THE EFFECT OF GROUP INVESTIGATION METHOD ON
STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING
DESCRIPTIVE TEXT
A THESIS
Submitted to English Department, Faculty of Language and Arts State University of Medan, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the
Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
By:
YUNI KHAIRINA
Registration Number: 2101121051
ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
DECLARATION
I have familiarized myself with the University’s Policy on Academic integrity.
Except where appropriately acknowledged, this thesis is my own work, has been expressed in my own words, and has not been previously been submitted for assessment.
I understand that this paper may be screened electronically or otherwise for plagiarism.
Medan, September 2014
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly, praise and great gratitude to the almighty God Allah SWT for the blessing, mercy, opportunity and help given to the writer to complete this Thesis
entitled “The Effect of Group Investigation Method on Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text” as one of requirements for the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan (S1) at English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
During the process of writing and conducting the research, the writer was assisted and supported by many people. This thesis cannot be accomplished without guidance, suggestion, and comment from them, for which the writer would like to express her sincere appreciation which directed to:
Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si., the Rector of State University of
Medan.
Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the Dean of Language and Arts Faculty,
Vice Dean I, II, III, and all the administrative staff.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the Head of English and Literature
Department as well as her Reviewer,
Rika, S.Pd, M.Hum., the Secretary of English Department,
Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., the Head of English Education Study Program as well as her Thesis Consultant.
Dra. Tjut Ernidawati, M.Pd., her Academic Consultant as well as her
Reviewer.
Dr. Zainuddin, DIP.TEFL., M.Hum., and Rafika Dewi Nasution,
M.Hum., her Reviewers.
Thanks are given to them, for their valuable inputs, comments, and suggestions to enrich the quality of this Thesis.
All Lecturers of English Education and Literature Department, who
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Mam Euis, Mam Enda, Pak Hendra and Pak Pantas, the all
administrative staff who have helped her in fulfilling the administrative process.
Drs. K. Lumbantoruan, M.Pd., the Headmaster of SMA Negeri 11
Medan, and Dra. Ramewati Sibuea, the English teacher for giving her permission to conduct the research in the school.
H. Fadli Abdul Salam, S.Ag and Dr. Rahmah, M.Hum., her beloved
parents , for their endless love, prayer, moral and financial support, in completing her education. Mehdi Fikri, ST., her brother and all her relatives for their support.
Rizki Apriliyani and Saidatul Hanim her most supportive friends who
always support and help her, and also all her closed friends,Afsyah, Lala,
Debbie, Freddy, Fandy, and for Regular B 2010 and for those whose
name cannot be mentioned yet, who had inspired, encouraged and gave her support, helping, and laughs during her study years and the process of writing this thesis.
Overall, the researcher hopes this thesis can give contribution to the English Education students and further pedagogical research. And also it can be useful for the readers.
Medan, Agustus 2014
The Writer,
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ABSTRACT
Khairina, Yuni. 2101121051. The Effect of Group Investigation Method on Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text. A Thesis. English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Medan. 2014.
This study is an attempt to discover the effect of applying Group Investigation
Method on students’ achievement in writing descriptive text. It was conducted by
using experimental research design. The Population of this research was the tenth (X) grade students of SMAN 11 Medan which consists of nine parallel classes with the total number of students is 286. The samples of this research were taken by random sampling through lottery technique. The result was class X IPA 1 consisted of 33 students became the experimental group and class X IPA 3 consisted of 31 students became the control group. The experimental group was taught by using Group Investigation Method while the control group was taught by using Conventional Method. The instrument for collecting the data was writing test. The data were analyzed by using t-test formula. The result shows that the value of t-observed (3.733) is higher than the value of t-table (2.000) (α = 0.05) with the degree of freedom (df) = 62. It means that there is a significant effect of applying Group investigation Method on students’ achievement in writing descriptive text. So, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted.
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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ... 1
A. The Background of The Study ... 1
B. The Problem of The Study ... 4
C. The Objective of The Study ... 5
D. The Scope of The Study ... 5
E. The Significance of The Study ... 5
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ... 6
A. Theoritical Framework ... 6
1. Students’ Achievement ... 6
2. Writing ... 7
3. The Process of Writing... 8
4. Types of Genre ... 10
5. Descriptive Text ... 11
a. Types of Descriptive Writing ... 13
b. Grammatical Features of Descriptive Text ... 14
c. The Example of Descriptive Text ... 15
6. Approach, Method, Technique, Strategy ... 16
7. Writing as Cooperative Learning ... 17
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b. The Steps of Group Investigation Method ... 20
c. The Advantages and disadvantages of Group Investigation Method ... 21
d. The Implementation of Group Investigation Method in Teaching Descriptive Text ... 22
B. Conceptual Framework ... 23
C. Hypothesis ... 25
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHOD ... 26
A. Research Design ... 26
B. Population and Sample ... 27
C. Instrument of Collecting Data ... 28
D. Procedure of The Research ... 28
E. The Scoring of Writing Test ... 30
F. Technique of Analyzing Data ... 31
CHAPTER IV: THE DATA AND RESEARCH FINDINGS ... 33
A. The Data ... 33
B. Data Analysis ... 34
C. Testing Hypothesis ... 36
D. Research Findings ... 37
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ... 39
A. Conclusions ... 39
B. Suggestions ... 39
REFERENCES ... 41
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LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX A Pre-Test for Experimental and Control Group ... 43
APPENDIX B Post-Test for Experimental Group ... 44
APPENDIX C Post Test for Control Group ... 45
APPENDIX D The Scores of Pre-Test and Post Test ... 46
APPENDIX E The Calculation of T-Test ... 48
APPENDIX F Percentage Points of the T-Distribution ... 53
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of Study
As one of the basic skills of learning English, writing is important in language learning process. Writing is considered a highly productive skill and arguably the most difficult of the four language skills. It is a process of putting ideas or thoughts into words which is combined into the form of paragprahs. In writing, ideas are arranged in series of sentences that are related to each other so the information can be comprehended. Through writing people can express their experiences, events and social identities. It also can train them to think critically and creatively. Writing helps us to remember, observe, think and communicate (Barras, 1995:9)
Harmer (2004:86) states “writing is a process that we write is often
influenced by constraints of genre, and then these elements have to be present in their learning activity. Based on the English syllabus of curriculum, one of the genre learned in senior high school is descriptive text. Its purpose is to describe person, things, and places by using vivid details. Descriptive text is concerned with giving a clear information of what we experience based on the fact.
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enthusiasm in the process of learning writing. They had some ideas in their
mind but they didn‟t know how to put it into written form, moreover they
used to open their dictionary when they were going to write the text. Based on the observation in SMAN 11 Medan, it was found that students had problems when they were asked to write, especially in writing descriptive paragraph. They were lack of motivation and ideas, lack of mastering vocabulary, and grammar. Those facts indicate that most of students are not able to write a simple writing.
Actually their lack of writing ability at school is influenced by the ways of teaching. In the process of teaching, teacher usually gives tasks from the textbooks, students answer the questions and submit them to the teacher. From this fact, it can be concluded that the process of teaching and learning has not been conducted successfully. It means that the teacher
didn‟t concern with students‟ writing ability and teaching it in an
interesting way. Therefore it needs to develop and apply the effective methods to enhance the students‟ writing skills.
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A cooperative learning method is believed as being able to give chance for students to be involved in discussion, to encourage, to have critical thinking and to take responsibility of his/her own learning. Although it considers as an active role for students, it does not mean that teacher is not participating in the classroom. In the learning process, teacher should play some roles such as designer, facilitator, motivator and guide in the learning process.
Cooperative learning can be a lot of fun, planning the text together can be very motivating. Research by Storch, ( http://elt-resourceful.com/2013/01/14/collaborative-writing-activities/) found that texts produced by pairs were shorter than those produced individually, but that they were better „in terms of task fulfilment, grammatical accuracy and complexity. It appeared that the process of working together meant that learners were giving each other useful feedback as they went along, and thereby producing more accurate and complex texts.
A cooperative learning method has several types, namely Group Investigation, Students Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD), Teams-Games-Tournament (TGT), Team Assisted Individualized (TAI) and Jigsaw. One of the types chosen to be applied in this study is group investigation.
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processes. Group investigation method requires the students to form small interest groups, plan and implement their investigation, synthesize the
group members‟ findings, and make a presentation to the entire class.
Group Investigation is appropriate to be applied in solving the
students‟ problem because the students work on a task in group of two or
more, that they are encouraged and motivated to help one another to learn (rather than being in competition with one another), that they are dependent upon the efforts of one another to achieve success, and that they are held accountable for that learning both as a group and as individuals (Killen, 1998:82)
Hence, based on the explanation above, it is interesting to conduct the research related to teaching writing descriptive text by Applying Group Investigation. It concerns to assist the students to improve their writing by actively investigating the phenomena and writing them down on a piece of paper.
B. The Problem of the Study
In line with the background of study, the problem of this study is
formulated as follows: “Is there any significant effect of Group
Investigation Method on students‟ achievement in writing descriptive
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C. The Objective of the Study
The objective of this study is to find out whether there is an effect of applying the Group Investigation Method on students‟ achievement in writing descriptive text.
D. The Scope of the Study
This study is focused on students‟ achievement in writing descriptive text particularly on describing place. The level of students being studied is the first grade of Senior High School.
E. The Significance of The Study
The findings of the study are expected to be useful for:
1. The students to get more interested in writing class and to improve their writing skill.
2. English teachers in their attempts to improve their teaching strategies to motivate students learning.
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion
After analyzing the data, it was found that the students’ score in
experimental group was higher than the students in control group. The total score and the mean score in experimental group showed that there
was a significant improvement of the students’ score between the pre-test
and the post-test score.
Since the value of tobserve was 3.733 with df (62) at the level significance (0.05) = 2.000, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted. So, from the calculation of the data, it can be concluded that Group Investigation Method significantly affect students’ achievement in writing descriptive text.
B. Suggestions
The result of this study shows that the use of Group Investigation Method is able to improve the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text. So, the writer’s points out some suggestions as in the following:
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2. By learning in group and investigating the environment, the students will be motivated and definitely enjoy the learning process particularly writing in which they can discuss and share their ideas with one another, and will get motivated in writing. 3. Other researcher can develop the related study to improve
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REFERENCES
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Akḉay, N.O and Doymuᶊ, kemal. 2012. The Effects of Group Investigation and Cooperative Learning Techniques Applied in Teaching Force and Motion Subjects on Students’ Academic Achievements. Journal of Educational Science Research. II (1) 113.
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Dirgayasa, I.W. 2012. Maritime English. Medan: Unimed Press
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Harmer, Jeremy. 2004. How to Teach Writing. Essex: Pearson Longman.
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Hughey, J.B. et. al. 1983. Teaching ESL Composition Principles and Techniques. Rowley: Newbury House Publisher.
Jolly, D. 1984. Writing Task. New York: Cambridge University.
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Knapp, Peter and Watkins, Megan. 2005. Genre, Text, and Grammar. Sidney: University of New South Wales.
Lodico, M.G., et. al. 2010. Methods in Educational Research: From Theory to Practice (Second Edition). San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass.
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http://elt-resourceful.com/2013/01/14/collaborative-writing-activities/
http://reporttext.blogspot.com/2009/06/differences-between-report-text-and.html
