Abstrak
The research was aimed at describing students’ difficulty in writing a descriptive text. This was descriptive qualitative research .The subject was student of eight grad student SMPN5 Tarakan. This employed three data collection techiqnues ; observation, interview,and documentation. The data were analyzed by using mile and Huberman’s interactive model. Based on the data analysis, it can be drawn some conclusion: 1) from the observation, there was need of more explanation from the teacher to direct thestudents in building there writing style,2) the interview data showed the almost all the students had a difficulty triggered by their limited mastery of English Vocabulary. This problem had put them in an uneasy situation as they were listening in English, speaking in English, reading text, and doing their writing task, and 3) from the document it was proved that a direct teaching was better for promoting the student’s participation than the online meeting; they were nore active in a conventional teaching. In an online class teacher did not provide anadeuate expalation about the topic; the teacher preferred to give them taks and assignment . Yet the students did not have much better situation in direct-meeting classes, as the teacher’s explanation filed to address the issue . Basides, the teacher did not try to engage their students in the learning process.