THE EFFECT OF APPLYING THINK TALK WRITE

STRATEGY ON STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN

WRITING SPOOF TEXT
*Ingrid Laurensia Simanungkalit
**Sortha Silitonga

Abstract
This study dealt with the effect of applying Think Talk Write strategy on students
achievement in writing spoof text. It was an experimental research. The subject
was social students of Grade XI, SMA Negeri 17 Medan, which consisted of 113
students. The research was divided into two groups: experimental and control
groups. The instrument to collect the data was writing test. The result of the
reliability was 0.70, and the test was reliable. The data were analyzed by using ttest formula. The analysis showed the scores of the students in the experimental
group were higher than in the control group at the level of significant=0.05 with
the degree of freedom (df) 72,t-observed 4.871> t-table 1.994. The findings
indicate that applying Think Talk Write strategy significantly affected the
students achievement in writing spoof text. English teachers are suggested using
Think Talk Write strategy in order to improve students achievement in writing.
Keywords: TTW (Think Talk Write) Strategy, Student Writing Achievement,
Spoof Text, Experimental Design

Introduction
Background of Study
Human can not be separated with communication. Communication helps
human to deliver a message or more. The best instrument which is used to
communicate is language. According to Sanggam (2008:10) language is a set of
rules used of human as a tool of their communication. Language is an instrument
to convey information which is used to express ideas,feeling, purposes, thoughts,
and opinions in written or spoken way.There are many languages that human
beings produced in communicating with their societies.
One kind of languages that we learn as a foreign language is English.
English is considered as a global lingua franca which means English as a first

language, as a second language, and as a foreign language. English is officially

admitted as the first international language. Our government realise that by
learning English as a foreign language, students are able to communicate well in
all international activities such as; diplomacy, global tender, tourism, education,
and so forth. In formal education, people, in Indonesia, have generally learnt
English from elementary school until university and at present in some
kindergartens.
In learning English, there are four skills that the students should be
mastered in their study. The four skills are speaking, listening, reading, writing.
Writing is one of the four basic skills in learning English holds an important role
in daily communication. People use writing from simple activity to complex
activity. It is also one of the most important skills that can improve students
achievement in learning foreign language. As one of the basic language skills,
writing has a very complex process. Therefore writing is not easy as some people
think. Ratnasari (2004) as cited by Sadiyah (2011:164) states that these abilities
can be achieved only if a learner masters some techniques of writing such as how
to obtain ideas about what s/he will write on, how to express them in a sequence
of sentences, how to organize them chronologically and coherently, and how to
review and then to revise the composition until the writing is well-built.
Moreover, even English is officially taught for years and the students had passed
the National Examination, there is still no significant achievement especially in
students writing ability.
The study conducted by Msanjila (2005:15) reveals six glaring writing
problems, namely: capitalization and punctuation problems, inexplicitness or
fuzziness, poor organization or illogical sequence, spelling problems and
grammatical errors. There are some factors the students might think that writing is
difficult. First, they find difficulties in gathering their ideas and organizing them
in a good paragraph unity. Second, students do not have much idea of what to
write and how to start writing. As a matter of fact, they waste too much time
thinking about what they are going to write instead of freewriting. Third, students

are afraid of making errors. Most students only focus on not making errors
spelling, grammar, and punctuations - to their writing rather than strengthening
their ideas to be vivid. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are also important
parts in writing a paragraph, but the most important part is how the writers can
give clear views through their writing. Finally, most teachers tend to use the
traditional method. Here, the teacher takes the major role explaining everything,
doing what the student is supposed to do while the student's role is only listening
to what is uttered to him/her by his/her teacher.
In this study, the researcher while doing Field Practice Experience
(Praktek Pengalaman Lapangan: PPL) in one of the Senior High School in
Kabanjahe also found those problems. The students competence in writing
English was low. One of genres that Senior High students learn about type of texts
based on the syllabus for Grade XI in the second semester is spoof text. Spoof text
is a text which tells factual story, happened in the past time with unpredictable
and funny ending. The researcher found that most of the students were not able to
write spoof text successfully because the students were taught about spoof text
only once as long as the students get formal education in school.
Teachers hold an important role in solving students problems in writing.
Making the teaching-learning process interesting and meaningful, teachers can
apply strategy in the process to increase students writing achievement. In this
case, the writer implements Think, Talk, Write strategy to make students get their
own ideas and put them down in a good text. Think talk write is a teaching
strategy in facilitating the learners to speak and to write fluently.
Thus, in line with evidence above, the effect of applying Think, Talk,
Write strategy on students achievement in writing spoof will be tried by the
writer. The evidences on its effectiveness, especially in the context of teachinglearning writing achievement, are needed to find out. The writer needs to obtain
such evidences by conducting a research.

Research Question
In the relation to the background of the study, the research addresses the
following problem as the following:
Is there any significant effect of applying Think Talk Write strategy on students
achievement in writing spoof text?
Conceptual Framework
Writing can be defined a tool of delivering message as a process of
expressing and organizing the ideas, thoughts, and feelings into the right words in
a piece of paper. Writing is one of the ways to communicate with others in a
written text. Spoof is a kind of genre in writing skill that has function to share and
to entertain with others a real story of which the ending is funny to amuse the
audience or readers. Students imply that they are not able in writing spoof text
because they do not know how to develop their ideas, they dont have confident in
writing by their own words because they are not sure with their ideas, and
teachers do not have a good strategy in teaching the lesson to the students. There
are several ways the teacher can use to teach this type of text, one of them is by
applying the Think Talk Write strategy. Think Talk Write strategy has activities
that help students to solve their problem in getting higher score. By thinking
students can develop their ideas by comparing and setting the ideas that test
presents with their ideas and know what ideas that can be discussed. Talk with
their friends can make student share each other and test their ideas to get better
ideas. Every student may have different opinions about ideas discussed. By
sharing and testing their ideas, students get self-confident to use their own
language in the writing activity because they are sure that their ideas are good.
This activity also will help students to write spoof text because they just connect

ideas that they get from talking activity. It will make them easily in organizing
their ideas and write them in to good spoof text by their own words.
Methodology
This study was conducted by using an experimental research design. This
research consists of two variables. The dependent variable of this study is Think
Talk Write strategy while the independent variable is studentss achievement in
witing spoof text. This study was conducted in two groups, i.e an experimental
group which received the treatment by applying Think Talk Write strategy and a
control group which did not receive the treatment. Both of groups were given pretest and post-test with same items. It was applied in order to know the effect of
applying the Think Talk Write strategy on the students achievement in writing
spoof text.
Table 3.1 The Research Design
Groups
Experimental
Control

A.

Pre-test

Treatment
Applying Think Talk Write Strategy
Without Applying Think Talk Write
Strategy

Post-test

Population and Samples

1. Population
A population is defined as all members of any well-defined class of

people, events, or objects (Ary, 2010:148). Best (1981:8) states that population is
any group of individuals that have one or more characteristic in common that are

of interest to the researcher. It means that the researcher can gather and analyze
data from a group of individual which has more than one characteristic.
The population in this study was the member of second year students of
SMA NEGERI 17 Medan. There were seven parallel classes, namely XI IPA 1,
XI IPA 2, XI IPA 3, XI IPA 4, XI IPS 1, XI IPS 2, and XI IPS 3 and each class
consists of 40 students.The population was all social classes. So, the total number
of population was 120 students.
2. Sample
Best (1981:8) states that a sample is a small proportion of a population
selected for observation and analysis. Ary (2010:148) states that a sample is a
portion of a population. A sample is a group of individuals who represent the
whole individuals in the population (Arikunto, 2006: 38).
Two classes were taken randomly as the sample to represent the entire
population. The sample then was randomly taken by using lottery technique. It
was done by writing each class on a little piece of paper, rolling and placing them
in a box. Then the box was shaken and two pieces of roll paper randomly was
taken by the researcher and the researcher divided them into two groups; the first
was the control group (XI IPS 3) and the second was the experimental group (XI
IPS 2).

Technique of Analyzing the Data

To know the effect or result of the research, t test formula was used to
calculate, Arikunto (2010:254).
t =
[
(

][

Explanations:
Mx

= the mean of experimental group

My

= the mean of control group

dx2

= standard deviation of experimental group

dy2

= standard deviation of control group

Nx

= the total number of experimental group

Ny

= the total number of control group

Result and Discussion

This study was conducted by applying an experimental research. There

were two groups in this research, namely experimental and control group. The
students in experimental group were taught by applying Think Talk Write strategy
while the students in the control group were taught without applying Think Talk
Write strategy. The population of this research was the second year students of
SMA Negeri 17 Medan. Since all classes are homogen, the sample was taken
randomly. Class XI-IPS 2 was decided as an experimental group and class XI-IPS
3 was decided as a control group. The research was conducted during two weeks.
The treatment was given to the experimental group in two meetings after
administering the pre-test. Indeed, the students in experimental group had better
achievement in writing spoof text than those in control group. This was because

the students in experimental group were taught how to write a spoof text well by
applying Think Talk Write strategy; it was different with the control group which
was taught by conventional or lecturing method. After administering the
treatment, the post-test was done to both groups to measure the students
achievement in writing spoof text.
This research applied a writing test which the total score is 100. After
conducting the research, the researcher got the data of students scores in pre-test
and post-test from both experimental and control group. The data shows that the
total score in control group of pre-test is 1677 and post-test is 1867. The mean
score in the control group of pre-test is 45.32 and the post-test is 50.46. Moreover,
the total score in experimental group of pre-test is 1839 and the post-test is
2350.The mean score in experimental group of pre-test is 49.70 while the post-test
is 63.51. Based on the data above, it proves that there are different scores between
the two groups. The students scores in experimental group are higher than that in
the control one.
Conclusion And Suggestions
Conclusion
Based on the result of this study, the researcher found that the students
achievement taught by applying Think Talk Write strategy is higher than the
students achievement taught by without Think Talk Write strategy. It is indicated
from analyzing the data statistically that the result of calculation of t-test that tobserved value 4.871 is higher than t-table value 1.994 at the level of significant
of 0.05, which implies that the alternative Hypothesis (Ha) is accepted.

Suggestions
The study showed that the applying of Think Talk Write strategy could
improve the students achievement in writing spoof text. Based on the conclusion
given, the writer suggests that:
1. English teachers should apply Think Talk Write strategy in their
teaching learning process so that they can improve their students
achievement in writing spoof text because this method is designed to let
students sharing their ideas to write in good text. So it is expected for
the students to write a text especially spoof well.
2. Students should apply this learning strategy in writing a text because it
can stimulate students thinking when the students think their own idea
and share to others. Therefore, the students will find by applying Think
Talk Write strategy is easier to write down their idea into a good text.
3. The readers who are interested for further study related to this research
should explore the knowledge to enlarge their understanding about how
to improve students achievement in writing and search another
references.

References
Arikunto, S. 2006. Prosedur Penelitian: Suatu Pendekatan Praktek. Jakarta:
Rineka Cipta.
Ary, D., Jacobs, L.C. & Sorensen, C. 2010. Introduction to Research in Education
(8th edition). Canada: Cengage Learning.
Block, Cathy Collins. & Lacina, Jan. 2002. Progressive Writing Instruction:
Empowering School Leaders and Teachers (pp. 10-15). Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Brown, H. Douglas. 2000. The Principle of Languange Learning and Teaching.
San Fransisco: Longman.
Brown, H. D. 2003. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices.
California: Pearson Longman.
Fisher, R. 2002. Thinking to Write; Thinking Skills in Literacy Learning, in
Connecting, Creating: New Ideas in Teaching Writing. United Kingdom.
Gerot, L. and Wignell P.1994. Making Sense on Functional Grammar. Sidney:
Gerd Stabler.
Knapp, P. & Watkins, M. 2005.Genre, Text, and Grammar: Technology for
Teaching and Assessing Writing. Sydney, Australia: UNSW Press.
Muschla, G. R. 2011. Exploring Writing: Practice Makes Perfect. USA: The
McGraw Hill.
Nicholson, Margaret. 2011. A Dictionary of American-English Usage; based on
Fowlers Modern English Usage. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pardiyono.2007. PastiBisa! Teaching Genre-Based Writing: Metode Mengajar
Writing Berbasis Genre Secara Efektif. Yogyakarta: Andi Press.
Sadiyah. 2011. Improving Students Ability in Writing Descriptive Texts through
a Picture Series-Aided Learning Strategy. Lamongan, Indonesia: The
English Teacher Vol. XL: 164-182. Retrieved from:
www.melta.org.my/ET/2011/164_182_Halimatus.pdf (Accessed on January
31st, 2014)
Vockell, E. L. 1983. Educational Research. New York:Macmillan.
Weigle, S. C. 2009. Assessing Writing. London: Cambridge University Press.

10