Students’ difficulties in writing recount text at grade VIII SMP N 11 Padangsidimpuan.

This thesis talks about the students’ difficulties in writing recount text at grade VIII SMP Negeri 11 Padangsidimpuan. The purpose of this research is to extend the students’ ability in writing recount text at grade VIII SMP Negeri 11 Padangsidimpuan, to identify the dominant difficulties in writing recount text. And to know the efforts done by the English teacher to overcome the students’ difficulties in writing recount text. Design of this research is descriptive research by using quantitative approach. The population of this research was grade VIII SMP Negeri 11 Padangsidimpuan academic years 2014/2015. The total number of population is 110 students. Random sampling technique used to choose some students as sample; they are 27 students. The instrument of collecting data was test and interview, the analysis of data by mean, median and modus. Based on the result of the research, it was known that the students’ ability in writing recount text at grade VIII SMP Negeri 11 Padangsidimpuan can be categorized into good category, mean score 69,77%. The students’ dominant difficulties in writing recount text about content and language use. The efforts done by English teacher to overcome the dominant difficulties is English teacher ask students to practice their writing skill with write their every activity at least one paragraph for one day. Make students in some group and give project task to find examples of recount text, then ask them to identify sentence that use past tense. And give practice to write appropriate manner about tenses especially in past tense