Background of the Problem

5 had to be solved. The problem , popularly known as writer’s block, is actually quite common among many writers, even the professional ones. The reason behind it is really simple, human ’s mind is unpredictable. It needs stimuli to work and the researcher believed that when there was more than one brain that worked together, they would stimulate and inspire each other to work and think better. Besides those linguistic factors explained above, the students’ writing skills were also influenced by non-linguistic factors. One of them was related to the students. In this case, problems that came from students were usually in connection with their lack of motivation and interest, not only in the writing activity itself but also in English. In addition to the problems coming from the students, there were also several problems that arose from the teaching and learning process. Those were generally related to things such as classroom interaction and language practice. Related to classroom interaction, the students often did not get enough opportunity to have discussions with their fellow students in relation to the topics they were studying. In connection with language practice, most of the students hardly used English during the teaching and learning process. Those things above were a number of problems found among the eighth grade students at SMP N 1 Jogonalan Klaten. In regard to those problems, the researcher came up with a hypothesis that the best way to improve the students’ writing skills was by using cooperative learning method in teaching writing. The s tudents’ main problem was to generate ideas and the researcher believed that writing in a team or collaborative writing would solve that problem. 6

C. Limitation of the Problem

In this research, the researcher focused on how to make teaching and learning process more interesting by using cooperative learning method so that the students could enjoy writing activity even more. The researcher hoped that by conducting this kind of teaching and learning process, students would be motivated to explore writing skills on their own terms. The process also had more focus on helping students getting through the first step in writing generating ideas easily. The research was conducted among the eighth grade students. The text type that was used in this research was descriptive text. There were several types of writing activity the students had to do. The first one was producing short sentences. Next, students needed to compose a simple passage and, lastly, they had to put together a complete descriptive text. The materials, exercises, and pictures were given to the students in the form of handouts.

D. Formulation of the Problem

How can grade VIII students of SMP N 1 Jogonalan Klaten improve their English writing skills?

E. Research Objective

Based on the formulation of the problem above, the objective of this research was to improve English writing skills of grade VIII students of SMP N 1 Jogonalan Klaten by using cooperative learning.

F. Significance of the Study

This study was expected to give the advantages as follows: 7 1. Giving some contribution to English teachers and other subject matter teachers in the field of the research to solve problems related to teaching and learning methods. 2. Providing an option of learning methods in writing for students. 3. Being a basis for the next researchers to conduct advance research.