Improving Students’ Writing Skill Using Email (A Classroom Action Research in the Seventh Grade Students of SMPN 2 SELONG in the Academic Year of 2010/2011)

Oleh :
Baiq Hikmah Widiawati - S890809102 - Sekolah Pascasarjana

The objectives of the research are: (1) to identify whether email can improve the students’ English writing skill; and (2) to describe the situation of teaching learning at writing class when email is applied. This research was carried out at SMPN 2 Selong East Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. It was conducted from June 2010 up to May 2011. The subject of the research was the students of class VII A of SMPN 2 Selong East Lombok in the academic year of 2010/2011. The research method was Classroom Action Research and it was conducted in two cycles. In collecting the data, the researcher used interviews, observation, diaries, document, and test. Having collected the data, the researcher analyzed them both qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data were analyzed using Constant Comparative Method: comparing incident applicable to each category, integrating categories and their properties, delimiting the theory, and writing the theory. The qualitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics to calculate the mean scores of the pre-test, post-test 1 in Cycle 1, and post-test 2 in Cycle 2. To identify whether email can improve the students’ writing skill to express descriptive texts and to describe what happens with the classroom situation, the research findings show email can improve: (1) The students’ writing skill: (a) The students could put punctuation and capital letter correctly: (b) The could spell some English words correctly: (c) They could write main idea: (d) They could use appropriate vocabularies: (e) They could arrange the words into sentence and sentences into a paragraph correctly: (f) They could produce grammatical sentences; and (2) classroom situation. It shows that: (a) The students give full attention toward the lesson: (b) during the writing class, most of the students had eagerness to ask the teacher about their difficulties in writing: (c) They have courage to answer the teacher’s questions: (d) They discussed their difficulties in vocabularies with their friends in the group: (e) The English writing class became more alive and creative. In addition, the score is also improving such as pre test is 37.93, post test 1, 65.90 and post test 2 is 71.07. And the KKM for English subject in SMPN 2 Selong is 65 in academic year of 2010/2011. This research showed that there is improvement not only in the writing skill of the students who involved in this study but also the quality of teaching learning process. It can be stated that the writing class is more effective, alive, and fun when the teacher taught the students using email. For that reason, it is recommended that the English teacher should be: (1) creative to guide the students in exploring email to improve students’ writing skill; (2) active to create exciting atmosphere because email can increase the students’ interest and motivation in writing; (3) active and creative to motivate the students to use email because they also can do it out of the school with the real people around the world. Keywords: email, keypals project, writing skill, classroom situation