Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal Volume 1 Nomor 2, Juni 2018 e-ISSN :2597-3819 p-ISSN:2597-9248 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31539/leea.v1i2.178 91 THE APPLICATION OF PEER-ASSISTED STUDY SESSIONS (PASS) TO TEACH WRITING AT STUDENTS OF CLASS EIGHT OF SMP NEGERI SEMPOL BONDOWOSO Nostalgianti Citra Prystiananta 1 IKIP PGRI Jember, Indonesia Nostalgianti_citra@yahoo.com 1 Submit, 12-04-2018 Accepted, 29-05-2018 Publish, 29-05-2018 ABSTRACT The study aims at finding out whether or not it is effective to use PASS write model to teach writing at students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempolin Academic Year 2016/2017. The population of students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol with the sample class VIIIB consist27 students. The research was a pre-experimental research by applying one group of pre-test and posttest design. In collecting the data, the writer used the written test that was administered in pre-test and post-test. The data analysis was conducted throughcalculating the individual score, convert students score with school’s passing grade, and calculating t-test. The results show that in the pre-test, the students’ mean was 69.29. On the other hand, in the post-test their scores increased to 75.67. The result of paired t-test calculation presented the t-test score was 7.25 and the significance level was 0.05 with the df 26 (27-1) (1.703). It means that t-test score was higher than its t-score. Finally, it can be concluded that it was effective to teach writing skill through Peer-Assisted Study Sessions to students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowosoin Academic Year 2016/2017. Keywords: teaching writing, peer-assisted study session, PASSwrite INTRODUCTION As teachers of English, we face various problems in transferring knowledge to students. It is a huge responsibility that teachers have to do the activities professionally. Therefore, facing the everyday problems may acquire creativity and innovation. As Ingram and Kilmer (1958:67) said that a good teacher is a creative teacher. Creativity and innovation derives from sufficient knowledge of experience. By recalling information obtained from some experiences, teachers can be creative and innovative if it is also supported by good opportunities such as facilities. mailto:Nostalgianti_citra@yahoo.com1 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 92 Teaching English as a foreign language surely needs creativity because the language is not students’ first or second language which is used in every day communication. Teachers have to apply suitable methods, techniques, or strategies to assist students to cope the materials. Media are also important to be utilized to provide students more opportunities mastering English (Spodek and Saracho, 2003:141). However, teachers are not the only one factor which determines the success of students in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Their internal factors including students learning problems in getting involve to the material are also the things which cannot be neglected.The problems faced by students in EFL may happen to all countries in which English status is as a foreign language. In Indonesia and other countries, students’ problems, as revealed in the previous researches,are caused by negative attitude toward English and the level of language mastery (Megawati, 2016:45; Lavidas, Alexiou and Sougari, 2013:23). Active students prefer speaking but passive students prefer writing skill. Chinese also have difficulties specifically in writing English text. Essays wrote by English learners in China faces dilemmas (Chen & Chang, 2014:528). They are lack of vocabulary and grammar mastery as well as lack of systematic training experience in high school. Writing can be difficult for students because it requires idea organization by recalling prior knowledge of someone. It has to be well organized so that it may create a good writing to read. Writing skill is complex and sometimes difficult to teach, requiring mastery not only the grammatical and rhetorical devices but also the conceptual and judgment elements (Heaton, 1998:212). Writing needs more thinking in producing the composition. Thus, writing in the formal style is harder to do. Therefore, pair work can be effectively applied to enhance students writing skill because the skill requires more practice. In a pair work may assist students to solve the problem together with a partner without involving too many students that will cause unconfident feeling. PASSwrite model is one of teaching model which apply some sessions with the purpose to develop students’ academic writing abilities through cooperation with others (Williamson & Godlsmith, 2013:67). The model has been applied in many parts of the world in a higher education. For high school students, the model can be adapted to the level of high school students’ ability. The application of the model is a challenge for the researcher in conducting the research by adapting the model to junior high school students of SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowoso in Academic Year 2016/2017. 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 93 LITERATURE REVIEW Teaching Writing Temple and Nathan (1993:13) state that writing is a way of making marks that call to mind the ideas, which you had when you write. Writing has many functions, such as the media to express feeling, media to record important this, etc. Writing as a social activity, that is writing is one of the way of using a language to interact with others. Through writing someone may easily communicate to others in social communities. Writing is one the ways to reach academic goals so that it requires knowledge and experiences. Not all people are capable in writing, especially writing by using other languages that they do not speak everyday. Writing requires sufficient vocabulary mastery, grammar mastery, cohesiveness and coherence, actual information, etc. Those things may be leant through some period of times. The skill leads students to develop their ability because in writing activities they will recall information that they have and lay it down on a paper. They have to learn to string up the ideas with the writing devices. They are forced to solve the difficulties that they face when writing turns to be confusing. Writing also opens a communication access between teachers and students because teacher may know about their students individually from the writing that they do. Writing is not only concerning to process but also presenting a final product. It cannot be neglected that to create a good product, students have to be creative. This challenge is a little harder for teachers because every student is different. Facing the process, teachers have to be focus on the attention and approach to gradually develop students’ ability. In teaching writing, as in other teaching activities,there must be a feedback in teaching and learning activities. It is important to conduct feedback in the activities in which it finally shows the outcome. Yale Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d) mentions some feedback which can be also applied in writing class such as reflective teaching (concern on variants approaches to identify improvements), midterm student course evaluation (observe the class sessions and discuss them with students), end-of- term evaluations (manage the classroom through the Online Course Evaluations (OCE) system), teaching inventories and classroom observation protocols (assist teachers through a variety of published tools), peer evaluation of teaching (observe teacher’s activity one another), and small group feedback session (visit a class and conduct a group discussion with students). 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 94 Narrative Writing According to Sudarwati (2007:62), narrative text is a text to amuse the readers with actual or imaginary experience in difference ways. Narrative always deals with some problems which lead to the climax and then turn into a solution to the problem. Narrative text consists of the text organization and language feature. They are as follows: 1. Text Organization a. Orientation means that who were involved in the story, when and where. b. Complication means that a problem arises followed by the other problem. c. Resolution means that solution of the problem. 2. Language Feature a. The use of noun phrase b. The use of connectives c. The use of adverbial phrase of time and place d. The use of simple past tense e. The use of action verbs f. The use of saying verbs g. The use of thinking verbs, feeling verbs, verbs of senses. Narrative writing can be in form of short stories, novels, fables, fairy tales and many others. The story tells readers about amazing things that will entertain the readers and make them imagine the plot of the story. PASSwriting (Peer Assisted Study Sessions) Model Peer assisted has developed and implemented since many years ago. It is expected to be beneficial for students in improving performance and widening retention (Black & Mackenzie as cited in Green, 2011:90). PASS or Peer Assisted Study Sessions model is one of learning model to improve reading and writing skill of learners. It implements the peer learning which train students based on the discipline. It has been applied by many modern countries such as Australia, US and UK. In Australia, it is well-known as a mainstay for undergraduate students and has been implemented in 33 institutions. In brief, PASS sessions provide students with the opportunity to deconstruct academic texts in terms of meaning and structure; apply what is learned to their own writing; give and receive feedback on their academic writing in an informal and collaborative environment; and practice writing within the session. The role of the facilitator is to model successful academic-writing approaches, give feedback in small 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 95 groups and move the attendees through structured writing activities (Williamson and Goldsmith, 2013:3). In the sessions they have an opportunity to collaboratively work with others in which all students will participate to cooperative activities. Starting from pairing the students and give them topic, teachers as facilitator have to be active approaching students activity by giving advice and feedback. In this sharing idea and writing activity, they are provided with information from a short text. The next stage is feedback on their writing editing. Then students reflect what they learnt and teacher summarizes the session and previews the next session. Related Previous Study The similar study in applying PASS model was conducted by Mita Susanti in 2013 in using peer technique. The title of the research was “Using Peer Review Panel Technique in Teaching Writing to the Tenth Grade Students of SMA Negeri 5 Lubuklinggau.” There are similarities and differences between Susanti’s study and the writer’s study. The similarity is both used peer learning to teach writing. The differences are the result of the writer’s study showed that the students’ mean in the pre-test was 62.13 and the students’ mean in the post-test was 68.17. The result of paired t-test calculation showed that t-score was 6.40 which was higher than t-table 1.687. It means that it was effective to teach writing by using Peer Review Panel Technique to the tenth grade students of SMA Negeri 5 Lubuklinggau in the academic year of 2016/2017. RESEARCH METHOD In this research, the writer applied a pre-experimental method with one group pretest-posttest design. The pre-experimental method uses only one group of students. In other words, it does not use two groups but only one group or one class. In the one-group pretest-posttest design, a single group is measured or observed not only after being exposed to a treatment of some sort, but also before (Fraenkel, and Wallen, 2009:269). It means the group will be treated twice after pretest and before posttest. It just tries to investigate the achievement before the treatment and after the treatment. The design is as follows: Table 1. One Group Pre-test and Post-test Design Group Pretest Treatment Posttest Experiment T1 X T2 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 96 Explanation: T1 : Pretest T2 : Posttest X : Treatment The population of this study will be all the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri Sempol in academic year 2016/2017withthe total number of 97 students. The sampling technique was cluster random sampling conducted by getting the sample randomly in class groups. In the study the sample was class VIII B consist 27 students. To collect the data, the writer used a written test which was given before the teaching and learning activity (pre-test) and after teaching learning activities (post- test). To get a good test, the writermeasured the validity of the test. The test was in the form of composition and the students were asked to write a narrative text for 80- 100 words.The time allocation to do the test was 60 minutes. The data analysis was conducted through calculating student’s individual score. The scoring was administered by two raters using Heaton writing rubric. Then the scores were converted to the passing grade. The next step was normality calculation and paired t-test calculation. FINDING The findings present some results of calculation using the statistical procedure such as students score in pretest and posttest, normality and paired t-test calculation. A comparison of test scores are presented in the section to show the difference between test results from both tests as listed in the chart bellow. Chart 1Pre-test and Post-test Scores Comparison -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 0 10 20 30 Pre-test Post-test 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 97 From the chart above, it was known that the treatment was success in improving students’ writing skill significantly. It can be seen through the significance different of students’ score in pre-test ad post-test. The Result in the Pre-test The result of the pre-test showed that the highest score was 87.5 obtained by only one student and the lowest score was 50 obtained by one student. The calculation of the mean was 69.29 which were under the school passing grade. It was known that students’ writing skill was low. In scoring, it was done by two raters, namely, the teacher and the researcher. The calculation in the pre-test indicated that there was one student who got 50 as the lowest scores and one student who got 87.5 as the highest score. Chart 2.Students’ Pre-test Score Conversion to Passing Grade The Result in the Posttest Based on the calculation in the post-test from 2 raters, there was an improvement of students’ skill in writing because there was significance difference of students’ scores obtained in post-test. The lowest score in the post-test was 64.5 reached by 3 students and the highest score was 96.5 reached by one student. The mean in the post-test was 75.67. The writer also presented the comparison of students’ scores based on Passing Grade. There were 68% who passed the criteria in the post-test and there were 32% students who were failed. The score is presented in the following chart. 31% 69% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 Chart 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 98 Chart 2.Students’ Post-test Score Conversion to Passing Grade Normality Test Normality in Pre-test The calculation through the statistical procedures presented X² scorewas - 16.459 with degree of freedom (df) 6 (7-1). Since level is 95% (0.05), and the X²table was 6.33, it can be concluded that it is normal because X²obtained was-16.459 < X²table was 5.49. Normality in Post-test Based on the calculation of normality testing in the post-test, the result presented X² score was -20.75with degree of freedom (df)4 (5-1). Since level is 95% (0.05), and the X²table was6.33. It can be concluded that it is normal because X²obtained was -20.75< X²table was6.33 Paired t-test Calculation The statistical procedure of paired t-test calculation presented that tscore was 4.52. Then it was compared to the ttable with the significance level 5% was 1.703. Therefore, tscore was higher than ttable (4.51>1.703 ). Based on the criteria of hypothesis testing, if tscore was higher than ttable, it means that Ha was approved and Ho was rejected. In the other word, it was effective to teach writing skill through PASS write to students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowoso in academic year 2016/2017. 68% 32% 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 Chart 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 99 DISCUSSION Teaching English as foreign language has some difficulties to face. For English teachers, they have to teach the material in appropriate ways to attract students’ attention to follow the material easily. EFL students often face some problems in learning English which is different from their first and second language. One of important skill in productive skills is writing. Writing tends to be academic activities that have to be done to get involved in various sectors. Having analyzed the data obtained from the test, the writer interpreted the result of the data analysis. The result of both pre-test and post-test showed that there was significant difference between students score before the treatment and after the treatment. Before the treatment, the students’ mean in writing was 69.29 whereas the students’mean in the post-test was 75.67. The result revealed that teaching English is rather complicated. Teaching a foreign language, especially English, is pretty hard because in Indonesia, English is a totally different language. They are confused in writing English because it has different elements with Indonesian language. And of course, teaching English needs a bigger effort. Students usually get difficulties in learning English so they cannot understand English well. Some difficulties faced by students are in the mastering of skill and other aspects. But writing is one of the most difficult things in learning English. As stated by Chen & Chang (2014:528) that Chinese students in their research also faced some dilemmas in writing English. It happens regularly because in writing we need a creative ideas and a lot of supporting aspects like grammar and vocabularies. These important supporting components in writing were faced by students. Therefore to support the teaching and learning English, the teachers have to find out the ways to improve students’ difficulties. In the research, the writer applied one of teaching technique, namely PASS write. This technique was intended to improve writing skill of students at SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowoso. The reason was the writer found out that student there were having difficulties in writing. The problems were they felt hard to get the idea to write. They have lack of vocabularies. They could not arrange the idea into a good paragraph. Finally they fail to write something in English. Those problems commonly happened to the students who were learning English at school.The information was obtained when the writer had the interview with the English teacher there. Before apply the technique in the treatment, the writer conducted a pre-test. In the test, the students were asked to write a narrative text entitled “Sleeping Beauty”. 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 100 And the result of the test was far from the score of Passing Grade of 66.67. The mean in the pre-test was 69. 29. After doing pre-test, the writer treated the students by applying PASS write model. This model was applied in several steps. It needed teacher’s guidance to apply the model with several steps when students have to change the position from individual session to group session. The sessions really guided students to write step by step instruction until they reached the final writing of narrative paragraph. Finally, after doing the treatment, the writer did the post-test to test students’ improvement. The test was in the same form with the test in the pre-test. The difference was only on the topic given. After scoring the test, finally the result showed the improvement of students’ writing. It proved that PASS write as the way to teach English writing is effective as well as stated by Williamson and Goldsmith (2013:45) because it provides students with the opportunity to deconstruct academic texts in terms of meaning and structure; apply what is learned to their own writing; give and receive feedback on their academic writing in an informal and collaborative environment; and practice writing within the session. The research ultimately proved by the result of paired t-test calculation in which the t-score was higher than t-table score. The t-score was 4.51 and the t-table was 1.703 with the significant level 5%. It means the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was approved. It can be concluded that PASS write model was effective to teach writing tostudents of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol in academic year 2016/2017. CONCLUSION English teaching is challenging in a country in which it is a foreign language for the people. Teachers cannot stay and stuck to the old methods. They have to be innovative and always be creative to improve their students’ English skills. To reach the goal of improvement especially in writing skill, a model can also be applied. A model may used in teaching and learning process within one semester by adapting it into the needs to both teachers and students. Through a pre experimental design, the application of PASS write model has proved to be effective to teach writing to students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowoso. The result was obtained through some statistical procedure indicated a satisfying result. The significant scores different is 6.38 by calculating mean of pretest and posttest mean. Data verification is also derived from the calculation of paired t-test which shows the effectiveness of this model to teach writing narrative text to class eight of SMPN Sempol in academic year 2016/2017. 2018. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal 1 (2):91-101 101 REFERENCES Chen, S.K & Chang, Y.H. (2014).International conference on artificial intelligence and software.Pensylvania: DeSTech Publication. Feedback on Teaching. (n.d). retrieved from https://ctl.yale.edu/FacultyResources/Feedback-on-Teaching Fraenkel, Jack and Wallen, Norman. E. (1993).Education A Guide to The Process. Singapore: McGraw-Hill Book Co. For Manufacture. Green, P. (2011). A literature review of peer assisted learning (PAL). National HE STEM Programme Project. www.uni-bielefeld.de/.../peer.../A-Literature- Review-of-Peer-Assisted-Learning.pdf Heaton, H.B. (1998). Writing English Language Test. London: Longman. Ingram, V & Kilmer, S. (1958). A good teacher is a creative teacher. 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