THE EFFECT OF PLEASE STRATEGY AND WRITING INTEREST TOWARD STUDENTS ’ WRITING SKILL

The aims of this study are to find out whether there was a significant difference in writing achievement between the students who were taught by using PLEASE strategy and that of those who were not, to find out whether there was an effect of writing interest on the students writing skill to write descriptive text or not, and to find out whether there was an effect of writing interest on the students writing skill who were taught by using PLEASE strategy or not. The samples involved in this study were the seventh-grade students of SMP Negeri 2 Kayuagung, South Sumatera which were divided into two groups; experimental and control groups. The data were gathered by using written test and questionnaire and then were analyzed by using t-test and simple linear regression. The results showed that t-obtained (2.57) > t-table (2.0017) with the degree of freedom 54 (df = 56). It could be concluded that there was a significant difference between the students who were taught by using PLEASE strategy and that of those who were not. The next result showed that there was no effect of writing interest on the students' writing skill (the score t-obtained of the writing variable was 1.14 at a significant of 0.26). After the treatment, the score of the writing variable was 3.34 at a significant level of 0.003. It indicated that there was an effect of writing interest on students’ writing skills who were taught using PLEASE strategy. In conclusion, the students who were taught by using PLEASE strategy could be encouraged to have writing interest so that they could write a descriptive text based on the generic structure given.


INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of the communication tools used by everyone.According to Sinurat and Alicia (2013), writing is an essential skill used to communicate besides speaking and is a process of communication that takes place between the writer and the reader.In short, writing is a way of communicating where the author provides written information without dealing directly with the reader.Moreover, writing is a very important skill for students.It is supported by Mather, Wedling, and Robberts (2009, p. 1) who state that writing is the key to success in school experiences and an important communication tool that helps students learn how to organize and organize their thoughts.Yagelski (2015, p. 21) also adds that writing is a powerful way not only to describe but also to examine, to reflect on, and to understand our thoughts, feelings, opinions, ideas, action, and experience.In other words, writing is an act of pouring out the feelings, opinions, thoughts, and ideas that the author wants to share with the reader in written form where the writing is well organized so that the reader can easily understand it.
Although writing is very important to be mastered by students, students still have difficulties in expressing their ideas in writing.As Husna, Zainil, and Rozimela (2013, p.1) explain that writing is usually regarded as the most difficult skill to learn, not only because of the needs to master many skills of English: reading, speaking, and listening but also because of the difference between the learners' native language rules and that of the language being learned.Rass (2015, p.49) also states that writing is a difficult skill for native speakers and non-native speakers because writers must be able to write it in multiple issues, such as content, organization, purpose, audience, vocabularies, and mechanics including punctuation, spelling, and capitalization.To sum up, writing English is very difficult for students to master because English is a foreign language, has different writing rules than the first language mastered by students, and involves several aspects of writing such as punctuation, spelling, and capitalization.In addition, students must also write using the right vocabulary, coherent text content, and the right text organization so that readers can understand the content of the reading properly.
In the curriculum, the junior high school students especially the seventh-grade students are required to have the ability to write various kinds of text genres such as descriptive, narrative, report, recount, and procedure texts.One of the texts that students must learn is descriptive text.Husna, Zainil, and Rozimela (2013, p. 2)     group can be seen in Table 2 above.
The students' pretest in the control group which was displayed in Table 2 showed that no students were in excellent category, four students were in good category, ten students were in mediocre category, fourteen students were in poor category, and no students were in very poor category.While the students' posttest in control group showed that no students were in excellent category, three students were in good category, fourteen students were in mediocre category, eleven students were in poor category, and no students were in very poor category.

The Result of Normality Test
The results of the normality test for each research variables are presented as follows.Based on the table above, the significance was at 0.000.This showed that there was a significant increase in both data.
In  Based on the table above, the significance was above 0.000.This showed that there was no significant increase in both data.In addition, the increase in scores between pretest and posttest of control group increased slightly.The average score of students when pretest was 44.14, while in the posttest was 45.54.It indicated that the mean difference between pretest and posttest was 1.39.

Comparison of Posttest Writing Descriptive Texts for Experimental Classes and Control Groups
After testing the results of writing descriptive text in both groups, the results of both groups were increased from pretest to posttest.The increase in the experimental group was 13.60, while the control group was 1.39.To find out which group had the most significant increase, independent sample t-test was used.
Based on the calculation of the data, the mean difference of the experimental 45.54 = 9.10.It signified that there is a significant difference in writing achievement between the students who were taught writing descriptive text by using PLEASE strategy and that of those who were not.See Table 7.The table above showed that the average score of the experimental group was higher than the control group.The result of t-value was 2.57 with significance (2-tailed) of 0.013.This shows that t-obtained (2.57) was higher than t-table (2.0017) with the degree of freedom 54.By paying attention to the testing criteria, namely the probability <0.05, it can be concluded that Ho was rejected, while Ha was accepted.In other words, there was a significant difference between the students who were taught by using PLEASE strategy and that of those who were not.

Ability
After the regression test, the correlation score showed that the independent variable with the dependent variable was 0.21, the determination coefficient score showed the number of independent variable contributions to the dependent variable was 0.48 or equal to 4.8%.See Table 8.Based on Table 10, a regression equation score is obtained, the correlation coefficient is Y = 22.21 + 0.25, the score t-obtained the writing variable is 1.14 at a significant 0.26.This shows that there is no independent variable relationship with the dependent variable.In other words, there is no influence of writing interest on the ability to write student descriptive texts.See Table 10.

Ability using PLEASE strategy
After the regression test, the correlation score showed that the independent variable with the dependent variable is 0.54, the determination coefficient score shows the number of independent variable contributions to the dependent variable is 0.301 or equal to 30.1%.See Table 11.Table 12 showed sig.0.03 and Fcount 11.17 which meant the coefficient independent variable regression with a significant dependent variable.See Table 12.

CONCLUSION
Based on the analysis data using independent sample t-test, the result showed that t-obtained was higher than t-table (2.57>2.00).In other words, there was a significant difference in writing achievement between the students who were taught descriptive text by using PLEASE strategy and that of those who were not.The students who were taught by using PLEASE strategy had better improvement in terms of their writing achievement due to the guidance of writing descriptive text using PLEASE strategy.
The students' writing interest who were not given treatment showed that there was no effect of writing interest on the ability to write descriptive texts (the score t-significant of 0.26).The result indicated that the students who were taught descriptive text without the treatment were lack of writing interest.The students did not have a writing interest because they learned writing only listen to the teacher explanation.
The students' writing interest who were given treatment using PLEASE strategy showed the score of the writing variable was 3.34 at a significant level of 0.003.It indicated that there was a relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable.In other words, there was an effect of writing interest on students' writing skills taught using PLEASE strategy.
learning outcomes and tends to support the next learning activity.Therefore, great interest influence toward learning activities.It can be assumed that the students who have great writing interest will have a better score in terms of writing achievement.Based on the above background, the main problems in this study are formulated as follows.1) Is there any significant difference in writing achievement between the students who are taught by using PLEASE strategy and that of those who are not?, 2) Is there an effect of writing interest on the students' writing skill to write descriptive text?, and 3) Is there an effect of writing interest on the students writing skill who are taught by using PLEASE strategy?The seventh-grade students of SMP Negeri 2 Kayuguang were taken as the subject of this study.Out of five classes of the seventh-grade students, two classes were selected as the sample of this study.The samples were selected using purposive sampling method in which the class had the same criteria in terms of a total number of the students and the same English average score (75).The selection of the experimental and control groups were done by using the lottery.Consequently, class VII.4 was selected as the experimental group and class VII.5 was selected as the control group.Since there were two classes used, a quasi-experimental design with nonequivalent control group design.In this study, the experimental group was taught writing descriptive text by using PLEASE strategy while the control group did not give treatment.To measure the students' writing skill, the written test was used and to check the students' writing interest toward writing, a questionnaire was used.The questionnaire was given twice to the groups; before and after the treatment.The two raters who had the same criteria, namely have taught English for five years and had Magister Degree qualification were judged the students' descriptive writing based on an analytic scoring rubric.The rubric of writing was adapted from Brown (2007) which was consisted of content (30%), organization (20%), grammar (20%), vocabulary (15%), and mechanics (15%).Before analyzing the data, normality and homogeneity tests were carried out.The normality data of the test was done to detect the distribution of data in a variable used in the study.This test aimed to test the assumption that those taken from the population were normally distributed.Meanwhile, a homogeneity test was conducted to show that two or more groups of sample data came from populations that had the same variance.Homogeneity test tells whether one sample with another sample has an equation or homogeneous.

(
Ha) was confirmed.It could be said that the seventh-grade students' achievement in writing descriptive text was significantly improved by using PLEASE strategy at SMP Negeri 2 Kayuagung.The students who were taught by using PLEASE strategy had better improvement in terms of their writing achievement to the guidance of writing descriptive text using PLEASE strategy.Following this strategy, the students picked the topic, audience and type of the paragraph they planned to write.Then, they were encouraged to write by selecting an interesting topic.After that, they generated a list of ideas they planned to include in their writing and to evaluate their list to see if it was necessary to add more ideas.Next, they activate the paragraph by constructing a topic sentence, adding supported sentences using their list of ideas.Finally, they wrote a conclusion.After the students had finished their composition, they were encouraged to evaluate their work by revising their ideas and editing their mistakes.The students followed the PLEASE strategy several times so that they were accustomed to writing descriptive text more carefully to produce a good descriptive writing text.The result of the study was supported by Akincilar (2010, p.53) who said that PLEASE strategy is effective to improve the students' ability in writing a paragraph.On the contrary, the students' distribution score who were taught descriptive text by using PLEASE strategy was slightly increased.Out of 28 students, 2 students were at an excellent level and 3 students were at good level.Meanwhile, the rest of the students were at mediocre, poor, and very poor levels.The data were obtained of the students' level proficiency.In fact, the teacher had already taught descriptive writing text using PLEASE strategy intensively and forced the students to write descriptive text.Second, the students writing interest which compared to the result of students writing descriptive text showed that there is no influence of writing interest on the ability to write student descriptive texts.(the score t-obtained the writing variable is 1.14 at a significant of 0.26).In other words, the null hypothesis (Ho2)was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha2) was accepted.The result of the data indicated that the students who were taught descriptive text without the treatment were lack of writing interest.The students did not have a writing interest because they learned writing only listening to the teacher explanation.Besides, they tended to avoid learning writing because they had difficulty to share their ideas in the written form.Third, the result showed that the score of the writing variable was 3.34 at a significant level of 0.003.It indicated that there was a relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable.In other words, there was an influence of writing interest on students' writing skills taught using PLEASE strategies (Ha3 hypothesis was accepted).At the first time, the students who were taught descriptive writing by using PLEASE strategy had low motivation to learn writing.It could be seen when they were asked to write descriptive text, they said that they were lazy to write and the result of the questionnaire showed that they had no writing interest.Moreover, when the students were given treatment (PLEASE strategy), they were encouraged to write descriptive text so that they could write a descriptive text based on the generic structure of the text and had positive writing interest.
explain that descriptive text is a text which a writer tries to picture what he is describing which is used to describe a particular thing/object, place, or person.It can be

Result of Pretest and Posttest of Experimental Group
excellent category, one student was in good category, fourteen students were in mediocre category, thirteen students were in poor category, and no students were in very poor category.While the students' posttest in the experimental group showed that two students were in excellent category, eight

Table 3 The
Result of Normality the control group have a significant value greater than 0.05 (p> 0.05).The skill to write descriptive texts during pretest and posttest in the experimental group students was above the significant level of 0.05, namely at the level of 0.065 and 0.208.The results of the normality test of writing descriptive text

Table 5
Statistical Data of Pretest and Posttest Writing Descriptive Text of Experimental Groups

Table 6
Pretest and Posttest Statistical Data Writing Descriptive Text of Control Groups

Table 7
The Posttest Data of Statistics in the Experimental Group and Control Group