An Analysis of Students' Grammatical Problems in Writing Analytical Exposition Text in Class XI IPA 1 at MAN 2 Padang

Writing is a complex process. When the students write, they do not only have to think the ideas to write, but also the organization of the ideas, diction, mechanics, and grammar. This research was aimed to find out the students’ grammatical problems in writing analytical exposition text. Besides that, it is also to find out the factors which cause the students’ grammatical problems occur on their writing. The participants of this research were all of the students in Class XI IPA 1 at MAN 2 Padang which consisted of 13 boys and 19 girls. The type of this research was a descriptive research. The data were collected by using students’ task and interview. The task was done in the classroom and it was followed by the interview done to 20 students. The data collected were analyzed based on the theories to analyze qualitative data. The data collected were simplified and transformed from the raw data into manageable form. After that, the data were classified based on the indicators used, and they were concluded. The findings of this research showed that the students’ grammatical problems were to use simple present tense, passive voice, conjunctive relations, direct and indirect object, linking and possessive verbs, and modals. It was also found that the factors which caused the students’ problems were language transfer, environment, and the status of English in Indonesia. From the data gotten, it could be concluded that the students had problems in six elements of grammar in analytical exposition text.