The Analysis Students’ Difficulties in Paragraph Writing of The Second Semester Students of English Department at Borneo University of Tarakan
This research discusses the difficulties of students in writing paragraphs of the second semester students of English Education at the University of Borneo Tarakan. The problem in this research was the difficulty of students in writing paragraphs and the factors that cause students to have difficulty in writing paragraphs. The purpose of the research was to find out the difficulties of the students in writing paragraphs and describe the factors that cause students to have difficulty in writing paragraphs. This research was descriptive qualitative. The data source of this research was the second semester students of English education at Borneo University Tarakan. The number of students involved in this research was 40 students. The researcher used tests and interviews as research instruments. The researcher analyzed the data by reducing the data, displaying the data and finally drawing conclusions. The researcher used Miles and Huberman’s stages in analyzing the data, namely data collection, data reduction, data display and conclusion. The results of the research showed that first, the answers found that the majority of students have been able to make paragraphs well and the minority of them are quite difficult in writing paragraphs on five aspects namely content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. The researcher used interval classification scoring guidelines including Excellent, Good, Fair, Less and Poor. With a total of 40 research subjects, in the content aspect it was that only 5% were sufficient, 17% were sufficient on organization, 7.5% were sufficient on vocabulary, 22.5% were sufficient on language use, and 22.5% were sufficient and 2.5% were poor on mechanics. The dominant aspect is the low of language use and mechanics with a percentage of 22.5% and 22.5% in the fair category and 2.5% in the poor category on mechanics. Second, the causes of students' difficulties in writing paragraphs are internal and external factors that hinder the learning process of students such as the environment, stress level, motivation and lack of practice.