IMPROVING THE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL THROUGH INTERACTION IN STUDENT TEAMS - ACHIEVEMENT DIVISIONS (STAD) (A Collaborative Action Research at the Tenth Grade Students of SMAN I Gorontalo in 2010/2011 Academic Year)

Abstract

Abstract The main objective of this research is to improve the students’ writing skill through interaction in Student Teams - Achievement Division (STAD) at the tenth grade of SMAN I Gorontalo, academic year 2010/2011. This research was an action research. Generally, the main characteristic of action research is to improve the quality of the teaching and learning process. By conducting the research, the writer hopes that the teacher can improve the quality of teaching and it is expected to improve the students’ activeness in classroom especially in writing activities. Based on the pre-obervation result, there were no significant interactions in the classroom between the teacher and the students, and the students with their friends, whereas an effective teaching process involves an interaction between the teacher and the students. In the teaching process, the teacher rarely interacted with her students. She explained the topic no matter the students understand the topic or not. Even, the teacher gave tasks to students and then left the class. It can be assumed that the teacher didn’t treat the students as the subject of learning. This situation makes the students feel bored and it is frustrated for them. An ineffective teaching situation above affects significantly the students’ involvement in writing activities. Based on the interview to several students, they revealed that writing has been the most difficult skill to master. Besides they have a low involvement or interaction in teaching process, they also revealed that they were lack of vocabulary and grammar. By conducting the research about the implementation of STAD method in teaching writing, the problems in learning process can be solved. In conducting this research, the writer colaborated with the English teacher. In this case, the writer acted as the observer who observed the teaching process of method application in the classroom. The interaction in the process has been the most important thing the writer observed. The interaction involved the interaction between the teacher and the students, and the students with their friend when working in groups. In the process of teaching, the teacher often asked the students to share their ideas about the material that is being learned. It helped the students to be more active in the teaching process. The subject of research was the tenth grade students of SMAN I Gorontalo, consisted of 13 boys and 18 girls. The data were collected through observation, questionaire, field notes and the test. The research was done in 2 cycles where the students were required to pass the passing grade, 75. Before the application of the method began, the writer first had given a pre-test. From the pre-test score, only 4 students (12.90 %) who passed the passing grade 75. In cycle 1, there was a little increase of number of students who passed the passing grade. There were 15 students or 48.39 % who passed the passing grade. The result showed that the students were still low in grammar and the organization of the text. The writer observed the way of the teacher applying the method and also the writer observed the students’ activities in group. In this cycle, the students who were active in the process were still low. There were only 48.52% of students who were active in the learning process. In cycle 2, there were 26 students (83.87 %) who passed the passing grade. It could be seen that the number of students who passed the passing grade had reached the minimum percentage (80%). In this cycle, there was a great increase of the number of students who active in the teaching process. Those were 94.35 % of students who are active in the learning process. From the illustration above, it could be concluded that STAD (Students-Team Achievement Division) method can significantly improve the students’ writing skill, especially writing recount text. In this case, the writer suggested the teacher to use this method to improve the quality of teaching and encourage the students to be more active in class. Key words: STAD, Writing, Recount Text, Action Research, Interaction