STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN WRITING ANALYTICAL EXPOSITION TEXT (A Study at Eleventh Grade Students of SMA 4 Negeri Padang)
Hasbi Muhammad Affan*
English Department, STKIP PGRI SUMBAR,muhammadhasbi1991@gmail.com Suharni**and Belinda Analido**
Abstrak
Penelitian ini dilatar belakangi oleh kesulitan siswa dalam menulis dan mengembangkan teks analitikal exposisi pada siswa kelas XI SMA Negeri 4 Padang. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kemampuan siswa dalam menulis teks analitikal eksposisi berdasarkan ketepatan generic structure pada siswa kelas XI SMA Negeri 4 Padang. Sumber data penelitian ini adalah dokumen, yaitu hasil dari karangan siswa tentang teks analitikal eksposisi yang didapatkan dari guru yang mengajar di kelas XI SMA Negeri 4 Padang. Data dikumpulkan melalui teknik acak (simple random sampling) yaitu peneliti mengambil 29 buah karangan siswa (10%) dari jumlah semua karangan siswa. Dalam menganalisis kemampuan siswa ada 3 aspek yang akan dinilai yaitu thesis, argument, dan reiteration. Berdasarkan data yang didapat selama penelitian, penulis dapat menyimpulkan bahwa kemampuan siswa dalam menulis thesis yaitu sebesar 58% (cukup bagus), sedangkan kemampuan siswa dalam menulis argument yaitu sebesar 61% (bagus), dan kemampuan siswa dalam menulis reiteration yaitu sebesar 51% (cukup bagus). Jadi, kemampuan siswa kelas XI SMA Negeri 4 Padang dalam menulis teks analitikal eksposisi dikategorikan cukup bagus.
Key words: Writing, Writing Ability, Analytical Exposition Text.
* Writer
** Advisor
INTRODUCTION
Writing is a process of exploring ideas through written form. Exploring ideas refers to students’ ability in exposing topic and sharing their opinion to finish the good writing process. In exploring ideas, the writer should deliver his or her statements to outcome the writing product clearly. It is important to make good writing process running and make the readers catch the points easily.
In writing, the students are hoped to have an ability to understand and write many kinds of text. As stated in English syllabus of Senior High School at eleventh grade, the students should master kinds of texts. They are report text, narrative text, procedure text, descriptive text, and analytical exposition text. Based on the text above,
Analytical exposition text is assumed difficult to be learnt by the students. It is a text which gives the complicated information including evidence and facts to
support the idea of the text. It makes the students should work hard to provide the concrete data and more knowledge to convince the reader that the idea is important.
Furthermore, in writing analytical exposition text the students also should be careful to the generic structure of analytical exposition text. The students should bring their mind into one topic to be developed. It is important to make them focus to the topic that will be developed and created the arguments related to the topic itself. They should be able to arrange and organize the ideas until they have a meaning in a paragraph or a text. The ideas should be connected well from a word to word and a word to be one sentence. In other words, in writing analytical exposition text the generic structure should be arranged correctly in a text. In addition, the generic structure of the analytical exposition text concerned with the way of how the writer arranges and organizes their ideas in writing. As a writer,
students should take care of the generic structure in their writing because it will help them to communicate successfully. Thus, in this research, the focus is on analyzing students’ ability in writing analytical exposition text at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Writing
Writing is a complex process in which requires writers to think critically in order to express their though in a written form.
Writing follows some process to be good writing such as planning, evaluating, and revising. In order to state the idea clearly, it is important for the writers to follow the process of writing. Nunan (2003:88), writing is the mental work of inventing idea, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statement and paragraph that will be clearer to the readers.
It means that, in writing the writer should has ability in creating the product of writing by organizing the ideas as good as the writers can. Thus, the writer must not use the promiscuously ideas but use the best ideas because the product a writing will be read by readers. If the students choose the promiscuous ideas the product of writing will be uninterested by the reader.
Writing involves the encoding of a message that is the writer translates their thoughts into language. This is a reason for the writer to be focused in writing by some components. Bacha (2002:17), writing a text has general problems, because there are three major sub skills of writing a text that emphasized in the text such as; language (sentence structure, grammar vocabulary, coherence and mechanics), organization ( general statement, thesis statement, topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence), and content (main, supporting ideas, logical order of ideas).
To make the students have ability in writing the teacher should teach students about the process of writing. Writing involves some steps that are done by the students in writing. Anderson (2002:32) states that there are four steps in writing process: 1).Discovering. In discovering, the students should explore and gather their ideas and information and select ideas and
group and organize the material. 2).Drafting.
In drafting, the students should get their thoughts on paper in the form of sequenced sentences, paragraphs, and sections. When the students draft, the students take all the ideas and information you’ve gathered in discovering and then choose those you want to use in your draft. 3).Revising. In revising, the students should looking back or seeing again. During the revising stage, the students correct their ideas in their compositions.
Often students terminate the writing process as soon as they complete a rough draft, believing that once their ideas are jotted down the writing task is complete.
4).Polishing. In polishing stage, the students should examine writing for effective and precise words, sentences that have variety.
Analytical Exposition Text
Exposition text is a text that discussed an issue or a problem. Exposition text can be divided into two types; they are analytical and hortatory text. Analytical exposition is a text which is not accompanied by suggestion, but hortatory exposition text is a text which is accompanied by suggestion about an issue or something that should or not to do. Rosa, Muryanti, Mulia (2008:178), analytical exposition is used to persuade the readers that the idea that the idea is important matter. It means that this text has influencing process to bring the readers to do or to do not something relate to case is happening. In this text, the researcher thinks that analytical exposition text is a text which is telling about the writer’s explanation text about the case. Pardiyono (2007:222), the rhetorical structure of analytical exposition text are thesis contains a writer’s statement of his or her position about certain a topic or problem, argument contains description of facts to support his or her statement in the thesis, reiteration contains a brief conclusion or resume related to his description to convince that what is stated in the thesis is acceptable, or correct reasonably.
RESEARCH METHOD
The writer used descriptive research as research design in this research. The data was the students’ writing test that given by teacher who thought at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang. The
writer took 10% of the students’ total number. Then, the total sample in this research was 29 students. The participants were chosen by using simple random sampling. In collecting the data for this research, the writer collected the document from the teacher who taught at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang.
After collecting the data, the writer analyzed the data in several steps: first, the students writing analytical exposition text were scored about generic structure of analytical exposition text. After that, the writer analyzed the percentage of the students’
ability in writing analytical exposition text.
DISCUSSION
In this case, the writer described the students’ ability in writing analytical exposition based on appropriate generic structure at SMA Negeri 4 Padang. To find out students’ ability in writing analytical exposition text, the writer had analyzed
students’ ability by using scoring rubric. In this research, the writer used scoring rubric adopted from Hamp-Lyons in Hyland (2003:231). It provides three criteria to analyze students’ writing analytical exposition text. The criteria are thesis, arguments, and reiteration. The analysis of students’ ability in writing analytical exposition text based on appropriate generic structure was described in the following explanation:
1. The students’ ability in writing thesis The data that writer got from the students’ document have been measured.
The writer found that overall the scale of the students’ writing ability in the aspect of thesis was 58%. It means that, students’ at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang have moderate ability in writing thesis. This finding can be illustrated in the following table:
Table 1: Percentage of students’ score in writing thesis No Point Amount of
students
Total Score Percentage Average
1 4 6 24 82.76%
2 3 6 18 62.07% 58%
3 2 8 16 55.17%
4 1 9 9 31.03%
Based on the criterion above, there were 6 students’ got 4 point (82.76%), 6 students’ got 3 point (62.07%), 8 students’
got 2 point (55.17%), and 9 students got 1 point (31.03%).It means that, the students’
ability in writing thesis of analytical exposition text at eleventh grade students of SMAN 4 Padang was moderate.
2. The students’ ability in writing argument
The data that writer got from the students’ document have been measured.
The writer found that overall the scale of the students’ writing ability in the aspect of argument was 61%. It means that, students’ at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang have good ability in writing argument. This finding can be illustrated in the following table:
Table 2:Percentage of students’ score in writing argument No Point Amount of
Students
Total Score Percentage Average
1 4 7 28 96.55%
2 3 6 18 62.07% 61%
3 2 8 16 55.17%
4 1 8 8 27.59%
Based on the criterion above, there were 7 students’ got 4 point (96.55%), 6
students’ got 3 point (62.07%), 8 students’
got 2 point (55.17%), and 8 students’ got 1
point (27.59%). It means that, the students’
ability in writing argument of analytical exposition text at eleventh grade students of SMAN 4 Padang was good.
3. The students’ ability in writing reiteration
The data that writer got from the students’ document have been measured.
The writer found that overall the scale of the students’ writing ability in the aspect of reiteration was 51%. It means that, students’ at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang have moderate ability in writing reiteration. This finding can be illustrated in the following table:
Table 3: Percentage of students’ score in writing reiteration No Point Amount of
students
Total Score Percentage Average
1 4 4 16 55.17%
2 3 7 21 72.41% 51%
3 2 4 8 27.59%
4 1 14 14 48.28%
Based on the criterion above, there were 4 students’ got 4 point (55.17%), 7 students’ got 3 point (72.41%), 4 students’
got 2 point (27.59%), and 14 students’got 1 point (48.28%). It means that, the students’
ability in writing reiteration of analytical exposition text at eleventh grade students of SMAN 4 Padang was moderate.
In conclusion, most of the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang had moderate ability to organize their ideas in a paragraph also had good ideas to support their topic sentence. If the students made good and clear thesis statement, their argument will be good and the students produced a good writing. On the other case, some of the students forgot and confused to make reiteration because the students did not know how to restate the thesis. So, at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang had moderate ability in writing Analytical exposition text.
CONCLUSION
Writing is a complex process in which requires writers to think critically in order to express their thought in a written form.
Writing follows some process to be good writing such as planning, evaluating, and revising. The document got from the teacher who taught at eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Padang. After analyzing the data from the students’ score, the writer concluded that the students’ ability in writing thesis was 58% (moderate), the students’ ability in writing argument was
61% (good), and the students’ ability in writing reiteration was 51% (moderate).
Therefore, the students needed to pay attention to their ability in writing and all criteria should be fulfilled to compose good writing.
SUGGESTION
Therefore, the writer has some suggestions. First, to the English teachers should be more pay attention on the students writing’s ability because the students who have weakness in every criterion, the teacher can improve students writing. It is also suggest that the teacher should teach components of writing to their students.
Meanwhile, for the students it is expect pay more attention in writing after the teacher give correction using all of components of writing (content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanic), especially for the teacher who teaches at eleventh grade.
The teacher pays more attention in writing analytical exposition text especially in generic structure. Second, for the students.
The students were suggested being careful and keep on improving their ability in writing analytical exposition text.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Marilyn. 2002. Keys to Successful Writing: Unlocking the writer within. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc.
Bacha, Nahla Nola. 2002. Testing Writing in the EFL Classroom: student Expectations. English Teaching
Forum Magazine Vol.
40.http//www.englishteachingforum .com. Retrieved on December 12th 2014.
Hyland, Ken. 2003. Second Language Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Nunan, David. 2003. Practical English Language Teaching. New York:
The Mc Graw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Pardiyono. 2007. Pasti Bisa! Teaching
Genre-Based Writing.
Yogyakarta:Andy Offset.
Rosa, Rusdi Noor, Elise Muryanti, and Mulia Dewi. 2008. English for General Purposes. Padang:
Sukabina Offset.
