AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT AT THE FIRST SEMESTER OF THE TENTH GRADE OF SMA MUHAMMADIYAH 2 BANDAR LAMPUNG IN 2020/2021 ACADEMIC YEAR

ABSTRACT Writing is one of the important skills in English. However, English writing is considered difficult for foreign learners because it is different from Indonesian language in its structure, spelling, and lexical meaning. Based on the preliminary research the researcher found that students had difficulties in writing, organize the idea, and lack of vocabulary. Therefore, the researcher was interested to know the students’ difficulties in writing descriptive text at the first semester of the tenth grade of SMA Muhammadiyah 2 Bandar Lampung. The objective of this research is to find and to know the dominant problem faced by students in writing descriptive text at SMA Muhammadiyah 2 Bandar Lampung. This research was descriptive qualitative research. The sample was choosen based on purposive sampling, the researcher choose X IPS 3 as the subject of the researcher, because the students of X IPS 3 got the lowest score in writing descriptive text. The number of X IPS 3 was 25 students. The researcher used documents, interview, and questionnaire to gather the data. To analyze the data, researcher used three steps by Miles and Huberman, they are: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing verification. The result showed there were five aspects of problem faced by students in writing descriptive text such as: content (5.8%), vocabulary (19.94), organization (3.58%), language (36.82%), and then mechanics (61.63%). It means that, the most dominant problem in writing descriptive text is mechanics. Keywords: Analysis, Descriptive, Difficulties, Writin