THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMIC STRIPS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL AT THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP N 7 PURWOREJO IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2013/2014

Abstract

English is used as the first foreign language in Indonesia. To be able to study it, we usually have an introduction to how to write. The most important is the writing of word in the English language. Written English language and Indonesian are very much different, then we must develop their intellectual capabilities. Writing skills is an aspect that should be practiced to students, because writing is very important in the smooth learning. The objective of this research is to find out whether there is any effect of using comic strip or not to improve student’ writing skill. This research is an experimental research which has conducted on the eighth grade students of SMP N 7 Purworejo in the school year of 2013/2014. In this research, the researcher took 64 students as the sample. As the experimental group, the researcher used class VIII B which consist of 32 students. Meanwhile, as the control group, the researcher took 32 students of class VIII A. Then, the researcher gave pre-test and post-test to both classes. The test is to make a paragraph after the students read the story in comic strips. Statistically, the researcher analyzed the data by using t-test separated variance. The result of this research revealed comic strips is effective to improve students’ writing skill, since it was found that the result of t-value is 4.349. Based on the 0.05 significant level, the value t-table is 1.999, the computation shows that t-value is higher that t-table that is 4.349> 1.999. The research finding indicate the students are interested in learning writing using comic strips.