An Analysis of the Ability of the Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Write Explanation Text at MAN 3 Padang

Abstrak

INTRODUCTION In order to master English, language skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing should be learned by students. Among the four language skills, writing can be the most difficult skill. Jones G.R (1998), writing is often confusing with the process of putting words down on paper in the same structure as an outline prepared with appropriate style and vocabulary the major ideas are arranged some often on the correction of mechanical and grammatical errors[1]. In general, students in Indonesia still have problem in writing. This is supported by one of the journal written by Alfaki (2015) The result shows that a number of things contribute to their problems. The first is students' limited understanding of the process of an event's occurrence, such as a natural, social,disaster, or culture. The second factor is that students do not put the instructions into practice. The third factor is the students' comprehension of the various parts of the text[2]. MAN is an Islamic school have the same level with an ordinary senior high school. In learning to write in English at MAN, the students learn about several kinds of text, there are hortatory exposition, descriptive text, narrative text, analytical expotition and the last one is explanation text. According to Aritonang (2018), Explanation text is a type of texts that provides an explanation of why something happened and how a phenomenon occurred. Explanation text focuses on three part of generic structure, general statement, explanation, and closing[3]. By writing an explanation text, students are forced to think and develop their topic. Writing a explanation text also makes students think in detail about something can happen, connect each sentence, and create their argument/thesis sentences. As long as the teacher can see the writing skill of the students is still quite low. It is suppose by the result of the exercise, midterm, and test of the students of MAN 3 Padang. The students feel difficult to find the topics, to develop ideas into paragraphs, have lack of interest in reading and writing, and do not understand the structure of the explanation text. Therefore, the explanation text produced by students has not reached the criteria of minimum, this shows that students’ students’ writing skill is still low. Students’ knowledge about writing is very low because they have a lack of writing models, and they do not have any clues to write. Based on the result of an informal interview that the researcher did on February 11, 2022 with an English teacher at MAN 3 Padang namely Yuli Eka Putri, it was found they were difficult to organize ideas. It made the students feel bored, and they are not interested in learning. METHOD This study belongs to descriptive research, Refnita (2018:17) states that descriptive research involves collecting data to test hypotheses or to answer questions concerning the current status of the subject of the study[4]. In this research the researcher wants to describe writing ability of the second grade students at MAN 3 Padang to write an explanation text. The study was conducted at MAN 3 Padang . The population of the study was the second grade students of exact science that consist of 163 students who were divided into five classes. Due to the large members of the population, the researcher used sample. The sampling technique used in the study was cluster random sampling. Cluster sampling was used because the members of population were distributed in groups or classes[5]. The classes selected as class sample were XI IPA 1. The number of the sample members was 29 students. Instrument for collecting the data was writing test, and its reliability index was 0.95 (very high reliable). It means the questionnaire was reliable. The data of this research are the students’ scores. The data are collected by using writing test. To collect the data, the researcher used the following steps: The researcher asked students to write an explanation text. The researcher made a copy of students’ answer and gives it to the second scorer. The researcher and the second scorer gave the score based on the criteria. The researcher analyzed the data through the following steps; the researcher summed up the score of each student and counted the average score from two scorers. The researcher classified the students’ ability based on score criterion of MAN 3 Padang. Then the researcher counted the number of students who got very high ability, high, low and very low ability. Then the researcher calculated the percentage of students who got very high ability, high, low and very low ability. the researcher described the second grade students’ ability in writing an explanation text. text. To calculate the average score given by scorer 1 and scorer 2, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION The Ability of Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Write Explanation Text. The result of data analysis showed that the highest score obtained by students was 92 and the lowest score was 43. This study also found that there are no students (0%) who got very high ability, 6 (21%) students who got high ability, 14 (48%) student who got low ability, and 9 (31%) student who got very low ability. The first finding of this study was that 14 out of 29 students of exact science class at MAN 3 Padang had low ability in writing explanation text. There were 48% of students who could write an explanation text properly. It was supported by the fact that many of the students still could not write the general statement, explanation and closing clearly. According to Aritonang (2018:10) who states that in writing the writers develop ideas, express information they know, but based on the students’ writing sheets, they were still less competent to express their ideas[6]. The ability of Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Write general statement in writing explanation text The result of data analysis demonstrated the highest score obtained by students was 100 and the lowest score was 75. This study also revealed that there were 17 (58%) students who got very high ability, 0 (0%) students who got high ability, 5 (17%) students who got low ability, and 7 (25%) student who got very low ability. The second findings of this study was that almost half of students had very high ability. As a matter of fact, 17 out of 29 students wrote the correct general statement in writing an explanation text. In writing general statement of explanation text, the students should be able to write a paragraph containing the event or things that want to explain. According to Heasly and Lynos (2006:9), writing is the ability to create a text that expresses the authors’ thoughs effectively[7]. The Ability of Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Write Explanation in Writing Explanation Text The result of data analysis showed that the highest score obtained by students was 67 and the lowest score was 33. This study also found that there was no one student (0%) students who got very high ability and high ability, 1 (3%) students who got low ability, and 28 (97%) students who got very low ability. The third finding of this study was that most of students had very low ability to write explanation in writing an explanation text. It means that they had problem to write explanation. They wrote unclear steps of process of events. In wrting explanation text, the part of explanation should contains how or why the events can occur (Desitawardhani, 2014:36)[8]. The ability of Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Write Closing in Writing Explanation Text The result of data analysis showed the highest score obtained by students was 100 and the lowest score was 75. This study also demonstrated that 11 (38%) students got very high ability, 9 (31%) students got high ability, and there was no one students (0%) students who got low ability, and 9 (31%) student got very low ability. The fourth finding of this study was that the second grade students of exact science at MAN 3 Padang had very high ability to write closing in explanation text. Unfortunately, there were still many students who were not able to write a clear closing. to write appropriate closing statement in writing an explanation text might be caused the limited time they allocated to think and plann how to express their thought (Kamehameha Schools, 2017:3)[9]. The ability of Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Use Appropriate vocabulary in Writing Explanation Text The result of data analysis showed the highest score obtained by students was 100 and the lowest score was 60. This study also demonstrated that 19 (67%) students got very high ability, 0 (0%) students got high ability, 6 (22%) students got low ability, and 3 (11%) student got very low ability. The next finding of this study as already discussed previously was that the second grade students of exact science class at MAN 3 Padang had very high ability to use appropriate vocabulary in writing an explanation text. However, there were still many students who had problem with the use of vocabulary in writing an explanation text. According to cleaver (2012:3), vocabulary is one of the aspect in writing activity[10]. The ability of Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Use Correct Grammar in Writing Explanation Text The result of data analysis of this study showed the highest score obtained by students was 100 and the lowest score was 26. This study also revealed that there were 7 (25%) students who got very high ability, 0 (0%) students who got high ability, 4 (13%) students who got low ability, and 18 (62%) student who got very low ability. The other finding of this study was that the ability of the second grade students of exact science class at MAN 3 Padang in using correct grammar was very low. In writing an explanation text the students must use the simple present tense but there were still many students who use the simple past tense. According to Lynch and Anderson (2013:4), grammar is very useful as a resource to express meaning and grammar is a system of rules for a language[11]. The ability of Second Grade Students of Exact Science to Use Correct Mechanics in Writing Explanation Text The result of this study showed the highest score obtains by students is 100 and the lowest is 60. This study also found that that 9(32%) students who got very high ability, 0 (0%) students who got high ability, 13 (44%) students who got low ability, and 7 (62%) student who got very low abiliy. The last finding of this study was that the ability of the second grade students of exact science class at MAN 3 Padang in using correct mechanics in writing an explanation text was low. Many students still made errors in using mechanics. According to Mettaningrum, Dantes& Suarnajaya (2013:1) in writing there are several mechanicsm that must considered properly[12]. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION In general, the finding of this study showed that the student’s ability in writing explanation text at MAN 3 Padang was very high. This conclusion was indicated by the fact that there were three out of the result of this research was very high, two out of the result was very low, and two out of the result was low. Based on conclusions of this study, the researcher proposed some suggestions for students and teachers. For the students, they need to improve their ability in writing, especially for writing an explanation text by doing some exercises, being more selective in choosing the right vocabulary, giving much attention to grammatical rules, and the use of mechanics. For teachers, the researcher hopes that they could give more exercises on writing an explanation text in order to students to increase their students’ ability in writing an explanation text and to build up their students’ understanding about the important aspects in writing an explanation text such as generic structure, grammatical rules and vocabulary and the use of mechanics. THANK YOU NOTE In the process of writing this thesis, many people have supported, motivated, and helped the researcher. She realizes that without their support and help, she could not finish her thesis. Therefore, she would like to express her deepest honor and gratitude to Drs. Khairul, M. Sc. as her advisor who gave valuable advice, suggestions, support, and time in the middle of his schedule. Moreover, her deepest gratitude is addressed to her beloved parents, alm.Bukhari Hasyim and Rosmita for their endless love, motivation, support, and prayers.