The Effectiveness of the Dialogue Journals Technique in Improving the Skill in Writing Narrative Texts of the Year-12 Students of MAN 3 Malang. (Thesis)
Main Author: | Ali Mukti |
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Format: | PeerReviewed |
Bahasa: | ind |
Terbitan: |
, 2009
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: |
http://karya-ilmiah.um.ac.id/index.php/disertasi/article/view/1804 |
Daftar Isi:
- Dialogue journal is a new technique. Its effectiveness has thus not been proved yet on MAN 3 Malang students. This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of dialogue journals technique in improving students' skill in writing narrative texts. The general question to answer was, "Do the students taught using dialogue journals technique perform significantly better in writing narrative texts than those taught without dialogue journals technique?" The tentative answer for the question was then formulated in the working hypothesis which read: "The mean score of the group taught using dialogue journals technique is significantly higher than that of the group taught without dialog journals technique." The design of the study was quasi-experimental with a non-randomized pretest-posttest control group. The samples of the study were taken from the population of the year-12 students of IPA at MAN 3 Malang in the 2008/2009 academic year; they were year-12 IPA 3 as the control group and year-12 IPA 2 as the experimental group. Both of the two classes were occupied by 36 female students. In collecting the data, two kinds of writing tests were used as the primary instrument; one of them was used in the pretest, and the other in the posttest. The tests required the students to write narrative texts. Then, their writings were scored using an analytical scoring rubric. Besides, a questionnaire was utilized as a secondary instrument. It was given only to the experimental group in order to evaluate the application of dialogue journals. Based on the descriptive characteristics, the result of the study showed that the means of the five writing aspects of the experimental group were better than those of the control group. Hence, the dialogue journals technique employed in the experimental group helped improve students' skill in writing narrative texts. Furthermore, using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with significance level of .05, the results of the study showed that vocabulary and language use aspects were significantly different. It was because the obtained F-ratios for vocabulary and language use aspects were 4.595 and 27.548 respectively while the F table was 3.988. The other three aspects, namely content, organization, and mechanics, showed insignificant differences. It was indicated by their obtained F-ratios which were lower than the F table. Respectively, their obtained F-ratios were 0.071, 0.669, and 3.755 for the three aspects. Generally speaking, however, it revealed that the F-ratio of the holistic writing aspects (8.580) was higher than the F table (3.988). Thus, there was enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis. In other words, the hypothesis was accepted. Based on the results of the research findings, it can be concluded that the dialogue journals technique given to experimental group is proved to be effective in improving students' skill in writing narrative texts. Thus, it is suggested that teachers of English utilize this technique in their teaching writing. Besides, teachers should also give more attention, in addition to content, organization, and vocabulary, to language use and mechanics aspects of writing in teaching writing. It is simply because these two aspects were still in the fair to poor criteria. Suggestions are also addressed to future researchers that they can conduct an experiment more than 10 meetings and the subjects are either year-10 or -11 students. Furthermore, the research can be conducted to classes or programs with low cognitive development and/or affective problems. The researchers, in order to be neutral, do not have to be involved in teaching but they can assign one teacher or two different teachers to teach in the two groups.