AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN USING PUNCTUATION IN DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH WRITING AT THE FIRST SEMESTER OF THE EIGHTH GRADE OF SMPN 2 PARDASUKA IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2016/2017

Writing is very important, because it is one of the language skills to be mastered. The students’ writing ability of SMPN 2 Pardasuka was still low, they did many mistake in using punctuation when they write a paragraph. The objective of this research was to describe the students’ ability in using punctuation in descriptive paragraph writing. This research applied descriptive quantitative research. The researcher took class VIII B that consisted of 37 students as the sample. The sample was taken by using cluster random sampling. The data of this research was gotten by test. The researcher analyzed the data by giving scores of students’ test and also computed the frequency students’ score and the frequency of students’ ability classification. After the researcher analyzed the data, so that we know the students’ ability in using punctuation in descriptive paragraph writing at the first semester of the eighth grade of SMPN 2 Pardasuka in the academic year of 2016/2017. From the analysis, the result showed that no student was categorized into excellent, 4 students or 11% were categorized into good, 21 students or 57% were categorized into fair, 12 students or 32% were categorized into low, and no student was categorized into failed. The total average score of the students’ ability in using punctuation in descriptive paragraph writing at the first semester of the eighth grade of SMPN 2 Pardasuka in the academic year of 2016/2017 was 59.7, it can be concluded that the students’ ability was categorized into fair. The contribution of this research is that it can be a reference both for teachers and students to more practices about punctuation to improve the students’ ability