certain time with the same level and different topic.
The findings show that the eighth grade students’ ability in writing descriptive paragraph is good. More than half of the sample achieved higher score than minimum criterion of the English subject which is 70. Based on the data, it can be seen that 1.4% of total samples achieved very good category, there were 65.8% who achieved good category, 31.4% of total samples who achieved fair category, 1,4% of total samples achieved poor category. Meanwhile, there was no student who achieved excellent and very poor category.
The researcher suggested to the English teacher to give more attention in students writing ability, especially in writing descriptive text by enhancing their vocabulary, giving various topic as exercise. So that, they can improve their writing ability.