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.

C. Limitation of the Problems

Conducting research covering all of the problems previously stated would not be feasible for the researcher. Therefore, the problem in this study is limited to the teaching method. The researcher only focused on improving students’ writing by implementing the more appropriate method which was cooperative learning for XI IPS 1 Students at SMAN 1 Seyegan in the academic year of 20132014. The researcher decided to implement the cooperative learning to improve students’ writing ability after considering some reasons. First, cooperative learning could promote students to work together in groups and enhance students’ performance. Second, it would be more effective and efficient when students worked and discussed the given task instead of working individually. Third, cooperative learning would boost students’ motivation and self-esteem. Students would not be worried about making mistakes but they are encouraged to share opinions with their groups. Furthermore, cooperative learning allowed using various teaching media that could be used during implementing the strategies so that the activities would not be monotonous.

D. Formulation of the Problem

This research study was aimed to answer “how can cooperative learning improve writing ability of XI IPS 1 students of SMAN 1 Seyegan in the academic year of 20132014?”

E. Objective of the Study

The objective of this study was to improve students’ writing ability of XI IPS 1 students of SMAN 1 Seyegan in the academic year of 20132014 through cooperative learning.