AN ANALYSIS OF THE STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN WRITING A DESCRIPTIVE TEXT ON THE EIGHTH GRADE OF SMPN 9 KOTA BENGKULU IN ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2019

This research aimed to figure out the students’ ability in writing a
descriptive text of Junior High School students. The research was designed as
descriptive quantitative research. The research was conducted at SMPN 9 Kota
Bengkulu. Population of the research was the students at eighth grade of SMPN 9
Kota Bengkulu with total 279 students that were divided into nine classes. From
the whole population, the sample was taken 41 students as the representative of
each class. They were chosen by having purposive sampling technique. The
instrument of the research was writing test about descriptive text.The students
were given 45 minutes to write one descriptive text with the 5 aspects. The
aspects were developing ideas, organizing ideas, grammar, vocabularies, and
mechanic. The result of the test were calculated by using SPSS program 20.0
version. From the calculation, it was got that generally the students’ ability of
writing descriptive text was categorized as Good Level according to the scoring
criteria from Brown (2007). The mean score of the students’ ability in writing
descriptive text was 64.41. It was supported by five aspects that also classified as
a Good Level. Even thought two of all aspects got the mean score were 61.15 and
63.41, but according to Brown who stated that the students’ score from 61.00 to
80.00 was still categorized as Good Level. Therefore, from all mean score
calculated aspects of the students’ ability in writing descriptive text on the eighth
grade of SMPN 9 Kota Bengkulu was categorized as a Good Level.
Keywords: Writing, Ability, and Descriptive Text