MPROVING THE XI IPA 3 STUDENTS’ WRITING ACHIEVEMENT THROUGH CONFERENCE FEEDBACK AT SMA NEGERI 1 AMBULU IN THE 2009/2010 ACADEMIC YEAR

Abstract

Writing is one of the English skills that students need to master. Based on the result of preliminary study by interviewing the eleventh year English teacher of SMA Negeri 1 Ambulu, it was known that the students of class XI IPA 3 had problems in writing especially in the aspects of grammar, vocabulary, mechanic, content, and organization. In addition, the students’ active participation during the writing teaching and learning process was low. This condition might happen because the teacher had never given any feedback to their writing. The teacher directly scored the students’ writing. To solve the problems, a classroom action research with cycle model was conducted collaboratively with the English teacher in which each cycle covered four stages included preparation of the action, implementation of the action, observation and evaluation, and data analysis and reflection of the action. This research was carried out in two cycles and each cycle was conducted in two meetings and writing test was conducted in the third meeting. The technique applied in this research was conference feedback since it enabled the students to recognize their errors and to correct them so that their writing achievement could be improved. There were two kinds of data collected in this research. They were qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data was gained through observation in the form of field note, while the quantitative data was gained through observation in the form of checklist and writing test. Observation in the form of field note was conducted to record the teacher’s activities in the classroom based on the lesson plan, while observation in the form of checklist was conducted to know the students’ active participation during the writing teaching and learning process through conference feedback. The observation checklist consisted of five indicators they are: asking questions, answering questions, paying attention to the lesson, using dictionary to find the words, and revising for the final draft. In this case, the students were considered active if they could fulfill at least three indicators. Meanwhile, writing test was administered to know the students’ writing achievement. This research was considered successful if at least 75% of the students got the score of ≥ 70 and 75% of them actively involved in the teaching and learning process of writing through conference feedback. However, based on the result of the observation checklist and the writing test, the actions in the first cycle failed to achieve the target requirement. There were 24 of 43 students (55.8%) who were active in the first meeting. Meanwhile, the number of active students increased to 62.8% in the second meeting. In this meeting, there were 27 of 43 students who could fulfill at least three indicators of the students’ active participation. In addition, based on the result of the writing test the mean score was 68.0 from the targeted score, that was 70. Therefore, it was necessary to continue the actions to the second cycle by revising some necessary aspects in the first cycle. They were gave clearer conference feedback to the students about their errors, gave explanation about passive voice and simple past tense to the students, provided more time for the students to write narrative text whether in the writing assignment or in the writing test, and also provided more topics in the writing test in order to give chance to choose the topic based on their experience to write narrative text. Based on the process and product evaluation, there was an improvement on the students’ active participation in joining the teaching and learning process of writing through conference feedback and their writing achievement in the second cycle. In this cycle, there were 32 active students of 43 students (74.4%) in the first meeting. Meanwhile, in the second meeting, the number of active students increased to 81.4% or there were 35 active students. Furthermore, the mean score of the students’ writing test also increased to 72.8. Having known the results of the classroom action research, the actions were stopped since the students succeeded in achieving the target of the research. Concerning the results above, it can be concluded that the use of conference feedback can improve both the students’ active participation in the teaching of writing and learning process and their writing achievement. Therefore, it is suggested that the English teacher apply conference feedback as an alternative technique in the teaching of writing and learning process.