AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL IN WRITING AN

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AT ELEVENTH YEAR OF SMK HANG NADIM BATAM

IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2015/2016

Benny Syaputra

Email : beni.cool11@gmail.com

First Advisor : Desi Surlitasari Dewi, S.Pd, M.Pd // Second Advisor : Yuli
Angraini, S.Pd, M.Pd

ABSTRACT

Based on syllabus, vocational high school students’ learned about autobiography

text. Autobiography text called the story of a life. An autobiography is information
about one’s own life written by that one person. The purpose of this study is to know
how are students’ writing skill in writing autobiography text at eleventh grade students’
of SMK Hang Nadim Batam in the Academic Year 2015/2016. Formulation of this
study is how are students’ writing skill in writing autobiography text at eleventh year
students’ of SMK Hang Nadim Batam in the Academic Year 2015/2016. The research
type of this study is descriptive qualitative research, because the writer will analyze the
data of students’ writing. Analysis of this type is done with words to describe and
explain the conclusions. The result of this study described that students’ writing skill in
writing an autobiography text at eleventh year students of SMK Hang Nadim Batam
was good enough. In generally, the organization can be seen; the content was logic
sequence; the grammar was used simple present tense, simple past tense, and simple
future tense; the mechanics was legible enough and neat; and the vocabulary was
enough for word choice. There are some suggestions which addressed to the teacher,
students’, and the other writer. The result of this study could be the reference for the
English teacher for the further research.
Key Words : Writing Skill, Autobiography Text.

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, English is an international language which has achieved a genuinely

global status by developing a special role that is recognized in every country (Crystal,
1997 : 5). In Indonesia, English is a foreign language that has been taught from
elementary school until vocational high school and continue to university. People
realize that English becomes very important now and need much concern.
 In learning English, there are four skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and
Writing) and there are complement likes Grammar, Pronounciation, and
Vocabulary. Besides the four skills, writing is more difficulties part to be learned by
students. Writing is importance for integrating with other language skills in
particularly stressed, with speaking and listening no less than reading, both in the
belief that this leads to more effective language learning and it provides more
natural contexts for writing activities. It is one of the skills in English which must be
mastered by students at vocational high school. In spite of that, there are many
students think writing is a difficult activity.
In the English subject, writing is one of the point in teaching in vocational high
school. The focus is writing the text, especially an autobiography text. An
autobiography is one of the media which can be applied by the teacher to analyze
students’ writing skill in writing the text. The writer knows the problems
encountered by students in writing an autobiography text.
Provision of English subject in vocational high school intended to make students
able to develop the competence to write and communicate in spoken and written in
novice level. The Students’ are also expected to reach the level of knowledge that
they are able to make an information or text with the ability to write, because
writing is one of the skill to achieve success in students’ learning.
Therefore, teacher should teach writing well so that students are able to receive
and give good and correct information in the form of written. As writing skill
becomes very important in education, so students should be able to perform and
train themselves to have a good writing. On the other hand, the government expects
the students can achieve the target of curriculum. However, in reality some of the
students at vocational high school still do not know how to comprehend the writing
material.
Many component skills are involved in writing task. These aspect of the writing
skills include (1) writing mechanics like grammar, sentence structure, spelling and
punctuation, (2) planning a writing strategy, (3) communicating ideas clearly and
concisely, (4) constructing reasoned demonstrable argument and (5) organizing
ideas effectively.
 Based on the previous research in Nurul (2011:3), the most difficult skill to be
learned is writing. There are some difficulties faced by students in writing class.
First, they do not have idea to write. Second, they are still confused in organizing
the writing. Third, they often do some mistakes with the lack of knowledge in
vocabularies, the grammatical structure, especially in writing activities.
Actually, the writer used the material from the syllabus of eleventh year
students. The material is how to write an autobiography text. According to Couser
(1968), an autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment
missing. Autobiography is the story of a life: the name implies that the writer will
somehow attempt to capture all the essential elements of that life. The writer choose
the material because it is designed to improve the students writing skill by providing
form as an active learning situation and condition in writing the text, especially an
autobiography text.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Leliana (2012:3) stated that writing is the work of writer, anything expressed in
letter of the alphabets. According to Nilson (1984:134) writing is a skill which has been
developed in civilized society to pass on knowledge or messages. Some experts usually
define it by looking at its characteristics. One of writing characteristics is relation to
speaking. Tidyman (1959:257) says that writing is closely related to speaking, not only
in such items as content, organization of ideas, and vocabulary, but also in the use of
pauses and the modulation of the voice to show the division and the relationship of
ideas.

The other characteristic is said by Nilson (1984:134), he says that writing is not
something which is natural to humans. It is the most complex skill to be developed. In
addition, Tidyman (1959:66) says that the important thing in writing is attitude-
willingness to write. Furthermore, Hedge (1996:134) says that writing as one of the
language skills has given an important contribution to human.

According to Harmer (1998:86) writing is a process and that what we write is

often heavily influenced by the constraints of genres, then these elements have to be
present in learning activities. Writing is the presentation of language in a textual
medium through the use of a set of sign or symbols (known as a writing system).

According to David (2003:98) writing is multifaceted, it is only logical that it

evokes different images. Sokolik (2003:98) in David jurnal stated that writing is a
combination of process and product. The process refers to the act of gathering ideas and
working with them until they are presented in a manner that is polished and
comprehensible to readers. Writing is a form of our thinking, ideas, opinion,
imagination, wish and feeling that poured in a paper and hope other know about them
by reading the creation. In writing, the aspects of writing include the use of vocabulary,
structure of the sentence, composition of the sentence, spelling and punctuation. These
aspects are important to master in order to able to produce good writing.

Generally, there are four steps of writing according to Caroline (2003:105) :

a. Prewriting
For every piece of writing, there is always a prewrite activity. Before writing, let
our mind explore. Freely what the interesting topic will be discussed. Then,
record the ideas to visualize the imagination on a piece of paper. States your
purpose and choose the subject that you care and know about it. Communicating
always has purpose, to persuade, entertain or to influence the reader to be agree
with your opinion. Then, define the audiences who will be the reader so that you
need to provide a lot of evidences.
b. Writing
Before the writing started, define the topic is the first step in writing. Start
writing based on the topic. Do not worry about making the mistakes because you
probably change your mind and words later anyway. Drop your ideas, thinking
and feeling through writing. After brainstorming idea and subject, you can write
freely as writing as you speak orally. Do not worry about the mistake you made
in structure, spelling, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. You have time to
revise and edit your writing.
c. Revising and Editing
Reread and edit the writing to revise the mistakes. Revising is the most
important steps in writing. It means that you improve the writing you have made
 and measure how well the idea stated. Revising can be liked rearranging ideas,
developing ideas further any idea that do not fit to your topic. After revising
your idea, you can edit your writing carefully. It focuses on structure, grammar
word choices, spelling and punctuation.
d. Publishing
After a piece of writing has been edited, it is ready to be published. Publishing
refers to putting the writing in a final finished format where it can be shared with
others.

According to Brown (2007), There are five elements, there are five indicators of
writing. They are :
1. Organization : introduction, body, and conclusion
2. Logical development of idea : Content
3. Grammar
4. Punctuation spelling and mechanics

5. Style and quality of expression

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.

Autobiography is the story of a life: the name implies that the writer will somehow
attempt to capture all the essential elements of that life. One of the definition about
the autobiography is that anyone can write his or her story. It is the days when only
an illustrious political or social figure was the authoritative autobiographical voice.
The assumption about the democracy of this genre has become more widespread and
held with greater conviction in recent years, both by writers and by readers, as the
popularity of the autobiography has surged and books have been written by people
whose lives are not particularly extraordinary, but, in many cases, painfully
quotidian. The autobiography is a work that is by its very nature deeply personal, it
is possible that the autobiographical text can create a larger category or archetype
within which others can understand, define, and describe themselves. An
autobiography is information about one's own life written by that one person. In it, it
tells what that person's life is all about. When writing the autobiography, use
interesting facts to explain as much as about self clearly. There are five major things
 that focused by students when write the autobiography text: background
information, who you are in life, what life means to you, what your outlook on the
future is, and conclusion.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
According to Creswell (2003:18) research design divided into three, they are
quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research design. In this study the writer will use a
descriptive qualitative research design as the data in this study are sentences. And the
data of this study use not statistically analyzed. He also said the word qualitative implies
and emphasis on processes and meaning that are not rigorously examined or measured
(if it measured at all), in terms of quantity, amount, intensity or frequency. According to
Railis (1998) in Creswell (2003:181) there are characteristics recommend :

a. Qualitative research take places in the natural setting. The qualitative

research often goes to the site of the participant to conduct the research.
b. Qualitative research uses multiple methods are interactive and humanistic.
The methods of data collection are rowing and they increasingly involve
active participants and sensitivity of the participants and sensitivity to the
participant in the study.
c. Qualitative research is emergent rather than tightly refigured. Several aspect
emerge during a qualitative study.
d. Qualitative research is fundamentally interpretive, this means that the
researcher makes an interpretation of the data.
e. The qualitative researcher views social phenomena holistically. This
explains why qualitative research studies appear as broad.
f. The qualitative researcher adopts and uses one or more strategies inquiry as a
guide for the procedures in the qualitative study. For beginning researcher it
is enough to use only one strategy and to look in recent procedural books for
guidance as how to design a proposal and conduct the procedures of the
strategy.

The data in this study are described an analyze of students writing skill in
writing an autobiography text.
The writer gave the writing test to collect the data. Writing test for this test is an
autobiography text. The administration of the writing task uses structure to write an
autobiography text. Teacher reads the directions on the writing aloud to all students, the
directions was taken from lifetime memories and stories “How to Write an
Autobiography”. Students’ have 15 minutes to plan, 90 minutes to write and 15 minutes
to edit. The format of instruments used by the writer was taken by Erika Baker from
mpsaz.org “An Autobiography Outline.” Finally, researcher analyzed the data by using
analytical scoring designed by Brown and Balley (2004 : 243).

DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Based on the data analysis, the researcher found some findings, as follow: In the
organization of students writing there are title, background information, content, and
conclusion, in the other hand, the organization of the students’ writing can be seen
generally and got adequate level. The students’ writing was appropriate; some
conclusion of the composition was clear enough; some of them wrote logical sequence
and the ideas was addresses and complete enough. But, there is one student in arranged
the organization was fair.

In the content of students’ writing missed some points of the composition; there
are some extranous material, there is one student also wrote his thought, but it can not
acceptable. His writing is too much problem and it is too difficult to give scored based
on the classification. In the content criterion, the students’ writing got adequate level.

In grammar, the students’ writing was fair level. There were some grammar
problems of the students’ writing. There were some grammar problems didn’t influence
communication, but there were some grammar problems that had negative effect to the
reader also. There is one student also in lacking of the grammatical structure. He used
the spoken language and try to produce his thought used by translate application. His
grammatical was bad. But, in generally, the grammar of students’ writing was not run-
on sentences.

In mechanics aspects, the students writing was legible and the paper was neat.
There were some problems in writing, such as they wrote many unclear letters, unclear
words, missing punctuation (.) in the end of sentences. Inappropriate capitalization, and
addition punctuation. But, in generally their writing was neat and legible and got
adequate level.

In vocabulary, the students’ writing was adequate level. They used good
vocabulary and not wordy.

CONCLUSION
The writer could be concluded that students’ writing skill in writing an
autobiography text at eleventh years students of SMK Hang Nadim Batam in the
Academic year 2015/2016 was good enough.

REFERENCES

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Brown, Douglas, H. 2004. Language Assessment: Principle and Classroom Practice.

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Couser, Alex. 2007. The Autobiography

Creswell, John. 2003. Research Design. Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Crystal, David. 1997. English as a Global Language. United Kingdom: Cambridge

University Press

Harmer, Jeremy. 2007. How to Teach Writing. United Kingdom: Longman Publishing

Hedge. 2002. Approaches to Writing in EFL/ESL Context. Oxford: Oxford University

Press

Leliana, Dwiky. 2012. Writing II. Batam: Universitas Riau Kepulauan

Linse, Caroline, T. 2005. Practical English Language Teaching for Young Learners.
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