International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
ResearchGate Impact Factor (2018): 0.28 | SJIF (2018): 7.426
A Study of Vocational Students‟ Ability in Writing
Report Text in Painan, Indonesia
Rahmi Azizah1, Hermawati Syarif2, Yenni Rozimela3
1, 2, 3
State University of Padang, English Department, Jalan Prof. Dokter Hamka Padang, Indonesia
Abstract: This paper reports on the results of a study focusing on the analysis of students’ ability in writing report texts in terms of
generic structure and language features. The subject of the research was the second year students at Vocational high school number 1
Painan. To take the sample, stratified random sampling was used. The data of this research were the texts that were written by the
students. Thus, to collect data, writing test was used. The test was analyzed by using scoring rubric. Based on the data analysis, it was
found that there was no students had excellent, good and very good ability, 38 % students had fair ability, and 56% had poor ability.
Then 6% students had very poor ability. The analysis of the data indicate the students’ ability in writing report text was poor. Then,
most of students cannot achieve the passing grade which was seventy. Hence, appropriate teaching techniques and approaches should
be implemented.
Keywords: writing ability, report text, vocational student
1. Introduction a sequence. The topic of the report is usually introduction by
an opening general statement or general classification and
English has been well known as one of languages in the followed by a series of description paragraphs about the
world. Indonesia, as one of the international communities, topic.
includes English as one of the subjects to be learned by the
students from the junior high school up to university level. In But writing is not easy to mastery by the students. The
this subject there are some competencies that should be difficulties in writing happen by the students because it
mastered by students, namely; listening, speaking, reading needs process to transfer opinion into written form. Huges
and writing. From the four competencies, writing is useful (2003:101) states writing process is a learning one and
for the students to be an alternative way for communication learning that process fully take time. Experienced writers are
besides speaking. Also, it can be motivating for the students able to write fluently because they have invented time in
in reflecting on what is achieved and to see a concrete learning to write well. According to O‟Malley and Lorraine
example of students' progress in learning. (1995:136) writing is a personal act in which writer take
ideas or prompts and transform them into self initiated topics
Basically, writing is a process of communication something
through media writing to a reader. In writing activity, In the same point, Oshima and Houges (1993:3) say that
students are demanded to be able to produce an effective and writing is not easy to be conducted since students need to
interesting composition which combines the abilities of the consider several process of writing in other to be able to
students in expressing their ideas and the students‟ generate a good composition Davless (1998:55) adds that
knowledge about the grammatical patterns. The writing skill writing is an essential creative process and good writers must
is considered as a cognitive challenge because it helps to learn to communicate their ideas carefully to unseen
assess language competency, recalling capability and audience. Furthermore, Nunan (1999:24) states writing as a
thinking ability. It demands to recall information from long- skill a difficult one in skill even most native speaker of
term memory (Kellogg, Olive, & Pilot, 2001).Moreover, the English also cannot master that skill from explanation above
ability of productive writing requires sound ability of it can be concluded that ability to write is not really easy to
thinking on comprehensible matters (Nickerson, Perkins, & learn eventless hard work and good effort to practice can
Smith, 1985).We can see that, writing is a complex skill increase students‟ ability to write. This is supporting by
which requires to the students to express his or her idea. several research findings related of the students ability and
Besides that, with writing the students can also gain difficulty in writing genre text. first, Leviana (2016) who
creativity when they can write based on their own ideas, not conducted a study about students‟ ability and problems in
copying what has already been written. writing explanation text at grade X students on SMAN 7
Padang, found that the students‟ ability in writing text was
Writing a report text is one of a skill that needs to be fair and the students also have problems in writing
mastered for grade eleven of Vocational High School. explanation text; organization, content, grammar, vocabulary
Report text is a text that has purpose to describe the way and mechanics. And then the other research by Efrianti
things are, with reference to a range of natural, human made (2015) who conducted a study about students‟ ability in
and social phenomena in our environment. Derewiaka (1990: writing generic structure of descriptive text at Tenth Grade
51). Says that information reports classify and describe the of Senior High School 4 Padang, the aim of this study is to
phenomena of ourworld. We use them when we talk about a find out the students‟ ability in writing generic structure of
whole class of things, like bikes. The major focus of this text descriptive text at Tenth Grade of Senior High School 4
is on „thing” (or more accurately, a class of thing) rather than Padang. The result found that some of the students of Senior
Volume 8 Issue 7, July 2019
www.ijsr.net
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: ART20199379 10.21275/ART20199379 417
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
ResearchGate Impact Factor (2018): 0.28 | SJIF (2018): 7.426
High School 4 Padang at Tenth Grade were not able to write of the population while for a relatively small population at
generic structure of descriptive text well, they did not fulfill least 20% of the population. And to choose the students to be
some criteria based on Winch‟s theory such as did not put sample, the writer used proportionate random sampling
identification in the first paragraph, described more than one technique; the researcher writes each name of the students in
participant, and they also did not describe the thing that they each class. After that, the researcher rolled-up paper that
wanted to describe into detail information. written of the students‟ name. Then, it is taken randomly
based on the number of sample of each class.
Besides, related in writing report text several researches have
been conducted early, the research is written by Pestaria 2.3 Research Instrument
(2014), in a paper present in IOSR-JHSS entitled “Students‟
Difficulties in Writing Report Text at Grade IX of SMP The research instrument for this research was writing test.
Negeri 5 Tanjung Balai”, states that the students in the IX-1 The writing test has content validity. It is based on the
class still had the problems in using grammar features. content of curriculum and material that has been taught to
However, they were able to write generic structure. But they the students in the first semester. A test is valid if it measures
had difficulty in determining the tense and the attribute of a what it purpose to measure (Anderson et. Al in Arikunto,
topic in report text. In short, the students of the IX-1 class 2013:80). The test that the researcher give to the students is
did not know how From to write the report text well. The based on the syllabus, the content of curriculum and teaching
second research by Leviana (2013) who conducted a study material that have been taught by the English teacher.
about Students‟ difficulties in Writing Report Text of
Eleventh Science class of SMAN 1 Kec. Harau in 2012/2013 According to Arikunto (2013:87) in measuring the reliability
academies year, found that the students of senior high school of the test product moment formula can be used. The formula
got difficulty in writing identification and writing description is:
of a report text. rxy = =
Although there are a lot of researchers who have conducted Where:
the research previously, this research is different because the Rxy : Coefficient correlation between x and y
researcher investigated the students‟ ability in writing a
N : Numbers of stud
report text viewed from generic structure and language
features at XI grade SMKN 1 Painan. By analyzing students‟ : Score total of cross x and y
ability in writing report text will help to find out students‟ : Sum of the item score x
problems in writing report text. : Sum of the item score y
: Square of x
2. Data and Methods : Square of y
2.1 Study Design Table 3.7: Criterion of reliability test
Degree of (r) Interpretation
This research was descriptive research since it sought deep 0.800-1.00 Very High
discussion about the students‟ ability and problems in writing 0.600-0.800 High
report text. Gay (2000:16) state that qualitative research 0.400-0.600 Fair
seeks to probe deeply into the research setting in order to 0.200-0.400 Low
obtain understandings about the way things are, why they are 0.000-0.200 Very Low
that way, and how the participants in the context perceive
them. In this research, the researcher analyzed and Finally, the degree of coefficient correlation of the test
interpreted the data in order to find out the students ability would be checked whether the test is reliable or not based on
and the problems in writing report text. This research was Arikunto‟s idea (2013:89)
held in SMK Negeri 1 Painan, at eleven grade students. It
was located on at Jl. Moh. Hatta Painan, Pesisir Selatan 2.4 Technique of Data Collection
district.
In collecting the data for this research, the researcher
2.2 Population and Sample distributed the sheet of written test of report text. There were
some procedures that had been done. First, the researcher
The population of this research was the eleven grade student asked the student in class XI to write a report text based on
of SMK negeri 1 Painan in the academic 2017/2018. It four topics that researcher offer. Then, the students choose
consisted of twelve classes. The total population from twelve one topic from four topics offered to develop into a report
classes at grade XI of SMKN No. 1 Painan is 323 students. text and the writer explained to the students about what they
Since the limitatation of ability and time in conducting this should do during the test. The test was observed by the
research, 32 students was choosed as the sample in this researcher. The time of the test is 90 minutes. The last, the
research. In choosing the sample for this research, the researcher collected the students paper to be scored. After
researcher takes 10% from the population. So that, from each collecting the data.
class takes three or two students as the sample. As states by
Gay (2002) the minimal sample for descriptive study is 10% 2.5 Technique of Data Analysis
Volume 8 Issue 7, July 2019
www.ijsr.net
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: ART20199379 10.21275/ART20199379 418
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
ResearchGate Impact Factor (2018): 0.28 | SJIF (2018): 7.426
The table 2‟ shows that there were twelve (38%) students
In analysis the result of the research, the researcher analyzed had fair ability, eighteen students (56%) had poor ability
the data in several steps: first, the students writing were and two (6 %) students had very poor ability in writing
scored by two scorers about generic structure; identification report text. It can be said that the second year students‟
and description, language features; timeless present tense, ability in writing report text of SMKN 1 Painan was fair
technical terms, relating verbs and common noun. Second, because most of students had fair ability in writing report
after all of the students‟ text were scored, Then, the text. It means that the students had problems in writing
researcher analyzed the students' writing based on the report text.
criterion of writing score that they get in their writing. And
to get the conclusion of the students‟ ability in writing report Besides, the students‟ ability of writing report text can be see
text the researcher got it from the students‟ mean score in from the students‟score in of writing components report text.
writing report text and then interpret the scores into it can be see in the table below:
arikunto‟s criterion; they are excellent, good, average, poor
or very poor. The table criterion of writing students‟ ability
purposed by Arikunto (2013:245). It could be seen in the
following table below.
Table 1: The Interpretation Range of Students‟ Writing
Achievement
Test score Probable class performance
91-100 Excellent
81 - 90 Very good
71 - 80 good
61 - 70 Fair
51 - 60 Poor
Less than 50 Very Poor Table 3. The classification of students‟ average score in
writing report text
3. Results
Indicators Score
This research was done at the second year students of SMKN Score1 Scorer 2 Total Category
1 Painan in academic year 2017/20018. There were 32 Score
students‟ takes as the sample of this research. In obtaining Generic structure
General 17 17 17 Fair
the data for this research, the researcher used writing test.
classification
After that, the students‟ writing was scored by two scorers;
Description 18 17 17 Fair
both of them were teachers at Vocational high school Language Feature
number one Painan and the researcher itself. And it was Timeless 6 5 6 Fair
scored based on the scoring rubric of report text was present tense
developed from Brown (2004:244) and Raison Technical 6 5 6 Fair
(2004:38).The scorers were using the same scoring rubric to terms
analyze the students‟ writing ability of report text. The data Relating verb 6 5 6 Fair
were analyzed based on the generic structure of report which Common 6 5 6 Fair
consist of identification paragraph and description noun
paragraphs and language features of report text, they are Total 58 Poor
timeless present tense, Technical term, relating words and
common noun. The table 3 above shows that the students‟ ability of writing
report text of general classification is categorized into fair in
After administering the writing test to the students. Then, score 17. For the description, the students‟ ability is in score
calculating the result of writing score, it found that the 17 in category fair and language features of report text of
Percentage of students‟ ability in writing report text is as timeless present tense is categorized fair in score 6 and the
bellow: technical terms in score 6 in category good , the relating verb
in score 6 in category good and the common noun in score 6
Table 2. Percentage of Students‟ Ability in Writing in category good. The average score of students‟ in writing
Report Text report text is 6 in fair category.
Score Category Number of students Percentage
91 -100 Excellent 0 0% In summary, from the result finding, the students‟ ability in
81 – 90 Very good 0 0% writing report text was poor. Also, most of students cannot
71 – 80 good 0 0% achieve the passing grade which was seventy. It means that,
61 – 70 fair 12 38% this research with the title „Students; Ability in report Text at
51- 60 poor 18 56% Eleventh Grade Students of SMKN 1 Painan” was found that
Less than 50 Very poor 2 6% the students still have problem in developing the general
Total 32 100% classification and description paragraph, and in using
language features of report text of timeless present tense and
Volume 8 Issue 7, July 2019
www.ijsr.net
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: ART20199379 10.21275/ART20199379 419
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN: 2319-7064
ResearchGate Impact Factor (2018): 0.28 | SJIF (2018): 7.426
it means that report writing text was hard to the students at [11] Pestaria,Friska, “Students‟ Difficulties in Writing
the eleventh grade of vocational school. Report Text at Garde IX of SMP Negeri 5 Tanjung
Balai, IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social
4. Conclusion Science,”2014, (journal style)
[12] Richards, J. C. & Renandya, W. A, “Methodology in
Based on the findings it can be concluded that the students‟ Language Teaching: an anthology of current practice,”
ability in writing report at the second grade SMKN Painan New York: Cambridge, 2002, (book style)
was poor. It was based on the analysis of all of indicators in [13] Raison, Glenda, “Writing Resource Book,” English
this research. Concerning with generic structure (general Published Melbourne: Longman Australia, 1994, (book
classification and description paragraph), and language style)
features of report texts that consist of timeless present tense, [14] Siahaan, Junita, “An Analysis of Students‟ Ability and
technical terms, relating verbs and common noun. Where the Difficulties in Writing Descriptive
average students‟ score was 58 and it cannot achieve the texts,”ejournal.upi.edu/index.php/LE/article/view/355,
passing grade in writing which was seventy. [Accessed: Sept. 03, 2018], (general internet site)
5. Implication
It can be implied that the vocational school students in
Painan have poor ability in English especially in writing
skill. The students did not know how to write well especially
in writing report text. It means that students need to study
hard to learn about writing components especially
components of report text and do some exercise to avoid the
same error when writing.
References
[1] Arikunto, S, “Prosedur Penelitian: Suatu Pendekatan
Praktek,” Jakarta: PT. Rineka Cipta, 2013, (book style)
[2] Brown, H. Douglas.), “Language assessment: Principles
and classroom practices,” White Plains, NY: Pearson
Education, 2004, (book style)
[3] Derewianka, B, “Exploring How Text Work”,Australia:
Sydney, 1990, (book style)
[4] Efrianti, Rini, “An Analysis of Students‟ Ability in
Writing Generic Structure of Descriptive Text (a study
at tenth grade of Senior High School 4 Padang
2014/2015 academic year,” jim.stkip-pgri-
sumbar.ac.id/jurnal/download/6118[Accessed: Sept. 03,
2018], (General Internet site)
[5] Gay, L(book style). R, “Educational research
competencies for analysis and application,” Lahore:
Combine Printers (Pvt) Ltd, (2000), (book style)
[6] Kellogg, R. T., Olive, T., & Pilot, A, “Verbal, visual
and spatial working memory in written language
production,” ACTA Psychologica,124, 382-397, (2001),
(book style)
[7] Leviana, Sari, “Students‟ difficulties in writing report
text of eleventh science class of SMAN 1 Kec. Harau in
2012/2013 academies year,” jim.stkip-pgri-
sumbar.ac.id/jurnal/download/5931, [Accessed: Sept.
03, 2018], (General Internet site)
[8] Nickerson, R. S., Perkins, D. N., & Smith, E. E, “The
teaching of thinking,” Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, (1985),
(book style)
[9] Nunan, David, “Practical English Language Teaching,”
New York:McGraw-Hill Company Inc,1998, (book
style)
[10] Oshima and Houge., “Writing Academic English,” San
Fransisco: Addison Wesley Publishing Company. 2006,
(book style)
Volume 8 Issue 7, July 2019
www.ijsr.net
Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution CC BY
Paper ID: ART20199379 10.21275/ART20199379 420
