The students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary at grade XI SMA Negeri 1 Simangambat Padang Lawas Utara

This research is focused to discuss the students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary at grade XI SMA N 1 Simangambat Padang Lawas Utara. The problems of this research were the students were afraid of having English class, the students had a low score in English subject and the students faced some problem in receiving foreign or English language, because English words are confused to understand such as differentiating from its writing and pronunciation. The focus of the problem was only about the difficulties that faced by students in grammar, meaning, pronunciation and spelling.The purposes of this research were to know the students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary and students’ dominant difficulties in learning English vocabulary. This research methodology used a descriptive qualitative method. The primary source for this research was all the students of class XI SMA N 1 Simangambat Padang Lawas Utara. Total of them were 22 students. The secondary source was the English teacher of grade XI SMA N 1 Simangambat. Next, the researcher analized the data by editing the data, reducting of the data, tabulating of the data, describing of the data and the last was taking conclusion. The researcher used interview as a basic instrument, it was done to some of students to get rich description of the students’ difficulties in learning vocabulary. The researcher alsogave a test and record to the participants to know their dominant difficulties in learning vocabulary. After doing the research, it was found that the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 1 Simangambat Padang Lawas Utara have some difficulties in learning vocabulary. The difficulties are in grammar, meaning, pronunciation and spelling which have some problems in it. Besides, the researcher also found that the difficulties in spelling and pronunciation, it was determining the multifunction of the English letters in using comparing to Indonesian letters. The categorization of the students’ difficulties based on vocabulary learning aspects, namely grammar, meaning, pronunciation and spelling. The students’ score in grammar test is categorized into enough category (57.57%), the students’ score in meaning test is categorized into enough category (43.56%), the students’ score in pronunciation test is categorized into enough category (47.90%), the students’ score in spelling test is categorized into low category (27.27%). So, the students’ total score in learning vocabulary is categorized into enough category (43.36%). The second question found the answer that the students’ dominant difficulties in learning vocabulary was spelling