Difficulties in Writing Recount Texts of the 10TH Grade Students of SMKN 2 Probolinggo

ABSTRAK Writing is considered as adifficult skill to master, especially for ESL/EFL students. Writing is a complex skill that requires students to have ability in mastering text structure, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. Writing recount texts is challenging for students. Many students faced difficulties when starting to write recount texts.The difficulties came from text structure, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. This study is addressed to investigate and describe students’ difficulties in writing recount texts.This study used a descriptive qualitative design which focused on analyzing and knowing the difficulties faced by the students in writing recount text. The data were taken from students’ written production. The subjects of this study were 30 students in grade ten of Teknik Instalasi Tenaga ListrikDepartment in SMKN 2 Probolinggo. This study used writing prompts as the instrument to get the data from students’ ability in writing. The prompts were given to the students as a guide for them in composing recount texts. Another research instrument wasa questionnaire for students. The questionnaire was to find the most difficulties faced by the students in writing recount texts.The result of this research showed that there were four major problems faced by students in composing recount text. The first problem came from text structure which was the lowest among the other three problems. Out of 30 students, it was found that 87% wrote orientation, 77% wrote complete sequence of events, and 93% wrote re-orientation. From another 3 problems, there were 450 errors found in total. As much as 62% or 281 errors in grammatical sentences which was the highest among the others, 12% or 52 errors in using correct mechanics, and 26% or 117 errors in selecting vocabulary. Errors were represent difficulties that the students had in writing. It is suggested that the teacher should provide the studentsa lot of activities, such as writing a diary or journal for helping the students to improve their writing skills in recount texts. For future researchers with the same interest topic, it is also expected to investigate the difficulties faced by students in other text types, such as descriptive, narrative, report, announcement, and others