An Analysis of the Third Year Students` Ability to Write an Analytical Exposition Text at the English Department of Bung Hatta University

Abstrak

In education, writing plays its important role in the teaching learning process. According to Li (2007:41), writing has been a major means used by academic staff in all subjects in order to assess student learning in higher education. It means that the lecturers usually assess the students’ competence through their writing. Analytical exposition text is a piece of text that presents one side of an issue. To make the readers easily get the purpose of the text, it is necessary to arrange the text in good order. The arrangement of the text stresses on the thesis, argument, and reiteration.

The aim of this study was to describe the students’ ability to write an analytical exposition text. Relating to this, the researcher used descriptive method. The population of this research was the third year students at the English Department of Bung Hatta University. The total population was 24 students. To get the sample, the researcher used total sampling. The data of this research were gathered by using writing test. Based on the result of data analysis, it was found that the students’ ability in writing an analytical exposition was very good.

The result of data proved that there were 9 students (37,5%) got very good ability, 8 students (33,3%) got good ability, 2 students (8,3%) got moderate ability and 5 students (20,8%) got bad ability. Specifically, the students ability to write the thesis of analytical exposition text is as follow : there were 13 students (54,16%) who had very good ability, 5 students (20,83%) who had good ability, 3 students (12,5%) who had moderate ability, and 3 students (12,5%) who had bad ability. Whereas in writing argument of analytical exposition text is as follow : there were 10 students (41,66%) who had very good ability, 5 students (20,83%) who had good ability, 5 students (20,83%) who had moderate ability, and 4 students (16,66%) who had bad ability. Furthermore in writing reiteration of analytical exposition text is as follow : there were 8 students (33.33%) who had very good ability, 8 students (33,33%) who had good ability, 3 students (12,5%) who had moderate ability, and 5 students (20,83%) who had bad ability.

Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the third year students’ ability in writing analytical exposition text was very good. Relating to this conclusion, the lecturers are suggested to give more practice to write an analytical exposition text as a media to develop their writing skils.

Keywords   : analytical exposition text, total population sampling, descriptive method