IMPROVING THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ WRITING ACHIEVEMENT THROUGH WRITTEN FEEDBACK AT SMAN 5 JEMBER IN THE 2007/2008 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to improve the eleventh grade students’ writing achievement at SMAN 5 Jember in the 2007/2008 academic year. This research was begun by conducting an interview with the English teacher of the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 5 Jember on 3 xii rd 2007. There were four classes of the eleventh grade students of that school. Based on the preliminary study, it was known that the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 5 Jember had problems in writing. It was revealed that class XI IPA B had the lowest writing score among the students of four existing classes with the mean score 50. Therefore, it was chosen as the subject of this research that was determined purposively. Written feedback was chosen as the technique in the teaching learning process of writing under the reasons that by this technique, the students could know the mistakes they made in their writing and could improve their ability in writing. This classroom action research was done in collaboration with the English teacher covering the planning of the action, the implementation of the action, class observation and evaluation, and data analysis and reflection of the action. This research was carried out in two cycles and each cycle consisted of three meetings included the test. The primary data were about the students’ writing achievement collected by administering writing achievement test and observation by using checklist. The collected data were analyzed in the form of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Meanwhile the reflection was done based on the findings during the observation and compared to the criteria of success that were 75% of the students had the average score 65 and 75% of the research subjects were actively involved in the teaching learning process of writing using written feedback. Mean score (M) of the students’ writing achievement test in Cycle 1 was 58.8. In addition, the result of observation in the first meeting of Cycle 1 showed that there were 14 students (35.8%) of 39 students who were actively involved. While in the second meeting, there were 16 students (41.02%) of 39 students actively involved in the teaching writing process. The results above were not satisfying because most of them were passive during the teaching of writing through written feedback. It was caused since most of the students were still confused about hortatory exposition paragraph. In brief, it could be said that the result above had not fulfilled the target of this research. Therefore, the action was continued in Cycle 2 by revising the actions in Cycle 1. The result of the actions in Cycle 2 showed significant improvement. It was indicated by the mean score (M) of the students’ writing achievement test that was 68.4. Besides, the result of observation in the first meeting of Cycle 2 showed that there were 26 students (66.6%) of 39 students actively involved. Meanwhile in the second meeting, there were 33 students (84.6%) of 39 students actively involved in the teaching writing process. It means that the target of this research was achieved in Cycle 2. Briefly, it could be concluded that written feedback could improve the students’ writing achievement. Therefore, the English teacher was suggested to use written feedback as an alternative in teaching writing.