My Final Project

ABSTRACT

Nirmala, Nirna. 2011. The Effectiveness of Pairs Check Activity to Improve the Students’ Skill in Writing Analytical Exposition (An Experimental Study of the Eleventh Grade Students of SMA Negeri 1 Pemalang in the Academic Year of 2010/2011). Final Project. English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. Semarang State University. Supervisor: I. Intan Permata Hapsari, S. Pd., M. Pd. II. Dr. Dwi Anggani LB, M. Pd.

Key words: pairs check activity, analytical exposition text, experimental study.

This final project is an experimental study that aims to investigate the effectiveness of teaching using pairs check activity to improve the students’ ability in writing analytical exposition. The subjects of the study were the eleventh grade students of SMA N 1 Pemalang in the academic year of 2010/2011. There were two classes of students participated in this study. They were students of XI PSIS 2 as the experimental group and XI PSIS 3 as the control group.

There were five meetings for each class. One meeting was for pre test, three meetings were for treatments and one meeting for post test. Before the treatment was conducted, the pretest was given to both groups. In the pre-test, the students were asked to write an analytical exposition text based on the topic provided. Post test was given after the treatment was done.

The result of this research showed that the average scores of pre-test from the two groups were nearly the same. The mean of pre-test for the experimental group was 68.46 and 68.19 for the control group. After the two groups were given different treatments, the score of the two groups increased, in which mean of the experimental group was 79.22, and for the control group was 75.73. The improvement of the experimental group was 10.76, and 7.54 for the control group. After that, I applied z-test to investigate the significant difference between the two means. The result of applying z-test based on the difference of two means revealed that the obtained value (2.832) was higher than z_table value for α = 5% and df = 72 (1.96). It means that there is a significant difference between the students who were taught by using pairs check activity and those who were taught without using pairs check activity.

Based on the result above, pairs check activity is an effective technique to improve the students’ ability in writing analytical exposition. It is suggested to the teachers that they can apply pairs check activity in teaching writing, especially in teaching analytical exposition.