Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 4 No.2, November 2016 74 THE INFLUENCE OF THE PYRAMID DISCUSSION TOWARDS THE STUDENT WRITING ABILITY Nazhan nullah SMA Darul Hikmah Mataram, NTB enoqnizam1@gmail.com Abstrak This research was aimed to know whether the " Pyramid Discussion" can give a significant influence toward the students' writing skill at the second year students’ of SMA Darul Hikmah in the Academic Year of 2016/2017. The research design of this study was pre- experimental design with pre-test and post-test one group only. The population of this research was the second grade student of SMA Darul Hikmah Mataram in the Academic Year of 2016/2017 that consist of 33 students with 18 males and 15 females students. Meanwhile, the instrument of this research was pre-writing test. The technique of data analysis were descriptive analysis and inferential analysis. Based on the result of the data analysis as the mean score of pre-test was 22.5 and the mean score of post-test was 28.2 Whereas the score of t-test was 9.24 the score of t-table was 1.68 with 32 of freedom degree it was the confidence level of 0.05 or 90% the findings indicated that the value of t- test was higher than the value of t-table (9.24 1.684). The conclusion of this research showed that " Pyramid Discussion" was significantly influenced the students' writing skill at the second year students’ of SMA Darul Hikmah in the Academic Year of 2016/2017. It can be conferred that the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected and therefore the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. Finally the researcher may conclude that the use of pyramid discussion in teaching writing was significantly influenced. Key Words: Pyramid Discussion and Writing. Abstrak Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui apakah "Diskusi Piramida" dapat memberikan pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap kemampuan menulis siswa pada siswa kelas II SMA Darul Hikmah pada Tahun Akademik 2016/2017. Desain penelitian dari penelitian ini adalah desain pra eksperimental dengan pre-test dan post-test satu kelompok saja. Populasi penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas II SMA Darul Hikmah Mataram pada Tahun Akademik 2016/2017 yang terdiri dari 33 siswa dengan 18 laki-laki dan 15 siswa perempuan. Sedangkan instrumen penelitian ini adalah pre-writing test. Teknik analisis data adalah analisis deskriptif dan analisis inferensial. Berdasarkan hasil analisis data sebagai mean skor pre-test adalah 22,5 dan skor rata-rata post-test adalah 28,2 Sedangkan skor t-test adalah 9,24 skor t-tabel 1,68 dengan derajat kebebasan 32 Tingkat kepercayaan 0,05 atau 90% menunjukkan bahwa nilai t-test lebih tinggi dari nilai t-tabel (9,24 1,684). Kesimpulan dari penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa "Diskusi Piramida" secara signifikan mempengaruhi kemampuan menulis siswa pada siswa kelas II SMA Darul Hikmah pada Tahun Akademik 2016/2017. Dapat disimpulkan bahwa hipotesis nol (Ho) ditolak dan oleh karena itu hipotesis alternatif (Ha) diterima. Akhirnya peneliti dapat menyimpulkan bahwa penggunaan diskusi piramida dalam pengajaran menulis sangat dipengaruhi. Kata Kunci: Diskusi dan Penulisan Piramid. INTRODUCTION Writing ability generally received in the classroom, taught experiences, teacher using some learning methods successively from easy to difficult one with some exercises. Even more people thought that Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 4 No.2, November 2016 75 English language is a foreign language, that an English teacher should have a set of enough vocabulary with good grammar. In many countries it is used as a first language and as foreign language of the second language. In principle, to write means to try to produce or reproduce written messages. Before we write, we need to determine what to write; we should have something meaningful to convey. When dealing with writing, we make the best to express our messages. Our purpose for communication. When we write, we intend to interact with our readers of using wtitten language. As in using spoken language to communicate, our principal purpose is to make our readers understand. One of the common problems is a lack of ability to construct grammatical sentences. Some students also often produce sentences that are grammatically correct, but semantically awkward or even wrong. The students have mastered the knowlwdge and skill of writing. They should know how to punctuate, how to arrange and administer the topic sentence and how to develop it, how to organize writing logically and clearly and so on. Most of students are still poor in writing. They fail to write good paragraphs. The way of material presentation of the writing is unsystematics; their sentences are faulty. Having seen the achievement of the second year students in writing, the writer concludes that the students are still not able to write very well in English because the students have less knowledge in vocabulary and grammatical structure. Dealing with such phenomena, the researcher did an observation and thus he concluded that most of students at SMA Darul Hikmah especially at second years grade have same factor that can influence their writing the sentence or story faulty such as, students lack of vocabulary mastery, students don not know how to start their writing, students have less knowledge about steps of writing and also in grammatical structure. Based on the explanation above, the researcher interested to apply "Pyramid Discussion" to help students writing skill and understand the kind of text generally. the researcher hopes that "Pyramid Discussion" can make the learners active in learning process because every student has to responsible to what they wrote with correct grammar and understand about what they wrote. "Pyramid Discussion" also can make students feel easily to write because they know how to choose the good topic, students understand how to start their story and can identify the differences between formal and informal language. In the statement of the problems study, the research question was: " Is there any significant effect of " Pyramid Dis cussion" toward the students' writing skill at the second year students’ of SMA Darul Hikmah in the Academic Year of 2016/2017. The purpose of the study was to find out the significant effect of "Pyramid Discussion"toward the students' writing skill at the second year students’ of SMA Daru lHikmah in the Academic Year of 2016/2017. The result of the research was expected to provide useful input for English teacher about the uses of teaching writing using Pyramid Discussion strategy, and also intended to inform the English teacher of any problems encountered by the student in learning how to use Pyramid Discussion strategy for teaching writing. Review of Related Literature Definition of Writing Writing is frequently useful as preparation for some other activity, in particular when students write sentences as a preamble to discussion activities. This gives students time to think up ideas rather than having to come up with instant fluent opinions, something that many, especially at Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 4 No.2, November 2016 76 lower levels, find difficult and awkward (Harmer, 2007: 33). Style is general characteristics that differentiate one individual from another. Learning strategy is those specific attacks that we make on a given problem, they are the moment by moment techniques that we employ to solve problems posed by second language input and output. Pyramid Discussion is a good interactive way of providing a model composition before asking students to do a similar one for individual homework. Where the alternative hypothesis (Ha) stated that"“there is a significant effect of using "Pyramid Discussion” in teaching writing at the second year students of SMA Darul Hikmah in the academic yer of 2016/207". Meanwhile the null hypothesis (Ho):“there is no significant effect of using "Pyramid Discussion” in teaching writing at the second year students of SMA Darul Hikmah in the academic year of 2016/207”. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Research Design This study is an experimental design. It is stated that experimental design is a means of collecting evidence to show the effect of one variable upon another practical compromises between true experimentation and the nature of human language behavior which we wish to investigate. The population of this study is all of the second year of students of SMA Darul Hikmah in the academic year of 2016/207. The students are still actively learning English as the compulsory subject in, the second year students of SMA Darul Hikmah in the academic year of 2016/207 consists of one class with 33 students. 18 students are males and 15 students are females. Sample refers to the technique or the procedure that the researcher will adopt in selecting some sampling units from which inferences about the population is drawn (Kothari, 2004: 153). The samples of this research are the second year student which is called as XI class. This research used total sampling technique, total population sampling was a type of purposive sampling technique that involves examining the entire population (i.e. the total population) that have a particular set of characteristics (e.g. specific attributes /traits , experience, knowledge, skills, exposure to an even, etc.). Research Instrument The instrument here is used to collect data. In this study, the researcher used a test for the instrument. The test is writing test which consists in the written test, the researchers will make the instrument in the form of essay with the obvious question, examples of instruments such as: Writing short stories two paragraph, describing the images of two paragraphs. RESEARCH FINDING AND DISCUSSION Research Finding Based on the research question in chapter one that was “Is there any significant effect of " Pyramid Dis cussion" toward the students' writing skill at the second year students’ of SMA Darul Hikmah in the Academic Year of 2016/2017?”. To find out the solution of the problem, the writer analyses the data obtained from pre-test and post-test. Then the writer presented the statistical computation of mean score both groups. The discussion continued to analysis and interpret the finding. The statistical computation covers the calculation of both pre-test and post-test experimental group. DISCUSSION Based on the result of the research finding above it was proved that pyramid discussion has significance effect toward Journal of Languages and Language Teaching, Vol. 4 No.2, November 2016 77 students writing skill, it proved a theory from the advantage of pyramid discussion itself in chapter II. This will help students to use the appropriate questions in the appropriate context a learning strategy that guides a student performance before during and after a task performance" by using pyramid discussion, it could gave students a good guide how to be a good writer in teaching and learning proccess it was seen based on the data analysis that included in research finding after the students score was convered with the t-tes, in which the students score higher than the t-test on the t- table. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION Conclusion The conclusions of this study is based on the result of the data analysis as the answer for question formulated in chapter one. The mean score of pre-test was 22.5 and the mean score of post-test was 28.2 whereas the score of t-test was 9.24 the score of t-table was 1.68 with 32 of freedom degree it was the confidence level of 0.05 or 90%. As the degree of freedom 32 on the table at the level of significance. The figure indicates that the value of t-test was higher than the value of t-table (9.24 1.684). Suggestion The teacher should be sure that the students have understood and mastered the material when they teach their students. The teacher should be patient, creative, and innovative in guiding their students. The teacher should applied pyramid discussion by combining or accompanying it with appropriate technique creatively. The students should be serious in studying English because English is one of the subject to past the final examination. The students should be active in English learning by using pyramid discussion because it is to make them ease to learn English. The students should be braver in sharing their opinion whether in written or spoken. The present study used relatively small sample, it is hope to the next researcher to use bigger and more representative sample. It is so worthy to pay more attention to the sampling technique when you do the research. It will guide you into a good, valid and representative result at the end of the study. This research is using pyramid discussion, so that is possible for the other researcher to asking some friends to help them in testing their students in collecting their data. REFERENCES Brown, H. Douglas. 2000. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching.Fourth Edition. White Plains, New York: Person Education. 2003. Language Assessment, Principles and Classroom practice. New York: Pearson Education. Harmer Jeremy, 2007.How to teach writing.England and Associated throughout the world.www. Longman.com Hyland Ken, 2004. Second Language Writing.Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York. Journal, Greece, Costas Gabrielatos, 2002. EFL Writing: Product and Process. Journal, Widodo, HandoyoPuji. 2008. Process-based academic essay writing instruction in an EFL context. Kothari, C. R, 2004. Research Methodology. 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