The aims of this research are to find out whether : (1) Dialogue Journals
Method is more effective than Direct Instruction Method to teach writing; (2) The
students having low writing apprehension have better writing skill than those
having high writing apprehension; and (3) There is an interaction between
teaching methods and students’ writing apprehension in teaching writing.
This experimental research was conducted at the eighth grade of SMP
Ta’Mirul Islam Surakarta.The samples were two classes, one class as the
experimental group and one as the control group. The number of the students in
each class is 20 students. Cluster random sampling technique was administered in
this research to select the sample.Data of the research were collected through
writing test and writing apprehension questionnaires. The data were, then,
analyzed by descriptive statistics to describe the research data and inferential
statistics namely multifactor Analysis of Variance ANOVA 2x2 and Tukey test to
test the hypotheses.
The findings of this research are: (1) Dialogue Journals Method is more
effective than Direct Instruction Method to teach writing; (2) The students having
low writing apprehension have better writing skill than those having high writing
apprehension; and (3) There is an interaction between teaching methods and
students’ writing apprehension in teaching writing. However, in the
implementation of the method, a teacher must consider about the students’ level of
writing apprehension. As proved in this research, writing apprehension influences
the students’ writing skill. By considering students’ level of writing apprehension,
a teacher can choose the method he/she uses properly in teaching writing to
reduce writing apprehension in order to improve students’ skill in writing.
Keywords: experimental research, teaching methods, writing skill, writing
apprehension.