ABSTRACT

Raihan, Muhammad. 2021. Investigating Problems and Perspectives of the Tenth-grade Students of SMAN 11 Banjarmasin in Writing Descriptive Text. Sarjana’s Thesis. English Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Lambung Mangkurat University, Banjarmasin. 

First Advisor: Prof. Dr. Abdul Muth’im, M.Pd., Second Advisor: Dini Noor Arini, S.Pd., M.Pd.

Keywords: Students’ Problems, Students’ Perspectives, Writing, Descriptive Text

Writing is one of the skills in the English language that is considered the most difficult to master. Many high school students still have trouble writing English texts, and one of them is descriptive text. This problem motivates the researcher to study to find more information about students’ problems and perspectives in writing descriptive text, specifically tenth-grade students at SMAN 11 Banjarmasin.

This study used a qualitative approach and descriptive design with a Likert scale and interview as the data collecting method. The researcher selected one class of tenth-grade students of SMAN 11 Banjarmasin consisting of 20 students as the subject of this study. First, the researcher distributed a Likert scale consisting of 11 items via google doc and an interview to two selected students consisting of 10 questions via WhatsApp video call.

This study showed that nearly half of the students have encountered problems in writing descriptive text such as linguistic problems, content problems, writing mechanic problems, psychological problems, problems with teachers’ teaching methods, inadequate feedback, and inadequate time to write. Some of the students thought it was hard to write a descriptive text due to their problems. In contrast, some other students thought that it was not hard to write descriptive text because they have good motivation to write and gathered many references for their writing.

According to the result of this study, it was proved that the students still encountered several problems in writing descriptive text. It was also found that the students have several perspectives toward the problems in writing descriptive text such as the possible cause of the problems, the effect of the problems on their writing, and the thought from the students who did not encounter the problems. Based on the result of this research, it is suggested for other researchers to conduct a study in a similar field in another high school. For the teachers, it is suggested to give more explanation about descriptive text and to give more feedback to help the students revise their writing. For the students, it is suggested to search for more learning material about descriptive text and references to get more knowledge on how to write a descriptive text.