Background of the Study
During the teaching and learning, the students only worked with friends sitting next to them. Every student did not have the same level of
proficiency. Those who had friends with higher level proficiency could share and discuss better than those who were considered as lower level.
There was a student who changed his partner since he was not capable enough. He went to other students who have better understanding
to discuss the given tasks. Most of the students were passive, only some of them were active. During the teaching and learning process, some students
did not pay attention to the teacher but played and chatted along. The researcher also found that the students did not bring dictionary, so they
found problems when they were asked to change the word into the correct forms.
The second problem was concerned to the teaching media and materials. The materials were mostly adapted from the activities in the
LKS. The media was less various as the teacher only provided the handouts or LKS. Futhermore, the class was equipped with an LCD but it
was rarely used to support the teaching and learning process. The third problem referred to the teaching method. During the
observation, the researcher observed the activities conducted in the class. The teacher applied the PPP Presentation, Practice, and Production
approach during teaching writing. There were no other methods applied to motivate the students. The teacher used to provide the students with the
handouts containing three tasks related to the writing skill. There were
other media that could attract students like videos and pictures which were not provided. Using various media could help stimulating the students and
make them interested in the activities. The researcher suggested that cooperative learning could improve
students’ writing ability because cooperative learning has many strategies that can promote students’ motivation. The strategies are learner-centered
in which students are put in groups working together to attain a certain goal. There are some cooperative learning strategies proposed by Mandal
that could be implemented during teaching writing namely think-pair- share, round robin, three-minute review, buzz group, write around and
praise-question-polish. Furthermore, cooperative learning allows using various media during the activities that would stimulate students’
motivation to learn.