ABSTRACT

Sekarini, Danti Ayu. 2018.Students’ Ability in Writing Descriptive Essay at the English        Department of Lambung Mangkurat University Batch 2015 in  the Academic            Year of  2017/2018. Sarjana’s Thesis English Department, Faculty of Teacher          Training and    Education, Lambung Mangkurat University, Banjarmasin. The first advisor : Prof. Dr. H. Abdul Muth’im, M.Pd., the second advisor Elvina Arapah,               M.Pd.

Keywords: ability, writing, descriptive essay.

            Writing essay is quite challenging for EFL students. In writing good essay students should have enough knowledge and vocabulary to develop a main idea into writing.Therefore, the researcher is interestedin conducting a study to analyze the students’ ability in writing descriptive essay. The researchertries to find out students’ ability in writing descriptive essay at theEnglish Department batch2015 in academic year 2017/2018. The number of population in this researchis about80 students, 46 students are taken as the samples. The method is descriptive and the instrument is test. The students have to write descriptive essays twice as the test. Students’ abilityin writing descriptive essay is analyzed in terms of  content, organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics. The result shows that students’ ability in writing descriptive essay is 63% excellent and 37% good. It can be conclude students’ ability in writing descriptive essay is excellent. For each category, students’ ability in mastering content category is good, then ability in organizationcategory is also good. Ability in language usecategory is mostly good. Ability in vocabulary category is good and the last ability in mechanics category is average. Based on the research, students’ ability in writing essay is excellent. It is suggested for students to maintain their ability and if it possible they can improve their ability in language use and mechanics category.