Abstract:
Descriptive text is a text that can be called not too difficult, but it is still
found some problems that encountered by the students when writing this text.
This is the researcher’s background for doing this research. The aim of this study
is (1) to find out the English students’ difficulties in writing descriptive text (2) to
know the English students’ strategies to overcome their difficulties in writing
descriptive text. To approach the aim of this study, the researcher used the
qualitative design. The data were collected by using questionnaire. The
questionnaire consisted of two parts related to the students’ difficulties and
strategies in writing descriptive text. The data analyzed by using descriptive
qualitative The respondents of this research were 34 second semester English
students of University of Islam Malang in the academic year 2020/2021.
The finding of this research shows that the students have problems in
getting and generating ideas, developing the ideas, and organizing ideas. It is
because the students did not have much idea and constructed the sentences.
Besides that, grammar, lack of vocabulary, generic structure, and spelling,
punctuation and capitalization (mechanic), the use of simple present tense, and
finding new ideas, and describing an object/noun in detail are also the students’
problems in writing descriptive text. The majority students have difficulties
because the students are lack of practice. To overcome these difficulties, there are
some strategies used by the students when writing descriptive text. The result of
findings shows that the strategies used by the students to overcome the difficulties
are deciding a topic before writing, making an outline, using dictionary to check
vocabulary, strategy to ask a friend to check descriptive text, strategy to apply
writing process, making the ideas clearer, strategy to check grammatical error,
revising sentences, and the last is sharing writing with friend.
Based on the result of the research above, it can be concluded that
descriptive text is difficult text for English students at the second semester of
University of Islam Malang. Therefore, the English teacher is advised to pay more
attention to the teaching of descriptive text structure in getting and generating idea,
developing idea, grammar and mechanic, etc. English teacher is expected to
provide many examples and exercises regarding descriptive text to the students so
that educational goals are achieved well, especially English subject. The English
students are also accustomed in writing and need to practice more writing so that
the students don’t feel difficult in writing, especially writing descriptive text.