Abstract:
The aim of this study is to find out students’ difficulties in writing recount text and the
most dominant problem that appears in writing recount text of eleventh grade students at SMAN
15 Batam. The subject of the research was 40 students of XI IPS 1 at SMAN 15 Batam in the
academic years 2023/2024. This study was descriptive qualitative research. Writing tests and
interviews were used as an instrument of this research to find the difficulties and dominant
problem faced by the students while writing recount text. The technique for analyzing the data was
analyzed the student’s writing results by using Jacob’s scoring rubric in writing. There were five
aspects on Jacob’s scoring rubric: content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and
mechanics. The result showed the most dominant problem that students’ faced in writing recount
text was language use. It showed that the total of students who got fair to very poor was 36
students. It is because most of students write recount text using the present tense meanwhile, in
recount text, the students should write it in the past tense. The interviews also showed that the
students have difficulties in language use especially in grammar. The students only focused on
retelling their story without considering the importance of past tense in recount text.
