AN ANALYSIS ON THE STUDENTS’ ABILITY OF IN WRITING NARRATIVE TEXT AT GRADE IX OF SMPN 2 GUNUNG TALANG

Abstrak

Writing is a complex skill that requi

res students to have ability in mastering generic
structure of the text, language feature, vocabulary and mechanics. Writing a narrative text
is more complex. The students still face difficulties in writing a narrative text. This research
was aimed at describing the ability of the grade IX of students at SMPN 2 Gunung Talang
in writing narrative text dealing with generic structure, applying language feature of
narrative text, vocabulary, and mechanics. The design of this research was descriptive in
nature. The total population were 205 students. The researcher took 31 students as the
sample by using cluster random sampling technique. It means that the percentage of the
member of sample was 15.12%. The researcher used writing test in the form of narrative
text to collect the data. The test was try out to the students out of the sample since the
instrument was categorized non-standard test. The researcher used inter-rater technique to
know the reliability of the test. The reliability index of the test was 0.98. It was categorized
very high correlation. It means that the instrument was reliable. In general, the result of
this research showed that the ability of grade IX students of SMPN 2 Gunung Talang in
writing narrative text was moderate (18 students). In specific, there were 19 students had
moderate ability in writing generic structure of narrative text, 17 students had moderate
ability in applying language feature of narrative text, 22 students had moderate ability in
using appropriate vocabulary, and 19 students had moderate ability in applying
mechanics.

Key words: Ability, Writing, Narrative Text