ABSTRACT
This research is intended to investigate whether: (1) Experiential Learning (EL) is more effective than Direct Instruction (DI) to teach writing; (2) The students who have high self-efficacy have better writing skill than those who have low self-efficacy; and (3) There is an interaction between methods and self-efficacy in teaching writing.
Moreover, this research is a quasi-experimental research by using factorial design that was conducted at SMAN 2 Surakarta in the academic year of 2014/2015. The population of this research was 300 students of the eleventh grade coming from ten classes, then, the researcher recruited two classes by using cluster-random sampling. Therefore, the research samples chosen randomly by using a lottery were XI E consisting of 30 students as an experimental group that was taught by using Experiential Learning and XI F consisting of 30 students as a control group that was taught by using Direct Instruction. Furthermore, the researcher conducted a writing test to identify students’ writing skill after giving treatments and a self-efficacy questionnaire to investigate students’ self-efficacy levels. Then, those gained data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential analysis using ANOVA 2x2 and Tukey test.
After analyzing the data, it was found that: (1) Experiential Learning is more effective than Direct Instruction to teach Writing, (2) The students having high self-efficacy have better writing skill than those having low self-efficacy, and (3) There is an interaction between teaching methods and students’ self-efficacy in teaching writing especially an analytical exposition text. Therefore, based on the results of the research above, it implies that the English teachers are suggested to apply Experiential Learning as one of the alternative teaching methods especially in teaching writing by considering the students’ self-efficacy in order to improve their writing skill. Additionally, for other researchers, they are expected to develop and expand another point of view related to psychological aspects of language learning.
Keywords:Experimental Study, Experiential Learning (EL), Direct Instruction (DI), Self-efficacy, Writing Skill