1
THE CORRELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS’ COGNITIVE SKILL AND ABILITY IN WRITING REPORT TEXT
(A Study at Eleventh Grade Students of SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang)
Oleh:
RENY ELVITA KARTIKASARI*)
**) Lili Perpisa and**) Muhammad Khairi Ikhsan Staf Pengajar Program Studi Bahasa Inggris
STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Kognitif adalah kemampuan siswa dalam mengetahui, memahami, menerapkan, menganalisa, mensintesis/menyelaraskan, dan mengevaluasi sebuah teori atau prinsip-prinsip yang telah dipelajari. Kemampuan kognitif juga diperlukan dalam menulis sebuah esai. Seorang siswa/penulis membutuhkan sebuah pengetahuan yang didukung oleh kemampuan kognitif. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melihat hubungan antara kemampuan kognitif siswa dan kemampuan menuliskan teks report. Populasi dari penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas XI SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang.
Peneliti menggunakan simple random sampling teknik dengan mengacak seluruh kelas XI untuk mendapatkan sample.
Dalam penelitian ini total sampelnya adalah 58 siswa. Untuk melihat kemampuan kognitif dan menulis siswa, peneliti memberikan dua bentuk tes yaitu tes kognitif dan tes menulis esai tentang teks report. Dalam menganalisa data, peneliti menggunakan Correlation Pearson Product Moment. Peneliti menemukan nilai dari r-hitung kognitif dan writing siswa adalah 0.44. Hasil dari r-hitung adalah korelasi positif antara kemampuan kognitif siswa dengan kemampuan menulis siswa. Untuk membuktikan hipotesis, peneliti mendapatkan hasil t-hitung dari kemampuan kognitif dan menulis siswa lebih tinggi dari t-table (4,1 > 2.0032) dengan level signifikan 0.05 dan degree of freedom (df=n-2). Maka, hipotesis pada penelitian ini diterima. Berdasarkan penelitian ini dapat disimpulkan bahwa kemampuan kognitif siswa berkorelasi dengan kemampuan menulis siswa.
Key words: Correlation, Cognitive skill, writing ability
*) Peneliti
**) Pembimbing
2 Introduction
Cognitive skill is one of three domains that defined by Bloom. It is called as Bloom’s taxonomy.
According to Efland (2002:19) Bloom’s taxonomy indicators of change began to appear in a publication known as the Taxonomy of educational objectives prepared by Benjamin Bloom and his associates.
Bloom divides it into three domains in education. In addition, he states The Taxonomy also established three domains called the cognitive, the affective and the psychomotor. They are needed in teaching and learning process to reach the goal of education. The cognitive is focused in human intellectual. Affective domain is focused in human attitude. Then, psychomotor domain is focused in human behavior and activity.
According to Billings (2009:8) Cognitive skill has six levels. First, knowledge is what human know about something, information, principles and so on.
Second, comprehension is how the human understand the information. Third, application is how the human apply the knowledge. Then, analysis is human ability in correcting some mistakes. Next, evaluation is human ability in giving judgment about something. Last, creation is human ability in creating new product based on their background knowledge.
Cognitive domain is needed by language skills especially in writing skill. Writing needs knowledge and comprehension in using words acquisition. There is some important knowledge that can be caught. Like how to spell the word and arrange it into sentence to make a good writing. As productive skill, writing also needs to apply the knowledge acquisition. In cognitive domain, it includes into application level. To be good writer, students need to analyze their writing. It can be analyzed the incorrect word spelling or the grammatical. Then, the students also need to evaluate their writing. Next, creation is about how they organize topic and develop their topic into written form. Last level is evaluation. In this level, the writer can give some judgment to get their writing better. All of cognitive levels are connected each other. The teacher should fulfill all of cognitive levels to get good cognitive skill.
Based on the researcher’s experience in practice teaching at SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang and her observation in that school, she found phenomena in teaching. First, some students who have good score in comprehending the material, it means they have a good cognitive skill, but they uncertain able to write a report text. Second, student who get average score some of them able to organize the topic well. Last, students’
who have low score some of them still confuse how to gather their ideas in writing report text. Then, the researcher wants to make sure the correlation between students’ cognitive skill and their ability in writing report text. Researcher also want to know the influences between two variables above. It will be conducted for eleventh grade students at SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang.
In general, this study is aimed at finding ability of students in SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang related to their cognitive skill. The specific purpose is to find out the correlation between students’ cognitive skill and their ability in writing report text for students SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang.
According to Linse (2005:99) states when you are teaching writing to children, you must consider two separate areas of development. They are fine motor or physical skills and cognitive skills necessary. Based on the theory above, the researcher hypotheses that, there is any positive correlation between students’ cognitive skill and their ability in writing report text at SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang.
Research Method
This research used correlation design. This research conducted on February 12nd- 13rd 2015 at SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang. Population is gathering people in a place with same characteristic or has the same goal. The population of this research was eleventh grade students of SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang. The sample of this research took by simple random sampling technique. The samples of this research are the students who choose by simple random sampling. The researcher took between 14 or 15 students in each class.
In this case, the instruments of this research were cognitive and writing test. Both cognitive and writing can be measured by achievement test.
For collecting data from cognitive test, the researcher distributed the test to the respondent. After that the researcher asked them to give answer and collect it. There were several steps collecting the data:
The reseacher distributed the test, asked the students to answer the test, collected the students’ answer, then reseacher read the students’ answer for each item, corrected the students’ answer, last scored the students’
answer of the test.
The researcher used Pearson Coefficient Correlation to find out the correlation between students’ cognitive and ability in writing report text by using SPSS for windows version 21. After the researcher knew about the result of correlation between two variables, the researcher gave interpretation of coefficient correlation by using Pearson Product Moment from Arikunto (2010: 317), which was described as follow:
𝑟𝑥𝑦 =
𝑛( xy) − x . ( y) {𝑛.Ʃ𝑥2− (Ʃ𝑥)2}. {𝑛.Ʃ𝑦2− (Ʃ𝑦)2} Where:
n = the total of respondents
𝑟𝑥𝑦 = the coefficient correlation between variable X and Y
𝑥 = the score of variable x (cognitive test)
𝑦 = the score of variable y (writing test)
3 Finding and Discussion
Data analysis of this research was the correlation of students’ cognitive skill and their ability in writing report text at SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang in academic year 2014/2015. Because the population was very large that was 4 classes, and each classes have 35 students, the researcher used totally random sampling as the suitable technique to select a sample of large group. In selecting a sample, the researcher used slovin’s formula, from the total population of eleventh grade students at SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang. Total of the population was 140 students. Then total sample was 58 students, and then the researcher divided into 4 classes, so, the sample of each class 14- 15 students.
After collecting the data, the researcher analyzed it. There were two kinds of instrument that was analyzed; students’ cognitive test and students’
writing test. First, the data was analyzed by correcting the students’ answer in cognitive test. Then researcher gave score and counted it. The result of cognitive test was found by sum up the total score from the test. The researcher got some data from cognitive test, where the highest score was 100 and the lowest score was 60.
From the data collection, researcher got the total of students’ cognitive score was 4559 and the average of it was 78, 60. Second, data was writing test. The researcher analyzed it by using scoring rubric from Brown (2008:245). Then from writing test, researcher got the highest score was 86, 5 and lowest score was 20. The total of students’ writing test was 4261, 5 and the average from the score were 73, 47. Then, the researcher analyzed both score by Pearson product moment (rxy) formula to see the correlation.
The researcher found out the score of cognitive test and the score of writing test of the sample. The researcher found the total scores of students’ cognitive test (x) was 4559 and total scores of students’ writing test (y) was 4261, 5. After getting the result of each variable, the researcher used Pearson product moment (rxy) formula to find out the correlation between students’ cognitive skill and their ability in writing report text. r-counted of students’
cognitive skill and writing ability was (0,44) and r- table was (0, 2586). After the researcher calculated the data by using Pearson Product Moment (rxy) formula, r- counted was higher than r-table, there is a positive correlation between students’ cognitive skill and their ability in writing report text. The strength of its correlation (cognitive skill and writing ability) resides in moderate correlation.
After the researcher calculated the data by using r-counted, then, the researcher used t-test to see the significance correlation by using r-counted. It found that t-counted higher than t-table in the degrees of freedom (df) n-2 where the level of significance (α) 0, 05. t-counted of cognitive skill and writing ability was (4,1), t-table (2, 0032). Thus, Hypothesis was accepted.
Based on the data analysis above, the researcher found that t-counted of cognitive skill and
writing ability was (4, 1) and t-table (2, 0032) in the degrees of freedom (df) n-2 where the level of significance was (α) 0,05. It clearly showed that t- counted was higher than t-table. As overall, it can be concluded that the improvement of cognitive skill related to the improvement of writing ability.
Based on findings above, the result of the correlation can be found by correlating the result of students’ cognitive test with students’ writing test.
There were some kinds of the data was found. First, there were some students who had high score in cognitive test, but low in writing test. It means that cognitive skill was not one of factor that influences the students’ ability in writing. Second, the researcher found that there were some students that got high cognitive score, and writing score also high. It means that the students’ cognitive skill gave positive effect toward writing ability. Last, from the data, there were some students who had the low in cognitive score, but they got high score in writing test. Then the researcher found the higher score of students’ cognitive test was 100 and the lowest score was 60. In writing test the researcher found the higher score was 86,5 and the lowest score was 20.
In line with the data above, the researcher found that r-counted of cognitive skill and writing ability was (0.44). Relating to the index of coefficient correlation between students’ cognitive skill and writing ability (0.44), the correlation between students’
cognitive skill and writing ability can be classified as moderate correlation.
Conclusion and Suggestion
In conclusion, there is positive correlation between students’ cognitive skill and students’ ability in writing report text at eleventh grade students in SMA Pertiwi 2 Padang, It means that, a student who has good cognitive skill they have good writing ability too. But, it is not the one which affected the students’
writing ability. There are any some factors that influence the writing ability.
The researcher proposed several suggestions for teachers, students, and readers. First, after reading this research result, the English teacher would get information about the correlation between students’
cognitive skill and their ability in writing report text.
Therefore, English teachers are expected to develop students’ cognitive skill more. Second, the students are suggested to improve their knowledge in learning English. By improving their knowledge in learning English, their achievement will be improved too. It gives a positive impact each other. Then, in this research, the researcher used cognitive test and writing test, these could be some limitations of finding. The researcher suggested to the next researcher who has interested to this research to conduct other related research in the large scope.
4 References
Arikunto, Suharsimi. 2010. Prosedur Penelitian: Suatu Pendekatan Praktik. Jakarta: PT. Rineka Cipta Billings, Diane M. 2009. Lippincott’s Content Review For NCLEX- RN. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Language Assessment:
Principles and Classroom Practices. New York: Longman
Efland, Arthur D.2002. Art and Cognition: Integrating The Visual Arts In The Curriculum. New York: Teachers College
Linse, Caroline T. 2005. Practical English Language Teaching: Young Learners. New York:
McGraw- Hill
