writing compared to their interest in speaking. They prefer to express their ideas orally rather than to express them in the written forms. As the result, students can
speak English fluently but they cannot write well. Another indicator is most students find difficulties in using correct grammar, vocabulary and punctuation to compose
English sentences into readable and acceptable texts.
B. Identification of the Problems
Based on the discussion in the background, there are some problems concerned with the writing learning process not to mention at SMP N 1 Pleret. The
crucial problems that influence the writing learning process are the teaching technique, limited sources of learning, uninteresting writing activities and lack of
practice. The teaching technique is the first factor contributing to the writing learning
process. The teaching technique used by the teacher was teacher-centered. She did not provide a sufficient opportunity for the students to learn from their experience. In
this case, students tended to be passive participants. In order to improve the students’ involvement during the writing class and make them actively participate, she should
give the students the opportunity to develop themselves in learning process as independent and interdependent learners. She can put the students as the source of
learning and minimize the teacher-centered during the writing class. By doing this, it is believed that they will be more interested in the writing class so the writing
learning process will improve. Limited source of learning is the next factor. In the teaching and learning
process, the teacher only provided the copy of student’s course book. As the result,
most activities of writing were based only on that source. The students only could use those copies during the English class and could not bring them to their home too.
To give additional materials, sometimes the teacher explained the materials on the white board, but it made the students spent more time in writing them in their
notebook. Beside limited source of learning, the teacher also rarely combined the
activities with other interesting activities, such as using pictures as the medium to stimulate the students’ ideas or browsing some interesting materials on the internet to
increase the students’ motivation to get involved to the writing activities. This
situation led the students to get bored easily. The classroom activities were monotonous and did not encourage them to actively involve themselves in teaching
and learning process of writing. Based on the pre-test conducted in VIII E students of SMPN 1 Pleret, most of
the students faced some difficulties in composing sentences in to a good short message. The difficulties could be classified into four categories; content,
vocabulary, grammar and writing mechanic. The first difficulty faced by the students is content. In terms of content, the
students were difficult to get the idea that they wanted to write. They still confused to write because they did not have a writing habit. As the result, many students wasted
the time only for finding what they wanted to write until the bell rang. Vocabulary mastery is the next difficulty faced by the students. It was
represented in their word choices in writing. In the English class, only a few students brought dictionary or used their smart phone to find the Indonesian meaning of
difficult words. If the students did not know the meaning of some English words or what was the English of some Indonesian words, they tended to ask the teacher.
Another difficulty found is related to the grammar mastery. Inability to use the correct auxiliary verb and how to use it in their sentence are two majors
difficulties found in relation to grammar mastery. In writing a short message, most of the students did not understand how to use auxiliary verb. Moreover, they often put
‘to be’ in the sentence that contained a full verb in their writings. The last difficulty faced by the students is the writing mechanic. In writing a
short message, the students made many errors in spelling and capitalization. In the pre-test, the students often misspelled the word, wrongly used the capitalization and
also wrongly used the punctuation such as full stop and comma. One of the factors why the students of SMPN 1 Pleret faced some difficulties
mentioned before is they lack of practice. It takes only 2X40 minutes in one meeting for a teacher to deliver the teaching and learning activity. During the meeting, the
teacher too much gave the students theories and she did not allocate enough time for students to practice their writing at class, so the students did not have an opportunity
to develop their writing skills, whereas practicing are very important. Practicing in writing was only given by the teacher as homework. When it became homework, the
students did it by themselves and the teacher did not guide them. Some of them might find a difficulty and be unmotivated. Therefore, they played with other friends
or opened Facebook Website to overcome their stress as the entertainment purpose. In conclusion, the writing learning process in this school still faced some
problems. The problems were related to the teaching technique, limited sources of
