IMPROVING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITING ABILITY OF THE EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS OF SMPN 2 SELAT IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2022/2023 THROUGH COLLABORATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUE

Writing is the activity of pouring thoughts, feeling and thinking using writing language as a medium. Writing can be described as a language skill to communicate indirectly, whether people cannot face to face each other to express. Preliminary research showed that most of students VIII A students of SMPN 2 Selat in the academic year 2022/2023 faced problem in writing, especially in writing descriptive text. When the teacher asked to write a descriptive text, the students of the eighth-grade seemed still confused about what they should write. Therefore, the application of an appropriate teaching method is required. The study attempted to investigate whether the writing ability of the eighth-grade students of SMPN 2 Selat in the academic year 2022/2023 can be improved through collaborative writing technique. The subjects consisted of 36 students; 17 females and 19 males. The design was classroom action research. It was done in two cycles, and each cycle consisted of two sessions. The findings of the study revealed that the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text has increased after the collaborative writing technique was applied in teaching-learning process. Data showed that there were significant improvements of the subjects’ mean scores from the pre-test and posttests. The mean score of the pre-test was 49.36, post-test I was 71.22, and post-test II was 81.11. As supporting data, the questionnaire was also administered in the end of the last cycle and the result showed 92% of the subjects positively agreed on the implementation of collaborative writing technique in improving writing ability. It could be concluded that writing ability of the eighth-grade students of SMPN 2 Selat in the academic year 2022/2023 could be improved through collaborative writing technique.