Improving the Students’ Paragraph Writing Achievement by Using Roundtable Technique at Junior High School

Abstract

Writing is one of the four main skills in English, which is an important subject that students should learn. Writing is one of the most difficult skills to master. It is related to ideas, concepts, grammar, and vocabulary. Brown (2004) states that writing is the process of putting ideas down on paper to transform thoughts into words, to sharpen main ideas, and to give them a structure of coherent organization. While converting ideas from the brain into written form, the teacher has to make sure all of the students pass the criteria of good writing. The objective of this study was to improve the students’ paragraph writing achievement by using the roundtable technique at junior high school. Based on the preliminary study conducted by interview the English teacher at junior high school, the students had difficulties in paragraph writing. The main problem was in generating ideas. The English teacher at junior high school never used any technique in teaching paragraph writing and only explained the material. As a result. The students’ previous scores showed that 13 students (43% of the students) scored ≥ 75, while 17 students (57% of the students) scored below 75. The average score before the action was implemented was 68.17 To overcome that problem, the researcher proposed the roundtable technique to improve students in generating ideas. The research design was classroom action research with two cycles. Each cycle consisted of three meetings. The first and second meetings were for implementing roundtable technique in teaching paragraph writing. Meanwhile, the third meeting was for paragraph writing test. The population of this research was the eighth–grade students of junior high school at Jember in the 2023/2024 academic year. The students of class VIII E were chosen as the participants because the students in this class had problems in generating ideas. Besides, the students in this class had the lowest score compared to other classes. Based on the results of observations in Cycle 1, 65% of the students were classified as active participants. Furthermore, the average score of the students’ paragraph writing test showed that 66,67% who succeeded in achieving a score ≥ 75. The target score that should be achieved was at least 70% of the students had to get a score of at least 75. The researcher concluded that the implementation of the action in cycle 1 did not achieve the target. Thus, the implementation of the action in cycle 2 was needed. The results of the observation in cycle 2 showed that 81.66% of the students were classified as active participants. Meanwhile, the paragraph writing test showed that 76.67% of the students succeeded in achieving a score of ≥ 75. This represented a 10% increase compared to the average score in Cycle 1. The target score should be achieved at least 70% of the students to obtain a minimum score of 75. Therefore, it can be concluded that the implementation of the action in Cycle 2 successfully achieved the target. In conclusion, the findings of this study indicated that using the roundtable technique in teaching paragraph writing effectively enhanced the students’ paragraph writing achievement. It is the researcher’s expectation that these results will be beneficial for English teachers and serve as a valuable reference for future researchers.