THE EFFECT OF APPLYING THINK-TALK-WRITE

STRATEGY ON STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT

IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT

*Indah Pratiwi
**Lince Sihombing
Abstract
This study is an attempt to discover the effect of applying Think-Talk-Write
strategy on students achievement in writing descriptive text. The objective of this
study were to find out whether applying Think-Talk-Write strategy affect the
students achievement in writing descriptive text. This study was an experimental
research. In conducting the research, the writer used 60 students of Al-Fattah
Senior High School Medan as the sample. The 60 students were taken from two
classes and they were divided into two groups namely the experimental group
who was taught by using Think-Talk-Write strategy and the control group who
was taught without Think-Talk-Write strategy. The data of the test were collected
by administering written test. The data were analyzed by using t-test formula. The
result of the analysis shows that the value of t-observed is higher than the value of
t-table (2,3> 2,00 ( = 0.05)) with the degree of freedom (df) = N-2 = 58. It means
that there is significant effect of applying Think-Talk-Write strategy on students
achievement in writing descriptive text. So the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is
accepted. The conclusion is that applying Think-Talk-Write strategy can
encourage and increase the students achievement in writing descriptive text.
Therefore, it is suggested that English teacher should try to apply this strategy.
Key words: Experimental Research, Think-Talk-Write Strategy, Descriptive Text

* A graduate of English Language and Literature Department of UNIMED

**A lecturer of English Language and Literature Department of UNIMED

Introduction
Background of Study
English is an international language that is used all over the world.It is
important for people to master English in oral and written form, in order to be
able to communicate, to share or convey message, ideas and feeling. Since
learning English isbecoming more and more important nowadays, it has been
introduced as the foreignlanguage taught in every school in Indonesia.Teaching
English will be related to four skills, they are: listening skill, speakingskill,
reading skill and writing skill. Reading and listening arereferred to the receptive
skills, while speaking and writing are referred to the productiveskills.By
mastering those four skills, students will be able to express ideas, feelings,
thoughts, opinions and the most required of those four skills in academic field,
that is writing.
Writing is very important to master since writing itself is an action to show
analytic activity, requiring evaluation and problem solving, yet it is also a
synthetic, productive process. Sharples (1999:6). By writing, student will learn
how to compile between information, ideas, thought and feeling become a unit
product that available for everyone. However, McCrimmon in Faulina (2013)
states that writing is the most difficult skill in learning process that allows the
writer to explore thoughts and ideas.
But, Reid in Nurussaniyah (2010) states that writing which consists of
process of talking, drafting, revising, and editing is usually easier, better and more
successful if it is done in groups. Nurussaniyah (2010) adds that written product
is influenced by some elements such as vocabularies, grammar, organization,

spelling and punctuation. In the first year of Senior High School, the basic
competency that should be achieved in the writing English subject is that students
have abilities in developing and producing written simple functional text in the
form of procedure, descriptive, narrative, news item and recount. Students of
Senior High School are claimed not only to be able to speak but also to write in
English. Based on Educational Unit-Oriented Curriculum, teaching and learning
process requires teacher to teach by genre based approach. Students should be
able to write various kinds of text. For the grade X, students are expected to
express the meaning of a short functional text and essay in the form of Procedure,
Recount, Narrative, News Item, and Descriptive.
Pardiyono (2006:165) states that descriptive text is a text which is contain
a description about an object, whether it is living thing or unliving thing including
human and animals. Its purpose is to describe a particular person, place or thing
by using adjectives. During conducting observation in Al-Fattah Senior High
School, the writer found that students have some difficulties to write descriptive
text well in English. First, the students do not have enough vocabulary and ideas
to write. Second, the students cannot organize the ideas they have well.
Due to the condition above, the teacher should be able to apply the
appropriate strategy to teach descriptive text to the students. Teacher needs apply
an interesting and a helpful strategy that emphasized the thinking capability of
students. In this case, the writer believes that Think-Talk-Write (TTW) is one of
strategy which is appropriate to be applied in this teaching and learning process.

Think-Talk-Write is a cooperative learning strategy introduced by Huinker

and Laughlin. This strategy basically built through thinking, speaking and writing.
Martinis in Rahmawati (2013:28) states that Think-Talk-Write strategy is
grouping 3 up to 5 students in one group involving student to think and discuss by
themselves after read, then talk and share their ideas with their friend before they
write it. Think-Talk-Write focuses on how the students thinking clearly about a
topic. By thinking, students learn to find so many ideas and information related to
the topic. All of the information by individually then will be talked in a discussion
of group. By talking, each student in a group will learn how to share their idea and
information and compile it in a written form by writing skill.
Based on the previous explanation, this research will be implemented in
order to prove if the applying Think-Talk-Write is effective on students
achievement in writing descriptive text.

Research Question
As related to the background of the study, the problem is formulated as
follows: Is there any significant effect of using Think-Talk-Write Strategy on
students achievement in writing Descriptive Text?
Conceptual Framework
Writing is one of the skills which must be acquired in language learning.
Experience, events, ideas, information, and feeling can be expressed through
writing. Writing is demanding mental activity, where the writer should think what
they are going to write deeply by clear thinking skill. Most writing involves

deliberate planning, but it also makes use of chance discovery. Engaged writing
produces texts that become the source material to inspire contemplation and
constrain deliberate planning. In writing, writer should be able to find so many
knowledge and idea in order to make a written information that easily
comprehended by the reader. When the readers successfully comprehend the
writing, it means that writer is success.
Writing deals with a text. Text is combination of some paragraphs which
have a unity and coherence one another, with a clear conclusion. There are some
types of text. Writing here is only focuses on writing descriptive text. Descriptive
text is a type of genre that has main function to describe an object. In this case,
students feel difficult in writing because they are not able to organize idea and
knowledge they have into a good writing. So, the teacher decided to choose a
good strategy in order to make students more creative, capable, and also enjoyable
in writing. Think-Talk-Write strategy will be a good alternative to help teachers in
this case.
Think-Talk-Write strategy is focus on building thinking capacity, ability in
sharing idea in a group and deciding the most important idea that will be written
based on the structural. Think-Talk-Write strategy is a strategy that facilitating the
exercise of language both oral and written fluently. This strategy based on the
interpretation that learning is a social action. Think-Talk-Write strategy
encourages the students to think, talk, and write based on the particular topic.
Think-Talk-Write Strategy is used to develop the writing fluently and
exercise the language before write them. In this case, the students involve with

themselves to think or make dialogue after reading process, then talk by sharing
ideas with their friends before writing. For more effective, firstly, students are
divided into groups consist of 4-6 students for each group. In teaching and
learning process, there is a big goal that is students are able to construct their own
ideas and thoughts to produce a good text. This strategy is expected to be a good
strategy in teaching and learning descriptive text.

Methodology
This study was conducted by applying an experimental research. It means
that the writer attempted to describe a causal relationship between an independent
variable and adependent variable.Ary in Fransisca(2012) says that the
experimental research involves a study of the effect ofthe systematic manipulation
of one variable on another variable.
This experimental research was conducted to know the effect of applying
Think-Talk-Write strategy in writing descriptive text. This study used two groups,
namely an experimental and a control group. The experimental group was the
group which received a treatment by applying the Think-Talk-Write strategy while
the control group did not use the Think-Talk-Write strategy. The design was as
follow:
Table 3.1 Research Design
Sample
Experimental Group
Control Group

Pre-Test

Treatment
UsingThink-Talk-Write Strategy
Without UsingThink-Talk-Write
Strategy
6

Post-Test

The Population of the study is the grade X students of SMA AL-Fattah

Medan. There were 2 (two) parallel classes and the total number of students was
60. In selecting a sample, a random sampling technique was used in this study.
Technique of Analyzing the Data
In this research, the data was from experimental and control group. The
data was analyzed by using t-test formula.

The formula of t-test was presented as follow :

t = Mx-MydX2+dY2NX+NY-21NX+ 1NY

In which:
MX

: mean of experimental group

MY

: mean of control group

: the deviation square of experimental group

: the deviation square of control group

: the total number samples of experimentalgroup

NX

NY

: the total number samples of control group

Result and Discussion

According the calculation (see appendix C), the researcher consulted the
critical value on the t-table to check whether the difference was significant or not.
Before the experiment was conducted, the level of significance to be used in the
experiment had been divided first. For this experiment, the researcher used 5% (0,
05) alpha level of significance as usually used in psychological and educational
research.
Based on the data analysis, the two scoreof both experimental and control
groups were different after giving different treatment. The mean score of the
experimental group was higher than control group (18.5 > 12.6).
The result of the t-test calculation also showed that t-observed value (2.3)
was higher than t-table value (2.00) with = 0.05 and df = 58, so Hypothesis
Alternative is accepted. It indicates that Think-Talk-Write Strategy significantly
affects the students achievement in writing descriptive text.

From the result, it could be concluded that difference was statistically

significant. Therefore, based on the computation there was significant difference
between teaching descriptive text using and without Think-Talk-Write Strategy.
Teaching descriptive text using Think-Talk-Write Strategy was more
effective than teaching descriptive text without using Think-Talk-Write Strategy.

It could be seen by the result of the test where the students score was higher after
giving the treatment.
Both the test, pre-test and post-test was aimed at measuring the students
achievement in learning writing by using Think-Talk-Write Strategy. The post-test
was given after explained the Think-Talk-Write strategy. The researcher can
distinguish and compare the result of the test. By calculating the result of the test,
it can be distinguish between the pre-test and post-test which showed that the
using of Think-Talk-Write strategy can improve the students achievement in
writing descriptive text.

Conclusion and Suggestions

Conclusion
Having analyzed the data, it was found that Think-Talk-Write strategy
significantly affects the students ability in writing descriptive text, since t-obs> ttable (p=0.05) df=58, or, 2.3 > 2.00 (p=0.05) df=58. The using of Think-TalkWrite strategy in teaching descriptive text writing in the classroom enables the
students to write systematically and guided to write the text of description, to
gather all the information about the subject, process the information they have in
mind and develop it into good writing.
The students who were taught by applying Think-Talk-Write strategy have
a higher achievement than the students who were taught by using conventional
method. In other words, Think-Talk-Write strategy gives significant effect to the

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students achievement in writing descriptive text as they become more systematic

in writing the text.
Suggestions
The result of this research findings by applying of Think-Talk-Write
strategy significantly affects on students writing ability especially descriptive
text. Therefore, the following suggestions are offered to the following:
1. English teachers, to apply Think-Talk-Write strategy because this strategy

helps the teacher in teaching writing descriptive text.

2. Students, to share ideas and information before they write by applying

Think-Talk-Write strategy because it can help the students to write their

descriptive text well.

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(Ed.), Communication in Mathematics K-12 and Beyond (p. 81-88).
Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
Hyland, Ken. 2002. Teaching and Researching Writing. England: Longman
Sharples, Mike. 1999. How We Write. London and New York: Routledge
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