The Second Year Students´ Ability in Writing Greeting Card at UPT SMPN 3 Rambatan Kecamatan Rambatan Batusangkar. Thesis. English Department, Bung Hatta University.

Abstrak

Writing is a skill that is required in written communication and in thinking
process (Brown; 2001:p.336). The students are expected to be able to present their
ideas and feeling in the written form. The second year students at UPT SMPN 3
Rambatan-Batusangkar learn writing skill especially, writing functional text
(writing greeting card). Greeting card is short message that’s used in daily life in
many situations and many expressions. Greeting card has some parts. They are
addressee, body, and sender. So, it is important for students to master writing
greeting card. Relating to this, the researcher conducted this study on purpose of
describing the students’ ability in writing greeting card.
The population of this research was the second year students at UPT
SMPN 3 Rambatan-Batusangkar. There were 100 students divided into three
classes. The researcher used cluster random sampling technique to get sample.
The sample members were 34 students. The researcher used writing test to collect
data. The test was valid in term of content and reliable since the correlation index
was 0.93 (very high). It means the test was valid.
To classify the students’ ability in writing greeting card, the researcher
used Minimum Completion Score (MCS) at UPT SMPN 3 Rambatan, in which
the MCS is 68. The result of this research showed that, in general, the students of
UPT SMPN 3 Rambatan-Batusangkar had high ability (67, 65%) in writing
greeting card. For the aspect of writing greeting card, the students’ ability in
writing addressee was low (82, 35%) , and in writing body of greeting card was
high (73, 52%), and in writing sender of greeting card was fifty-fifty (50%
students had high ability and 50% students had low ability in writing greeting
card).
Based on the research result, it can be concluded that students’ ability in
writing greeting card was high. Dealing with such conclusion, it is suggested to
the students to pay attention to write addressee of greeting card since their ability
in writing addressee was low. The English teacher is suggested to give more
explanation and exercise to students in writing addressee and sender of greeting
card because the students’ ability on those aspects are low. The next researchers
are suggested to do research about the factors that cause students have low ability
in writing addressee and sender of greeting card.
Keyword: Writing ability, functional text, greeting card