Students’ English Descriptive Writing Performance in SMP Negeri 26 Makassar

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the students’ range level and the problems encountered by students’ in their English writing performance at the 1^st grade of SMP Negeri 26 Makassar. This study used the explanatory sequential mixed method with purposive sampling. The sample of this research are 30 students from the VII-1 grade. The research instrument used was a writing test to determine the range level of students' writing performance abilities and interviews as a support to find out what were the problems that students faced in writing descriptive texts in English. The results of the data analysis showed that the total average score of students' writing descriptive text writing performance was 68.23 which was in a good category, and the results of the interviews showed that students still had difficulties, especially in the vocabulary aspect which was influenced by the use of google translate. Thus, it can be concluded that the problems encountered by students in their performance of writing descriptive texts in English still have weaknesses, especially in the use of punctuation and writing spelling in the mechanics component.

Keywords: writing performance, descriptive text, SMP Negeri 26 Makassar