Exploring Vocational High School Students' Difficulties in Writing Descriptive Texts across the Stages of the Genre-Based Approach

Abstract

Despite the wide implementation of the Genre-Based Approach (GBA) in EFL contexts, vocational high school students continue to experience persistent challenges in descriptive writing. This research aims to investigate students' difficulties in learning writing descriptive text using GBA across its learning stages. The study employed a descriptive qualitative method conducted at SMK Bina Insan Bangsa Ngamprah, involving 25 eleventh-grade students. Data were collected through non-participant classroom observations across GBA sessions and semi-structured interviews with both students and the English teacher. The findings revealed that students experienced difficulties in generating ideas, organizing paragraphs, using appropriate vocabulary, and applying correct grammar, alongside affective barriers such as writing anxiety. Notably, these challenges were most dominant during the Independent Construction of the Text (ICOT) stage, where limited vocabulary and grammatical weaknesses significantly hindered individual performance. Rather than indicating an insufficiency in the approach itself, the findings highlight that GBA requires more intensive scaffolding, interactive modeling, guided practice, and continuous constructive feedback. Ultimately, this research offers practical implications for educators to optimize pedagogical support and tailored language practice when implementing GBA in vocational education.