Writing is one language skill that students must master. Some finding indicates that students had difficulties in organizing ideas, lack of vocabulary, and writing the sentences grammatically incorrect. Msanjila (2005:18) states that problems in writing are capitalization, punctuation, organization, spelling, and grammatical. The objectives of this research are to find the students' problems, what the students do to overcome their problems, and the effect of TEXT-BASED APPROACH (TBA) in writing. Hafrizon (2009:4) states that the TBA is the most effective methodology for implementing a text-based syllabus. This research is in the frame of descriptive qualitative case research. The writer took 32 students in junior high school. To analyze data the writer used Quartile formula and data display. Researcher accounted for using Excel program. The result showed that there are five aspects of their writing. For high-level score increased in content aspect 1.3 point, in organization aspect 1.2 points, in vocabulary aspect, 1.3 points, in language aspect 1.5 points, and in mechanics aspect 0.6 points. For low­ level score increased in content aspect 1.1 points, in organization aspect 0.1 points, in vocabulary aspect 0.2 points, in language aspect 1.5 points, and in mechanics aspect O point. The effect of TBA was helpful for the students' writing. To conclude, the most dominant problem in writing recount text is mechanics. The suggestion was for the other researcher to investigate another text by using TBA or the same text by using another approach.