1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
English is the main language of communication that unites all people around the world where it is very easy to find English in everyday life at this time.
Thus, English must be learned from an early age since many items in English are important for their ability. English has many skills, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Writing is also a great way to teach and provide information. For students, having the ability to write is a must because most of the material related to lectures definitely requires writing skills such as writing articles, research journals, research reports, activity proposals, research, and so on. A student's writing is a form of creativity and knowledge, including how he presents his writing in the form of papers, theses, research proposals, and so on.
Writing is one of the language skills, besides listening, speaking and reading that must be mastered by English learners. They have to able to express their thought in writing to develop their ideas, and make readers interest when their writing read. Through writing, they can also transfer information and knowledge to other. In other words, writing can be said as a mean of communication between the writer and the reader (Reszy, 2013).
According to Syatriana (2018), writing is a language skill. It used to communicate indirectly, not face to face with another person, but through the
writing media. Writing does not require appropriate selecting topic, but mostly to be determined who supposed to read it, and particularly for the article and its objectives. Through writing we can convey the contents of thoughts and feelings, both imaginary and real condition. In this case, we can write something based on our experience; funny, weird, thrilling, embarrassing or the experience of painful.
Process of writing is very important in teaching writing. The teacher will know the process of students in writing based on some steps. There is some process of writing according to experts. Teaching writing is a process that the teacher does in classroom activity. Here, the teacher role is very important, because the teacher will guide the students to write about something correctly in learning process (Azrial, 2013).
There are many kinds of writing. One of them is writing paragraph.
Paragraph is the basic unit of organization in writing that consisted of more than two sentences. A paragraph has three major structural parts: a topic sentence, supporting sentence, and concluding sentences. There are some kinds of paragraph that can be used such as narrative, explanation, recount, information, report, exposition, argumentation, and descriptive.
In learning basic writing, especially for third semester students, students are asked to know how to write a paragraph well. However, most students face some problems in writing it. As a result, most of them get low writing scores. This means that students have problems in writing paragraphs. There are several
problems faced by the students; lack of ideas to develop their sentences, students' writing knowledge is low due to lack of models in writing.
Based on the explanation above, the researcher can conclude that writing is an activity of expressing thoughts and feelings in the form of a paragraph that is expected to be read by the reader and functions as an indirect communication tool.
1.2 Identification of the Problem
Based on the background, there are a few problems of students in writing paragraphs:
1. Lack of ideas and knowledge of students in making a paragraph.
2. Most of the student lacked of vocabulary.
3. Most of the students had problem in choosing exact words.
4. Most of the students lacked in the use of correct grammar.
1.3 Limitation of the problem
Based on the problem, the researcher limits the problem in this study, namely the researcher wants to know the students' skills in writing paragraphs in English Language Education and measure and evaluate them based on content, vocabulary, organization, language use, mechanics because they include components in paragraphs.
1.4 Research Question
Based on these limitations, this research is formulated as follows: How are students' skills in writing paragraphs in English Language Education study program?
1.5 Objectives of the Study
The general objective of this research is to find out the skills of third semester students at English Language Education study program in writing paragraphs.
1.6 Significance of the Study
This research will give any benefits to the lecturers and students. The benefits are listed below.
1. Lecturers can use it as a way to find out students' skills in writing paragraphs, then assess and maximize students' skills in writing paragraphs based on this research.
2. Students can find skills and increase knowledge about how to write effective paragraphs and how to understand the elements in writing.
1.7 Definition of Keywords
1. Writing
Writing is a skill in converting ideas or ideas into written form that makes it easier for readers to understand these ideas so that writing requires creativity and writer's practice.
2. Paragraph Writing
Paragraph writing is a course that discusses the procedures or rules for writing good and correct paragraphs. It is possible to write about a topic, problem or theme.
