The existence of English has a role in the Indonesian education system.

English is made one of the

In English there are four main skills. One of them is writing skill. This skill is the most basic skill that must
be mastered by students besides listening, reading, and speaking (Bakti et al., 2019, p.2). Fransisca
(2016) also added that writing is critical because it can help us socialize well, express our ideas, feelings,
and our opinions so that we can have good interaction with society (p.291). So it can be concluded that
writing skills are one of the basic skills that are very important to master to help someone socialize,
express ideas, feelings, and opinions so that it becomes easier to interact with social life.

But behind the importance of writing activities, there are still many students who have not mastered
this skill, which affects writing activities. It is because writing activities are not integrated with the
development of students' writing skills (Valentin et al., 2018, p.149). In addition, Brown in Fransiska
(2018) revealed that writing activities in learning might make students bored, resulting in a decrease in
their motivation and participation in the learning process (p.292). Therefore, this is what affects
students' learning interest resulting in difficulties in writing activities.

The difficulties faced by students in writing activities are a big enough problem for a teacher. The
difficulty is seen when a teacher assigns students to write a text in English. It is because each student is
required not only to be able to arrange words to become one sentence, but also to develop and express
their thoughts in good and orderly writing. Not only that, another difficulty faced by students in writing
is that students also have to master basic knowledge such as grammar, vocabularies, idioms, organizing,
of ideas, spelling, and punctuation (Raimes in Hermawati & Yandri, 2013, p.1). So no doubt if students
face difficulties in writing activities.

Further, based on the researchers' experience during learning internships in SMKN 1 Abung Selatan on
the eleventh grade of Hospitality Accommodation, the researchers found several difficulties related to
learning English. One of them is the difficulties faced by students in writing activities. Besides that, the
researcher also conducted interviews with the eleventh grade English teacher. According to the teacher
said that, the difficulties faced by students in writing activities were that students had not mastered
grammatical structures. This is because students don't like learning English so they use Google translate
to help them do their assignments. Here was the detail description of students' score in one of the
writing activities in the class:

Based on the data of students' score, the minimum criteria score in writing skill at SMKN 1 Abung
Selatan is 75. It could be known that only 2.9% could get the criteria of minimum score in writing, while
97.1% of students get a score under the criteria of minimum score in writing skill. From the data, it could
be seen that 34 students from 35 got low score or almost all students in the class have under the criteria
of minimum score in writing skill. So it can be determined that students are weak in English subjects,
especially in writing activities.
The several studies have examined the difficulties faced by students in writing activities. The first
research was conducted by Harjum (2020) with the title is "Students Difficulties in Writing Thesis as the
Final Text at IAIN Palopo". This research focuses on finding out the difficulties of the last semester
students of the English Department of IAIN Palopo academic year 2019/2020 in writing a thesis text. The
next research by Mia Chairunisa (2021) with the title "An Analysis of Students' Difficulties in Writing
Descriptive Text at SMA Muhammadiyah 2 Bandar Lampung in the Academic Year 2020/2021". The
focus of research in this thesis is to find out what are the difficulties of students in writing descriptive
texts at SMA Muhammadiyah 2 Bandar Lampung in the academic year 2020/2021 and what are the
most dominant problems in writing descriptive texts. Armi Hartati (2019) also conducted another study
which was almost the same as the title with the title "An Analysis of Students' Ability an Difficulty in
Writing Narrative Text at State SMAN 1 Kampar Timur". The focus of the research in this thesis is to find
out the students ability in writing narrative text at senior high school 1 Kampar Timur and also to find
out the difficulties in writing generic structure of narrative text.

Based on previous research, the researchers concluded that there were still few studies that focused on
writing activities. This is evidenced by the research above which focuses on writing thesis, descriptive
text, and narrative text, not writing activities in general. It because of that, researcher is interested in
conducting research related to the difficulties faced by students in writing activities. The researcher also
choses the eleventh grade Akomodasi Perhotelan students of SMK 1 Abung Selatan as the research
sample. The researcher will conduct research with the title "The Difficulties Faced by the Students in
Writing Activities at the Eleventh Grade Students of SMKN 1 Abung Selatan Academic Year 2023/2024.

According to Tarigan in Santoso (2013) revealed that writing is language skill used to communicate with
other people indirectly (p.3). It means that writing is the ability to use written or nonverbal language as a
medium to be used in communicating indirectly, not face to face with other people. This language ability
is obtained through continuous practice and learning. It is because the ability to write is not an ability
that is acquired automatically but rather a process of learning.

Writing activity is an activity that is very familiar with the world of education. Writing activities are often
carried out especially by students in almost every lesson such as taking notes, summarizing, and doing
assignments or questions. This activity is referred to as a productive activity on knowledge and thinking
by interacting with various fields of knowledge and learning contexts (Klein & Bascolo, 2016,p.312).
Therefore, this activity becomes an activity that is always there in learning activities.

Moreover, the writing activity is a very useful activity. It is because writing activity can usefully be
prepared for work in the other skills of listening, speaking, and reading (Ismayanti & Kholiq, 2020, p.10).
Besides that, writing activity are also beneficial for students, one of them motivation to stay interested
in writing activities. It means that, there is motivation that arises from the student is something that the
most important thing is that students can continue to practice writing.

The character in writing is a feature that indicates a writing is considered good and correct. It has five
main characteristics. According to Boardman and Frydenberg in Hayfitma (2021) revealed that the
characteristics of writing consist of coherence, cohesion, and unity (p.9).

Coherence is a very aspect necessary to exist in order to maintain affinity or strong associations in a
piece of writing. Coherence is also referred to as the orderly arrangement of facts and ideas, facts, and
ideas into a logical thread so that easy to understand the message it communicates.

Cohesion in writing is a formal aspect of language in discourse. This relates to the semantic concept that
also refers on linguistic associations found in an utterance that form discourse. In addition, cohesion also
shows the interweaving of speech in form sentences to form a text or context in a way connect the
meaning contained in the elements.

Unity in a text is the most important thing. An article is said to have good unity if all the sentences in a
text talk about the same idea.