IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL THROUGH REFLECTIVE JOURNAL: A STUDY AT A SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL IN ACEH

Abstract

Purpose of the study: The purpose of this study was to find out whether there is any significant difference between the students who are trained through reflective journal writing and those who are not trained through reflective journal writing. It also wanted to know students’ responses toward reflective journal writing the implementation. Methodology: The methodology of this study is an experimental research which used a quasi-experimental design. Quasi-experimental research is used to know the differences between classes that are given training and classes that are not given. The research design used in this study is the non-equivalent control group design. In this research, there were two classes taken as samples, namely experimental group and control group which consisted of 30 students of each group. The author used tests (pre-test and post-test) and questionnaire as the instruments to collect the data. The quantitative data was obtained from the result of pre-test and post-test scores of students’ writing in experimental and control groups. Then both scores were analysed through the SPSS program to calculate t-test. Main Findings: The findings of the research showed that the mean score of post-test of the experimental group 76.73 is higher than the mean score of control class 63.10. Furthermore, the result of p-value obtained from the post-test of the experimental and control group was 0.00 is less than the level of significance degree α = 0.05. In other words, there was a significant difference between the students who were trained through reflective journal writing and those who were not trained through reflective journal writing. Applications of this study: The implications related to this study the authors suggest to use Reflective Journal Writing Strategy to help students to be critical thinking writers and for the next researcher to use this strategy in other kinds of texts. Teachers are suggested to use this strategy to teach writing skills for other aspects of writing. Novelty/Originality of this study: This strategy has never been used by English teachers in South Aceh and it can contribute to the teachers to use this strategy in teaching writing, especially for senior high school students. In conclusion, the use of Reflective Journal improved students’ writing skill, especially in writing recount text of senior high schools first-grade students in South Aceh.