Students’ Ability and Strategy in Writing Argumentative Essay at English Language and Literature Department of Universitas Negeri Padang

This study aimed to analyze students’ ability, problems and strategy in writing argumentative essay at English Language and Literature Department of Universitas Negeri Padang. Descriptive research was used to examined this research and also writing final tests, questionnaires and interviews were used to collect research data. The participant of this research is students of English Language and Literature in 2021 of the 2019/2020 academic years. There were 25 students as the participants. The result of research that have obtained in this study are (1) students’ ability in writing argumentative essay were in five categories very good, good, fair, poor and very poor and based on five components of writing was at good category with mean score 73,54; (2) the most common writing problems faced by students in writing argumentative essay are grammar dan mechanics in this research; (3) and there were five strategies used by the students in writing argumentative essay; meta-cognitive, effort regulation, cognitive, social and affective strategy. The highest frequency used is mostly in affective strategy with 3,83.