AN ANALYSIS OF THE ABILITY OF THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS OF SMPN 3 PADANG IN WRITING AN ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT

Abstrak

There were some problems dealing with writing announcement text especially in making generic structure, language feature, appropriate words and mechanics of announcement text. This research was to describe the ability of the firs year students of SMPN 3 Padang in writing an announcement text. The design of this research was descriptive .The population was 160 students. There were 29 students are as sample. The researcher used writing test to collect the data. The coefficient of correlation was .96. To analyze the data based on the result of writing test, the researcher presented the raw score. Then she calculated the students’ score, the mean, standard deviation (SD), classified the students who got high, moderate, or low ability, and counted the percentage of students’ ability. The result of this research showed that in general students’ ability in writing announcement text at SMPN 3 Padang was moderate. There were 23 students (79.3%) who had moderate ability. In specific, there was 93.1% got moderate ability to use generic structure, there were 75.86% got moderate ability to use language feature, there were 93% got moderate ability to use appropriate words, and 69% got moderate ability to apply mechanics. Since the result of this research in writing an announcement text was moderate, the researcher gives suggestion to the students to pay attention to use generic structure, using language feature, using appropriate words, and applying mechanics. They should do more exercises in order to improve their ability in writing announcement text.

Key words: ability, writing, announcement