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the researcher also handed the scoring criteria rubric which were used to assess their writing. Also, as mentioned in the previous sub topic, the raters used the
rubric as the guidance for them to assess the students writing. In addition, the prompt writing question was made based on TWE Test of Written English,
which is well known for its validity Brown, 2001. In conclusion, the test also has construct validity.
Previously, the scoring criteria rubric to assess students’ writing has been mentioned several times. To get detailed explanation of the rubric, the researcher
discusses it in the following sub topic.
3.4.2 The Rubric of Pre-test and Post-test
To determine the score of the students’ writings, the researcher a needed rubric Hyland, 2003. The researcher made some changes to the original rubrics
made by Wagner 2002. Basically, it was because the words used were too difficult to understand. In making the adjustment or the changes to the rubric, the
researcher asked for suggestions from two parties. The first party was the teachers and the facilitators of an English course. All of them graduated from English
Language Education Study Program Yogyakarta State University YSU. The second party was the English teachers for science program in SMA Kolese De
Britto. After the criteria for each aspect had been adjusted, the rubric was finally
ready to use. There were four aspects to assess: focus, organization, sources and mechanicalgrammar features Wagner, 2006. Each aspect restricts the area that
should be assessed Hyland, 2003. The focus here was to assess the content of
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each paragraph: how many ideas presented by the writer and also how convincing the idea was. When the writer combined all the paragraphs together, the
organization aspect was used. Then, the raters assessed the way the writer developed the paragraph, began the text, presented the arguments, and finally
ended the discussion. On the other hand, sources tried to dig how much references or information the writer gathered to build the arguments. A persuasive text,
especially exposition, would be better and convincing when it had a lot of supports, evidences, or proofs Wagner, 2002. The last aspect was the mechanical
or grammatical features. It assessed the writer’s grammar. Basically, it required the writer to write the sentences effectively in good English. In short, these four
aspects were important to determine students’ writing skills in writing exposition text.
The aspects mentioned above were divided into four categories: excellent A, good B, acceptable C, and attempted D. From the order, it could be seen
that a very good persuasive text belonged to excellent category. On the contrary, the writing which was not yet satisfying belonged to the attempted category. In
order to be in certain category, there were several criteria.
3.5 Data Gathering Technique
In order to collect the data, the researcher took several steps. These steps of data gathering were discussed in the subsection below.
3.5.1 Preparation
Before the research could be conducted in the school, there were some preparations that should be done by the researcher Kothari, 2004. The first step
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was to ask permission from the school to do a research in the school APPENDIX 6. Then, the researcher also asked permission from the English teacher
APPENDIX 7. After that, the researcher discussed the time to conduct the research. In this case, the researcher followed the schedule given by the teacher.
Finally, an agreement about the time allocation was made APPENDIX 8. The next step was designing an assessment sheet or rubric to conduct the pre-test and
also the post-test. Last, the researcher came to school and conducted the experiment. The experiment lasted from April 30, 2014 until May 13, 2014.
3.5.2 Conducting the Pre-test
To measure the students’ level in writing before they got any treatment, the researcher conducted the pre-test APPENDIX 2. It was done before the
meeting began. The test was conducted for all the students in the treatment and control groups. In the pre-test, the students had to make an exposition text. The
submitted writings were then assessed by using the rubric that had been prepared before. Then, the students received treatment based on their group.
3.5.3 Conducting the Post-test
After conducting the pre-test, the treatment was given to both groups. The treatment group was taught by using GAIL and the control group was taught by
using the ordinary teaching-learning activities. The final result of these treatments was measured by the post-test APPENDIX 3. Similar to the pre-test, the
researcher gave the students an assignment to write exposition text. Then, their works were assessed by using the same rubric used to assess the pre-test.
3.5.4 The Method of Data Analysis
