Students’ Attitudes toward English Writing Activities at SMP Negeri 29 Medan

This study aimed to analyze the students’ attitudes toward English writing
activities. The method of this study was descriptive qualitative by conducting the
in-depth interview and questionnaire sheets. The data of this study were
transcription of the students’ attitudes toward English writing activities especially
in recount text topic. Moreover, the data sources were 31 students at grade 8 of
SMP Negeri 29 Medan. The results showed that the dominant components of
students’ attitudes in English writing activities was affective component (60,75%),
followed by conative component (58,06%) and cognitive component (54,8%)
which could be interpreted that the students had positive attitude regarding to the
writing of recount text. It was reflected from three components. For cognitive
component, the students believed that their writing skills will be better after
studying the material despite the many difficulties encountered when writing
recount text. For affective component, the students felt happy, interested and
really enjoyed the lesson. And for conative component, the students were able to
pay attention during teacher explained about material, asked questions about
material that has been understood and always discussed it with friends. So that,
this indicated that their overall attitude was positive.