STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN DESCRIPTIVE WRITING

ABSTRACT Writing is one of the four basic skills in English. Writing is also an important skill which needs to be taught to students. However, writing is considered more complicated than those other English skills. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to find out students’ difficulties in descriptive writing and identify students’ common errors in writing at a private senior high school in Palembang. This study applied qualitative research method, particularly descriptive study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 40 participants within the population of 375 tenth grade students both science and social science classes. The data were collected through test, questionnaire and interview. The result of the writing test were analyzed by using Miles and Huberman (1994) model and the result of questionnaire were analyzed by using simple percentage analysis. The findings and implications of the research were discussed later. Keywords: Writing difficulties, descriptive tex