Language is very important in human life. Language is means of communication. Without a language, a person cannot communicate with others. English is a language in the world. People call it a international language. In our school, the English language has been given since the fourth grade of the elementary school up to university.
Most people in the world from the different countries and nations speak language. Also, many scientific studies such as education, science, religion, technology, commerce or politic are written in the language.
Language includes four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Writing is language activity that needs much cognitive concentration. When writing, a writer is challenged to use just linguistics code without helping of other codes, take for instance, gestures. A writer has to arrange some ideas and transform them into his thinking carefully in writing codes on papers.
In fact, writing is different from writing Indonesian. English as stated above is a foreign language for Indonesian student. English is a new language that they often have trouble when they learn it. One of the reason is the characteristics of English itself. For example, tenses, regular and irregular verb are not found in Indonesia. On contrary, Indonesia is a language which the students have got earlier basically, we believe that student of SMP have enough knowledge of it and have known to use it well and correctly. So it is possible that Indonesian, though it is a school language for most of them, can regard as the student’s mother tongue. They use Indonesian more frequently with they friends and teachers. Moreover, Indonesian is very close to them, to their speaking or writing habits. This is one thing that invites problems when the student writes the sentences composition in English.