The Ability of English Department Students in Writing Cause and Effect Essay in Universitas Negeri Padang

This research aims to find out the ability of the third year of English Department students in writing cause and effect essay in Universitas Negeri Padang . The type of this research is descriptive qualitative research. The source of the data is the cause and effect essays written by the students taken by random sampling. The instrument used in collecting the data is writing test. There are 13 cause and effect essays as the source of data. Next, the data is analyzed by using the indicator of a good cause and effect essay that is divided into three categories; the introductory paragraph, the body paragraphs, and the concluding paragraph. The research findings showed that the students’ ability in writing the introductory paragraph of cause and effect essay was considered good (84.62% of students belonged to Good category). Next, the students’ ability in writing the body paragraphs of the essay was considered poor (53.85% of the students belonged to Poor category). Finally, the students’ ability in writing the concluding paragraph of cause and effect essay was considered good (46.17% of the students belonged to Good category).