An Analysis of the Second Year Students’ Learning Strategy of English Department at Bung HattaUniversity in Writing Descriptive Paragraph

Abstrak

The purpose of this research was to describe how do the second year students of English Department at Bung Hatta University employ language learning strategies in writing a descriptive paragraph. The design of this research was descriptive. The subject of this research was the second year students of English Department at Bung Hatta University in academic year 2012/2013. The total number of the population was 102 students. They were divided into three classes. The writer used cluster random sampling technique to choose the sample, and class B had been chosen to be the sample. The instrument used to get the data was questionnaire. To find out the reliability, the writer tried out the questionnaire. It was found that the reliability of questionnaire was high (0.70). It means the instrument was reliable. Based on the data analysis, the data showed that the students’ learning strategy was moderate. In specific, the percentage of each learning strategies were; 60% had moderate learning strategy in mnemonic, 91.4% had moderate ability in learning strategy in cognitive, 62.9% had moderate learning strategy in compensatory, 74,2% had moderate learning strategy in metacognitive, 82.8% had moderate learning strategy in affective, and 71,4% had moderate learning strategy in social. The finding of this research lead the writer to conclude that the students’ learning strategies should be improved in order that they can get good learning achievement. For the future research is suggested to investigate how students can show moderate performance in applying learning strategies.

Key word: Analysis, Learning Strategy, Descriptive Paragraph,