THE OF PEER GROUP COLLABORATION TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ WRITING ABILITY (A Mixed-Method Study at the Seventh Grade in a Junior High School in Tasikmalaya)

Abstract

This study reports the effect of practicing peer group collaboration to develop students’ writing skill. This study aimed to reveal the differences between the students who were taught by practicing peer group collaboration and those who were not. A mixed method study is employed as a research design in this study. This study took place at the seventh grade in one of Junior High Schools in Tasikmalaya. The writer adopted purposive sampling to choose two classes as the participants of this study. First group was control group and the second one was experiment group. Three instruments to collect the data were utilized. They were test, observation and questionnaire. The quantitative data is taken from the writing test, while qualitative data was taken from classroom observation and questionnaires. The writing test was analyzed by means of the statistical descriptive based on the pre-test and post-test result taken from Fraenkel, et al. (2012, p. 196). The results showed that the value of t-test (=6,619) is higher than the value of t-table (= 2.000) which means that the null hypothesis (H0) was rejected, while the alternative hypothesis (H1) was accepted. The observation result showed that most students presented positive response in teaching learning writing by means of peer group collaboration. The questionnaire result showed that most students were more excited, active and confident in learning by means of peer group collaboration technique. This study concluded that the practice of peer group collaboration technique could develop students’ writing skill and knowledge.