Abstract:
Writing is one of four basic skills which learners are required to master if they want to learn English. This research is using recount text to improve writing ability. Recount is speaking or writing about past events or a piece of text that retells past events, usually in the order which they happened. And as the medium is English diary, it is about the record of events especially a daily record of personal activities, reflections, or feelings.
English diary in teaching recount text connects to the aim of the research to find out whether there is any effectiveness of creating English diary to improve writing ability to the tenth grade students of SMA N 8 Purworejo in the academic year of 2013/2014. The sample of this research is two classes which are divided into experimental group (X-1, 30 students) and control group (X-2, 30 students). Those two groups were given the pre-test and the post test was given after conducting the treatment to investigate the effectiveness of the treatment.
The result of the research shows that creating English diary as a medium is effective in teaching writing recount text to the tenth grade students. The computation of t test shows that the Ha is accepted. It can be proven by the value of t-test. Compared to the value of t-table (3.056 > 2.000). The highest score from the whole score, both experimental and control of post test is 93. The highest score was gotten by the student in experimental group after got the treatment. Then the lowest score is 52. The lowest score was gotten by the student in the control group. After the test, the mean scores were found that the pre-test mean of the experimental group is 54.13 and 73.17 in post test. Meanwhile, the mean pre-test of control group is 56.40 and the post test is 66.60. Because the value of t test is higher than t table, the alternative hypothesis is accepted. Based on the result finding, it can be concluded that English diary in teaching writing recount text to the tenth grade students of SMA N 8 purworejo in the academic year of 2013/2014 is effective.
