Students’ challenges in using diary writing practice for writing recount text at SMAN 1 Grati Pasuruan

In learning English, Writing is one of productive skill. Students can represent their thought, ideas, and feels through writing activity. Diary Writing practice is one of the strategies in teaching writing. The teacher can apply diary writing in teaching writing recount text. However, there are some challenges faced by students in diary writing. This research focused on the students’ interest in writing especially in diary writing practice, the most frequent challenges in diary writing faced by the students and the students’ strategies to deal with the challenges in diary writing. This research was conducted on X-Science 1 grade students at SMAN 1 Grati. The subject is 38 students in X-science 1 the academic year 2017-2018. This research used qualitative method which used descriptive qualitative to analyze the data. The researcher contributed a questionnaire and document analysis to gain data. The researcher found that students are not interested with diary writing practice. Besides, the researcher found that the most frequent challenges are lack of vocabulary, and lack of grammar knowledge. In addition, there are several strategies used to deal the challenges, those are setting diary writing’s schedule, using their leisure time, finding a comfortable place, writing unforgettable moments, using a dictionary, and giving a self-reward.