THE IMPORTANCE OF NOTICING IN IMPROVING EFL STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS

The role of noticing in the second language acquisition has been increasingly considered by some researcher in L2 acquisition. Previous studies of the effect of noticing on EFL students’ task performance have shown that noticing has significant roles, especially on students’ grammar acquisition. However, the problems concerning how noticing does have something to do with the improvement of EFL students’ writing skills still need to be explored. As known that Writing skills has become one emerging factor in second language acquisition. Therefore, this study tries to seek whether noticing can give positive effect on EFL students’ writing skills in terms of five aspects, namely: (1) content, (2), organzation (3), Language Use, (4),Vocabulary, (5), mechanic. Noticing is proposed to lead students achieve an accurate use of L2 writing skills in an appropriate context of communication by making them aware and notice the form of certain features which can help them reconstruct their interlanguage. Therefore, Noticing does not only promote the students’ accuracy and explicit knowledge, but also provide them with opportunities to communicate and negotiate meaning to improve fluency and achieve implicit knowledge on their written work

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS ON RECOUNT TEXTS THROUGH COLLABORATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUE

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS ON RECOUNT TEXTS THROUGH COLLABORATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUE (Classroom Action Research on Grade Eight of SMP N 2 Sentolo in the Academic Year of 2011/2012) Amrih Bekti Utami 07202244062 The objective of this research is to describe the actions conducted to improve the students’ writing skills on recount texts through collaborative writing at grade eight of SMPN 2 Sentolo. This research applied the principles of classroom action research. The use collaborative writing in this research is expected to improve students’ writing skills on recount texts. The research consisted of two cycles. On each cycle, the researcher collaboratively involved the research members namely, the English teacher, the students, and the researcher herself. It was divided into two main steps, namely reconnaissance which is the step of identifying the field problems and the action which is the step of planning, implementing, evaluating, and reflecting the actions. The data were obtained from the observation during the implementation of the actions, interview transcripts, and the students’ tasks. The data were presented into qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data were in the form of field notes and interview transcripts. Meanwhile, the quantitative data were gained by assessing the students’ writing skills through the pretest and posttest. The result of this study shows that the use of collaborative writing is effective to improve students’ writing skills. From the data obtained, it can be said that the students were more enthusiastic to attend the lesson. They had motivation to write. They were also able to create positive relationship when they worked collaboratively in groups. It was because they had multiple pairs of eyes to proofread the writing. Besides, the students were offered the opportunity to give and receive immediate feedback on language used on their writings.Therefore, the teaching-learning process became more interesting and the students enjoyed the writing process. The improvement was also found in the writing aspects namely, content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. As a result, the students could perform better writing on recount tex