THE USE OF THINK-PAIR-SHARE COMBINED WITH PICTURE TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILL OF THE EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP PGRI 5 DENPASAR IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2022/2023

Writing is one of the productive language skills that students in all grades should learn. In school, writing istaught to develop and generate the students’ ideas or thoughts in written form, such as a paragraph. However, the students still had difficulties making a well-written paragraph, especially in generating and organizing their ideas in a descriptive paragraph. In addition, they did not know how to organize the paragraph in terms of generic structures, unity, and coherence. Besides, the English teacher still used a monotonous technique in teaching writing. The current research objective was mainly intended to find out whether the writing skill of the eighth-grade students of SMP PGRI 5 Denpasar in academic year 2022/2023 can be improved through think-pair-share combined with picture. The present study made use of a classroom action research design that was conducted in two cycles. The required data were collected by administering the research instruments: paragraph construction tests in the pre-test and post-tests and a questionnaire for the study subjects. After the cyclical research processes, it was found that think-pair-share combined with picture was appropriate to improve the subjects’ writing skills, primarily writing descriptive paragraphs. It could be seen from the results of the pre-test, post-test 1, and post-test 2, which showed significant improvement in the students’ writing skills. Furthermore, it was supported by the questionnaire, which showed positive responses to the implementation of thinkpair-share combined with picture. It can be concluded that writing skill of the eighth-grade students of SMP PGRI 5 Denpasar in academic year 2022/2023 could be improved by implementing think-pair-share combined with picture.