JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching http://ojs.ikipmataram.ac.id/index.php/jollt/index Email: jollt@ikipmataram.ac.id DOI: https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v8i1.2213 January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 p-ISSN: 2338-0810 e-ISSN: 2621-1378 pp. 40-47 JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 40 THE EFFECT OF TEAM PRODUCT TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY IN WRITING AT SMPN 1 JONGGAT Zukhairatunniswah Prayati English Teacher, SMPN 1 Jonggat, Central Lombok, Indonesia Corresponding email: anisprayati@gmail.com Article Info Abstract Article History Received: November 2019 Revised: December 2019 Published: January 2020 This study investigated the effect of team product to improve students‟ creativity in writing at the 8 th -grade students of SMPN 1 Jonggat, Central Lombok in the academic year 2018/2019. The research was designed as quasi experiment research. The students were divided into the experimental group and control group. The experimental group was treated using the team product method while the control group was subjected to a conventional method. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential analysis. The data in this research was taken from the mean scores of students‟ achievement and the score percentages. The subject of this research was the 8 th -grade students of SMPN 1 Jonggat, which consisted of 54 students. The instruments of this research were tests and questionnaires. The mean score of students‟ creativity in the experimental group was 75 and the writing skill was 76. It was higher than the students in the control group. It can be concluded that the team product had a positive effect on students‟ writing skills in relation to creativity at SMPN 1 Jonggat. Keywords Team Product; Creativity; Writing; How to cite: Prayati, Z. (2020). The effect of team product to improve students‟ creativity in writing at SMPN 1 Jonggat. JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, 8(1) pp. 40-47. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v8i1.2213 INTRODUCTION Among four language skills, writing is considered important to be developed by students. This skill allows students to produce and create ideas into texts. Hyland (2003: 14) explains writing as a way of sharing personal meanings and writing courses emphasize the power of an individual to construct his or her own views on a topic. It implies that writing is a way to express opinions or to emphasize and build up views on certain issues. As stated by Stenberg and Lubart (1998: 3) in Torrance (2016: 22), creativity is viewed as an ability to produce work that is both novels (i.e. original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e. useful, adaptive concerning task constraints). Therefore, creativity is seen as an ability in someone to create anything one‟s wants. Someone may produce something based on his/her ideas. They can produce anything with the abilities they have and give more innovation to create new things. Hence, in terms of writing, which is a productive language skill, creativity becomes very essential when dealing with the creative process. Chaplin, (1999, in Hidayat, 2008: 2) mentions creativity as an ability to produce a new form in arts or in the case of machinery or to solve problems by using new methods. Civilization is evidence of the creativity of humans since thousand years ago. Writing requires creativity to enable students to present varied ideas into a composition of various genres. They have to be creative in what they consider as appropriate and interesting to be shared with readers. For teaching writing skills, creativity becomes the main source of writing activity (Haerazi, Prayati, & Vikasari, 2009). Semi (2007: 14) defines writing as a creative process to generate ideas into symbols of writing. In this sense, symbols mailto:anisprayati@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v8i1.2213 Prayati The effect of team product to improve… JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 41 are merely media to record ideas into transferrable works. However, writing is mostly seen as a challenging task for students in learning a foreign language. In some prior observation sessions, the researcher identified that students of 8 th grade in SMPN 2 Jonggat had problems in developing their writing skills, especially dealing with narrative text. This genre requires students to expose ideas dealing with narration or story of events. Students should be creative to be able to present a proper narration by using language in a sophisticated manner. The researcher found that students encountered problems dealing with their creativity in writing. Considering the problem encountered, this study came with a conclusion to encourage students‟ creativity by using a new method to teach, i.e. Team Product (TP). Huda (2013: 130) explains that the name of TP refers to an inquiry to the students to create work in teams. TP requires students to work collaboratively in presenting writing by sharing ideas to compose single writing as a team. This study was initiated based on an assumption that interaction among students may boost up creativity in students. By working in a team, students may have different insights to improve their ideas. Therefore, this study was intended to overcome the problem of writing activity, especially dealing with creativity. To achieve the goal, students were expected to engage in group work, in which the study would like to see whether the method could improve students‟ creativity. Literature Review Understanding Writing & English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learning Writing is a process of producing a written text or manuscript. Hyland (2003: 3), defines writing as marks on a page or a screen, a coherent arrangement of words, clauses, and sentences, structured according to a system of rules. Meyers (2005:2) says that writing is a way to produce language you do naturally when you speak. Based on the statement above, it can be defined writing is a coherence arrangement that creates a post from the small unit, starting from the words, clauses, and sentences. Writing also includes skill which has grammatical and lexical features of English. The produced work is not merely a composition of sentences but should also be proper in terms of grammar, exposing certain ideas, and understandable. It was in keeping with what Haerazi et al. (2018) develop that writing in EFL classes always was focused on the grammar, idea, content, and vocabulary usage. Students at the junior high schools are expected early to acquire a lot of vocabulary, master English spelling, and know how to use those in phrases and sentences (Rafida, 2017). In fact, students still have a lack of vocabulary and grammatical competences. various instructional methods and strategies are applied by teachers to solve these problems. One of the appropriate strategies to help students improve their vocabulary acquisition is the use of the team product in terms of collaborative learning activities. Brown & Biley (1984: 39-41) mention five indicators of writing, i.e. grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, style, and fluency. Those indicators are used to access the quality of a text. These indicators are classified as a normal standard to assess writing skills. Definition of Creativity Boden (1998: 347-356) defines creativity as a fundamental feature of human intelligence and inescapable challenge for artificial intelligence (AI). Creativity is part of intelligence in humans. According to Stenberg and Lubart (1998: 3), creativity is defined as an ability to produce work that denotes novelty (original and unexpected) and appropriate (useful, adaptive, and concerning task constraints. In this sense, creativity is dealing with an ability ina human to create a product by generating their ideas and/or combining ideas in order to have a new creation. Prayati The effect of team product to improve… JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 42 Indicators of Creativity According to Thorne (2007: 45), there are four indicators of creativity, which is based on the number of activities, as follows. Fluency, thinking of many ideas; this is dealing with generating ideas in the context of the Torrance Test, within the intention of making a toy to be a better toy, in which one is trying to encourage the flow of ideas. Flexibility, thinking of different ways to do or use things; this indicator is identified as a popular creative thinking parameter used in many creative thinking contexts by adults as well as children by showing the class of an item then ask students to mention different uses of an item. Originality, thinking of different unique things; is dealing with an endeavor to get the students to seriously think „outside the box‟. Elaboration, expanding perspective; show the students a regular item or picture of an item then ask them to think of further ideas on what the item can do over and over to extend the current capacity. Team Product Huda (2013: 130) explains why the technique is called TP due to activity in which each group asked to create something. In this sense, TP is a kind of method or the strategy of learning. In TP, all learning activities are dealing with making certain products. To encourage individual responsibility from each student, the teacher may distribute different tasks to each student that will be integrated with other members in a group to create a collective product. The use of TP may cover all indicators of creativity with the help of peers to grow ideas, have different ways to use things, think about the uniqueness of things. RESEARCH METHOD Research Design The researcher used a quantitative approach by applying a quasi-experiment study. Data were taken by using a test. The quantitative data analyses used to know the performance from the learners with the purpose of measuring their attainment of specified criteria. Qualitative data includes almost all information that can be captured and is not in the form of numbers but description. The use of the team product method in learning writing was to produce a narrative text. There were certain procedures of applying TP in learning, as follows: (1) students were distributed into groups; (2) every group consisted of four people; (3) students from each group were asked to choose a topic to be discussed; (4) students discussed the topic given; (5) each student were required to take a part in discussion, while one of the members wrote a composition based on every member‟s thoughts and ideas. Place of the Research: This research was done at the 8 th -grade students of SMPN 2 Jonggat, Central Lombok in the academic year 2019. This study was conducted one month, two sessions every week. The Instrument of the Study To collect the data, the researcher used two kinds of instruments to obtain the data, a test, and a questionnaire. The test was used to know the achievement made by the students. The researcher used this test to know the effect of the TP method to improve students‟ creativity in writing. The kind of test used in this research was a work-based test, in which students were asked to produce a narrative text about their childhood story. By observing students‟ works, the researcher got to know how creative the students were in making narrative text. In order to see students‟ creativity, each student was given a questionnaire test then asked to fill it, to know their responses. The questionnaire was used to get information from the students. The researcher prepared fifteen questions in the questionnaire. To get scoring measurement, the researcher applied a “Likert scale", which was consisted of five Prayati The effect of team product to improve… JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 43 ranges, i.e. strongly agree, agree, hesitant, disagree, and strongly disagree. The researcher calculated the whole students‟ scores to measure the percentage of the responses given. Techniques of Data Analysis As mentioned earlier, this study was designed as a quantitative study. To analyze the data, based on Sugiyono (2017: 49), the researcher calculated the mean score. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential analysis. The descriptive analysis was conducted to find out the mean, mode, median, and standard deviation. Meanwhile, the inferential analysis was done to know the different mean scores between the two groups. In addition, the study also figured out the level of creativity by processing data of students' responses to the given questionnaire. If the score percentage of students was high, it indicated a positive response towards the use of TP by the students. On the other hand, a low score meant that students had negative responses towards the team product technique during the learning and teaching processes. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Research Findings In this chapter, the researcher discussed the result of the research. The aim of the research was to describe the TP method to improve students‟ creativity in writing at first- grade students of SMPN 1 Jonggat in the academic year 2019/2020. The problem that inspired this research was that the students had low creativity in writing. When the students were asked to create a narrative text, they got confused. The creativity of students was low. However, after the teacher implemented the TP method, finally the level of students‟ creativity was improved. Pre-test Results The writing test was conducted on 13 th March 2019. The teacher gave the students a writing test in the fourth meeting. As a work-based test, the teacher asked the students to produce a narrative text. The researcher analyzed the students‟ writing to find out the level of creativity in their works after engaging in learning activities using the TP method. The score of total students‟ examination in the pre-test was 52. This result became the basis to see the improvement after being taught using TP later. In the pre-test, only six students passed the KKM. It was found that some students were still confused about how to create a narrative text and lack of creativity in creating a text. After conducting the pre-test, the researcher gave treatment by using TP. Post-test Results After treatment given, a post-test was conducted on Wednesday 27 th March 2019, with the same work-based test instruction. The students were required to make a narrative text about their interesting experiences. The result of the post-test was improved than the pre-test results. There were 16 students who passed the minimum passing grade, while the three of them showed improvement but failed to pass the minimum passing grade. The average score in the post-test was 77. The percentage of students who passed the passing grade was improved from 44% to 84,21% after being taught using the TP method. It means that the use of TP had increased students‟ creativity in writing. Research Finding From Questionnaire To know the students‟ responses towards the use of the TP method, all students were asked to fill a questionnaire. Students' responses could give data regarding their learning attitude using TP. Based on the students‟ responses to the questionnaire given, this study found that there were 14 students who chose strongly agree on the effectiveness of using the Prayati The effect of team product to improve… JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 44 TP method to raise creativity in writing. By analyzing the responses, it was found that 75,78% of students chose strongly agree that the use of the TP method could improve their creativity in writing. Hence, 18,5% chose to agree, while 4,21% chose do not know. Only 1,40% chose to disagree and no one chose strongly disagree. Discussion Based on the research findings, it can be stated that the team product method has a positive effect to improve students‟ writing performance at SMPN 1 Jonggat. Students are able to improve their writing skills after the teacher treats them using the team-product method in relation to creativity. In the phase of collaborative works, students are asked to notice any topic going to write. In groups, they practice drafting some information in the form of a simple sentence. Besides, they are provided with instructional exercises to lead them to think of a topic sentence. it is in line with Haerazi and Irawan (2019) who found that the more students are provided with writing exercises, the more they have a chance to share their ideas and creativities. Exchanging ideas in the group seems to be an explanation of this result. Students had time to develop their ideas by delivering it in a group. Other members of the group gave a response to the ideas, which enriched one‟s perspective or thoughts. This learning activity helps students to improve their collaborative reasoning. It was reinforced by Lin et al. (2015); Ma et al. (2017); and Morris et al. (2018) who found that small-group and dialogic instruction direct students to develop their cognitive aspects. The team product method also provides students with writing activities that encourage them to think critically, resolve creatively, and work in the form of teamwork. For instance, given an interesting topic around them, students are able to produce a simple descriptive text although there are some grammatical errors still happening. It was seen in the step of learning, students are requested to write an introductory paragraph of the descriptive text. They discuss in the group the generic structure of the paragraph and what kinds of tenses used. This learning activity encourages students to write creatively. It is in line with Babayigit (2019) who states “providing students with creative writing activities helps them improve their writing attitudes to practice writing much more”. Implementing the team product method for students in junior high schools is helpful because the level of students adjusts their writing abilities. Writing in junior high school level is generally developed later than other skills (listening, speaking, and reading). Because of this reason, the students should be equipped with the knowledge and skills such as one of the 21 st -century skills, creativity (Cretu, 2017). In the writing practice, students are asked to develop some topic sentences into a sentence. These activities trigger students to arrange their ideas into a simple paragraph. In this study, creativity was seen as an attribute variable that gives an effect on students‟ writing performance. The teacher provides students with creative activities to involve them in doing creative thinking and it can help them as well to develop their writing and imagination to write. It was in keeping with (Sternberg, 2015); and Ahmadi and Besancon (2017) who found that introducing creative thinking in the classroom can provide benefits such as developing learners‟ imagination and increase their thinking discoveries. It is also to help students to form personal well-being (Plucker et al., 2004) and develop their curiosity, openness, and communication abilities (Dunn, 2004). In the teaching of writing skills, students are engaged in any writing exercise to raise their thinking creativity. In the team product method, the learning activities are designed with various writing topics. For instance, in groups, students are engaged in reading activities to build their knowledge of the text. It is relevant to link students‟ prior knowledge with what they are going to write. It was in line with Kuper et al. (2018) who found that creative Prayati The effect of team product to improve… JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 45 thinking seeks to learn how to read and write and also students can be engaged in creating pieces of creative output. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION Conclusion The researcher found a problem when the researcher did the observation at the 8 th -grade students of SMPN 2 Jonggat, Central Lombok. It was students‟ low creativity. The researcher wanted to research about how to improve students‟ creativity in writing by using team product method. The researcher wanted to know how the creativity of students in writing improved by team product method. The team product was effective to facilitate students to practice writing. The learning activities were relevant to improve students‟ writing skills in relation to their creativity. This method also provides students with learning activities that are able to exchange ideas in groups. Students feel much time to develop their ideas by delivering it in a group. Other members of the group give responses to the ideas, which enriched one‟s perspective or thoughts. Besides, this learning activity helps students to improve their collaborative reasoning. It was also designed in the form of the small-group and dialogic instruction that direct students to develop their cognitive aspects. The result of the research was succeeded because there were 84, 21% of students who passed the achievement standard enacted by the school. It was about 16 students who pass the achievement standard and only three of the students did not pass it. It means that the team product method improved students‟ creativity in writing. The researcher conducted treatments using the team product method. It was able to achieve the students‟ passing grades at the posttest. The researcher proved that team product is a good method based on students answer on the questionnaire. The response of students was good to respond to. The scoring percentage of students who strongly agree with the team product method was 75%. It means that the method succeeds. This method was able to apply in the next teaching-learning process. Suggestion For the English teachers, they should really know about the characteristic of every student because if we want to make some group in the class we really need that knowledge, so than the group will more effective. The next is the teacher should know what kind of method that can make the students interested in the learning process because if the method that we use is not interesting, it will give the effect to students‟ comprehension. For the English learners, they must be an active student it purposed to get more knowledge and more comprehension. If the students only attend the class without doing anything it will waste your time. They need to be involved in any writing activities. Besides, they should be provided with various writing topics to facilitate them more fun in groups. For the next researchers, they understand about the method that will use, we must really understand our method so then our research will run well. REFERENCES Ahmadi, N., & Besancon, M. (2017). Creativity as a stepping stone towards developing other competencies in classrooms. Education Research International https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1357456 Arikunto, S., Suhardjono., & Supardi. (2014). Penelitian Tindakan Kelas, Jakarta: PT. Bumi Aksara. Babayigit, O. (2019). Examining the effect of creative writing activities on reading, writing and language lesson attitudes of elementary school fourth grade students. European Journal of Educational Research, 8(1), 213-220 https://doi.org/10.12973/eujer.8.1.213 https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1357456 https://doi.org/10.12973/eujer.8.1.213 Prayati The effect of team product to improve… JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 46 Boden, M. A. (1998). Creativity and Artificial Intelligence. England: University of Sussex. Cretu, D. (2017). Fostering 21st century skills for future teachers. The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences, 23, 672-681. http://dx.doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.05.02.82 Dunn, L. L. S. (2004). Cognitive playfulness, innovativeness, and belief of essentialness: characteristics of educators who have the ability to make enduring changes in the integration of technology into the classroom environment [Unpublished doctoral dissertation], University of North Texas. Haerazi, H., Prayati, Z., & Vikasari, R. M. (2019). Practicing contextual teaching and learning (CTL) approach to improve students‟ reading comprehension in relation to motivation. English Review: Journal of English Education, 8(1), 139-146. https://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v8i1.2011 Haerazi, H., & Irawan, L. A. (2019). Practicing Genre-Based Language Teaching Model to Improve Students‟ Achievement of Writing Skills. IJELTAL (Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics), 4(1), 9-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.21093/ijeltal.v4i1.246 Haerazi, H., Irwansyah, D., Juanda, J., & Azis, Y. A. (2018). Incorporating Intercultural Competences in Developing English Materials for Writing Classes. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 9(3), 540-547. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0903.13 Hartana, S. (2013). Peningkatan Keterampilan Menulis Karangan Deskripsi dengan Metode Field Trip. Skripsi, Universitas Negri Yogyakarta. Heaton, J. B. (1990). Writing English Language. New york. Longman Inc. Hidayat, B. (2008). Pengembangan Kreativitas Menurut Tipologi Berpikir. Yogyakarta. Huda, M. (2013). Cooperative Learning Metode, Teknik, Struktur dan Model Penerapan. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar. Hyland, K. (2003). Second Language Writing. Hongkong: The University of Cambridge. Imran, F., & Sumarni, Bq. (2015). ELT Material Development. unpublished: IKIP Mataram. Karolina, I. (2006). Teaching Narrative Text in Improving Writing to The Tenth Grade Students of SMA Negeri Petarukan. Skripsi. Semarang. Universitas Negeri Semarang. Lin, T.-J., Anderson, R. C., Jadallah, M., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., Kim, I.-H., Kuo, L.-J., et al. (2015). Social infuences on children‟s development of relational thinking during small- group discussions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 41, 83–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.12.004 Ma, S., Anderson, R. C., Lin, T.-J., Zhang, J., Morris, J. A., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., et al. (2017). Instructional infuences on English language learners‟ storytelling. Learning and Instruction, 49, 64–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.12.004 Morris, J. A., Miller, B. W., Anderson, R. C., Nguyen-Jahiel, K., Lin, T.-J., Scott, T., et al. (2018). Instructional discourse and argumentative writing. International Journal of Educational Research., 90, 234–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2018.03.001 Pelton, R. P. (2010). Action Research for Teacher Candidates. United States of America Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY. http://dx.doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.05.02.82 https://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v8i1.2011 http://dx.doi.org/10.21093/ijeltal.v4i1.246 http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0903.13 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2014.12.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.12.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2018.03.001 Prayati The effect of team product to improve… JOLLT Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, January 2020. Vol.8 , No.1 | 47 Plucker, J. A., R. A. Beghetto, and Dow. G. T. (2004) “Why isn‟t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research,” Educational Psychologist, 39(2), pp. 83–96. Purwanto, N. (2013). Prinsip-Prinsip dan Teknik Evaluasi Pengajaran. Bandung. PT. Remaja Rosdakarya. Rafida, T. (2017). The integration of vocabulary and effective sentence mastery towards students‟ argumentative writing skills. REGISTER JOURNAL, Language & Language Teaching Journals, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2017, pp.1-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v10i1.1-11 Sternberg, R. J. (2015). Teaching for creativity: The sounds of silence. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9(2), pp. 115–117 Sudijono, A. (2009). Pengantar Statistik Pendidikan. Jakarta: PT Raja Grafindo Persada. Sugiyono. (2017). Statistik Untuk Penelitian. Bandung: Alfabeta. Sugiyono. 2018. Metode Penelitian Pendidikan. Bandung: Alfabeta. Thorne. Kaye, 2007. Essential Creativity in the Clasroom Inspiring Kids . 270 Madison Ave. New york Torrance, E. Paul. 2016. Comunicating Creativity as Delineated. The Center for Gifted. Geoge. Yuniarti, E. (2014). Keefektifan Metode Team Product Dalam Pembelajaran Keterampilan Berpidato Persuasive Siswa Kelas x SMKN 1 Karanganyar Kebumen. Thesis, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. http://dx.doi.org/10.18326/rgt.v10i1.1-11 Indicators of Creativity Team Product Place of the Research: This research was done at the 8th-grade students of SMPN 2 Jonggat, Central Lombok in the academic year 2019. This study was conducted one month, two sessions every week. The Instrument of the Study Techniques of Data Analysis Post-test Results Research Finding From Questionnaire The researcher found a problem when the researcher did the observation at the 8th-grade students of SMPN 2 Jonggat, Central Lombok. It was students’ low creativity. The researcher wanted to research about how to improve students’ creativity in writing... The result of the research was succeeded because there were 84, 21% of students who passed the achievement standard enacted by the school. It was about 16 students who pass the achievement standard and only three of the students did not pass it. It me... Suggestion