The aim of this research is to find out: (1) whether there is a significant difference in writing skill between students taught using dialogue journal writing and students taught using guided writing; and (2) whether dialogue journal writing is more effective than guided writing to teach writing. This research was conducted at SMP N 16 Surakarta in the academic year of 2015/2016. The population of the research is the eighth grade of SMP N 16 Surakarta. The samples are class VIII A as the experimental class which consists of 30 students and class VIII B as the control class which consists of 30 students. The research instrument used to collect the data in this study is test. The data were analysed by using t-test formula. The computation of the t-test shows that t observation (to) = 2.6288 is higher than t table (58, 0.05) = 2.0017. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference in writing skill between the students taught using dialogue journal writing and the students taught using guided writing. The mean score of the experimental group is 72.3, while the mean score of control group is 69. Therefore, it can be concluded that dialogue journal writing is more effective than guided writing to teach writing. The result of the research shows that there is a significant difference in writing skill between students taught using dialogue journal writing and students taught using guided writing, and teaching writing using dialogue journal writing is more effective than using guided writing. Keywords: dialogue journal writing, guided writing, writing skill, experimental research.