Selection of the Problems Based on the Urgency Level Determining of the Actions to Overcome the Selected Problems

12. The teacher focused on text rather than using fun media. T 13. The activities that the teacher gave were less varied. T 14. The teacher did not give the effective feedback. T S: Students T: Teacher From the identified problems above, the English teacher and the researcher then discussed the crucial problems to solve.

2. Selection of the Problems Based on the Urgency Level

As stated in the beginning of Chapter I, the researcher only focused on improving the students’ writing skills. Therefore, she decided to overcome the field problems based on the urgency level and feasibility to solve. In deciding the problem to solve, she also applied the democratic validity by having discussions with the English teacher and the collaborators to overcome the problems and to find the solutions that would be applied in her class. The field problems to solve are presented in Table 5. Table 5: The Field Problems to Overcome No Field Problems Code 1. Students’ comprehension about the organization of the text, language use and mechanic was still low. S 2. Students lacked vocabularies. S 3. The acts of cheating were identified in the students’ writing. S, T 4. Inappropriate insufficient dictionaries were brought by the students. S 5. Students got some difficulties in understanding the teachers’ explanation. S 6. Students were very noisy and hardly focus on the materials S 7. The students rarely did task in pairs groups. T 8. The students’ cooperation in group pair work was low. S 9. Students were less encouraged to work in groups. S 10. The teacher did not give the effective feedback. T

3. Determining of the Actions to Overcome the Selected Problems

Based on the discussion between the English teacher and the researcher, they agreed to do the cooperative learning strategy supported with some additional actions. 1. Giving a handout of today’s materials as a brief guideline. 2. Brushing up the previous materials at the first and the end of the class. 3. Providing the students with the picture-based vocabularies which are related to the topic to develop their mastery of vocabulary. 4. Giving effective feedback by analyzing most errors made by the students and training the students to give feedback. The following table shows the determined actions to solve the problems. Table 6: Determined Actions to Solve the Problems of the English Writing Teaching and Learning Process in Grade VII at SMPN 2 Playen No Field Problems Actions Expected results 1. Students’ comprehension about the organization of the text, language use and mechanism was still low. The Students got more exposures related to the organization of the text and minimum requirement mistakes.  The students would comprehend the organization of the text and apply it in the text.  The students would minimize the minimum requirement mistakes. 2. Students lacked of vocabularies. The Students got more vocabulary exposures related to the topic. Providing the students with the picture-based vocabularies and an E- dictionary which helped the students improved their mastery of vocabulary. The students would improve their vocabularies related to the topic. 3. Inappropriate insufficient dictionary brought by students. 4. The acts of cheating were identified in the students writing. Students were given some motivation and peer tutoring to increase their confidence. There would be no cheating done by the students. 5. Students got some difficulties in understanding the teacher’s explanation.  Students received additional explanation through peer tutorial.  The T used Indonesian and Indonesian translation in some difficult aspect so the students could easily understand. The students could easily understand the material. 6. Students were very noisy and hardly focus on the materials Forming new seating arrangements were done to effective the cooperative learning.  The students would more focus on the materials.  The class situations would be more conducive. 7. The students were rarely did task in pairs groups. The Students did various Cooperative Structures. The students would do more cooperative learning activities. 8. The students’ cooperation in group pair work was low. The students’ cooperation would be higher than before. 9. Students were less encouraged to work in groups. The students would be more encourage working in groups. 10. The teacher did not give the effective feedback. The T gave effective feedback by analyzing most errors made by the Students and trained the Students to give feedback. The students would be more aware of their minimum requirement mistakes and minimize it.

B. The Implementation of Actions 1. Report of Cycle I

a. Planning

After the discussion with the English teacher and the collaborators, the researcher planned the cooperative learning strategy to improve the students’ writing skills. In order to make an effective cooperative learning, she added some additional actions. The action plans of the Cycle I can be performed below. 1 Implementing cooperative learning. Before implementing cooperative learning strategy, in order to minimize the unnecessary noises in the class, the researcher planned to reform the seating arrangement of the students. She planned to use some Kagan Cooperative Structures in forming the groups so the students would have various group in each activity. The examples of Kagan Structure for forming the groups are Inside- Outside Circle, Mix-Freeze-Group etc. In this cycle, she tried to use Inside- Outside Circle to pair the students. The other important reason why the researcher would change the teams is that it would give the students opportunity to transfer their team work skill to a new social context. It also prepared the students to thrive in diversity. In Cycle I, the researcher planned to ask the students to involve in groups, pairs or individual learning. They are RallyRobin, RoundRobin, and Carousel Feedback. In RallyRobin, the students took turn stating responses or solutions in pairs. Same with RallyRobin, the students took turn stating responses or solutions