ABSTRACT

DEFENDS:  AStrategy  to  Teach Writing Skill viewed from Students’ Creativity. A Thesis. First Consultant: Dr. Sumardi, M.Hum;  Second  Consultant:  Dr.  Slamet  Supriyadi,  M.Pd.  English Education Department, Graduate School, Sebelas Maret University.The main objective of this research isto know whether: (1) DEFENDSis more effective than Pairs Checkto teach writing tothe eleventhgrade students of a high school in Purbalingga; (2) the students having high creativity have better writing skill than those having low creativity for the eleventh grade students of a high  school  in  Purbalingga;  and (3)  there  is  an  interaction between  teaching strategies used to teach writing andstudents’ creativity for the eleventh grade students of a high school in Purbalingga.This experimental research was conducted at a high school in Purbalinggain the academic yearof2018/2019. The sampling usedin this research was cluster randomsampling.  The  sample  of  this  research  was  60  students  including  30students of experimental class and 30students of control class. Each class was divided into high and low levels of creativity. To collect thedata, there were two instruments used in this research namely writing test and verbal creativity test. Writing test was used to find out students’ writing skill, while verbal creativity was conducted to know students’ creativity levels. After treatment was given to both classes in eight meetings, the researcher conducted post test of writing test to get  the  data.  The  data  were  analyzed  by  using  2x2  Multifactor  Analysis  of Variance (ANOVA) and Tukey test. Based  on  the  summary  of  multifactor  analysis  of  variance,  it  can  be concluded that:(1) DEFENDSstrategy is more effective than Pairs Checkto teach writing; (2) students having high creativity have better writingskillthan those  having  low  creativity;and(3)  there  is  an  interaction  between  teaching strategies and creativity to teach writing. It means that the use of DEFENDSstrategy is effective to teach writing for the eleventh grade students of a high school in Purbalingga. Therefore, it is recommended for the English teacher to apply DEFENDSstrategy in writing activity, to promote an effective teaching writing skill. The students are suggested to apply DEFENDSstrategy in writing so that they can achieve the most optimum writing skill. For other researcherswho  intend  to  conduct  similar  research aboutthe  effectiveness  of  DEFENDSstrategy to teach writing, the result of this research can be useful as an additional reference.Keywords: creativity, DEFENDS strategy, writing skill.

Keywords: DEFENDS strategy; Students Creativity; Creative students; Experimental design.