Journal of Linguistics, English Education and Art (LEEA)

Volume 1 No 2, Juni 2018

e-ISSN :2597-3819
p-ISSN:2597-9248

THE APPLICATION OF PEER-ASSISTED STUDY

SESSIONS (PASS) TO TEACH WRITING AT STUDENTS
OF CLASS EIGHT OF SMP NEGERI
SEMPOL BONDOWOSO

Nostalgianti Citra Prystiananta

IKIP PGRI Jember, Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The study aims at finding out whether or not it is effective to use PASS write model
to teach writing at students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempolin Academic Year
2016/2017. The population of students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol with the
sample class VIIIB consist27 students. The research was a pre-experimental research
by applying one group of pre-test and posttest design. In collecting the data, the
writer used the written test that was administered in pre-test and post-test. The data
analysis was conducted throughcalculating the individual score, convert students
score with school’s passing grade, and calculating t-test. The results show that in the
pre-test, the students’ mean was 69.29. On the other hand, in the post-test their scores
increased to 75.67. The result of paired t-test calculation presented the t-test score
was 7.25 and the significance level was 0.05 with the df 26 (27-1) (1.703). It means
that t-test score was higher than its t-score. Finally, it can be concluded that it was
effective to teach writing skill through Peer-Assisted Study Sessions to students of
class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowosoin Academic Year 2016/2017.

Keywords: teaching writing,peer-assisted study session, PASSwrite

INTRODUCTION
As teachers of English, we face various problems in transferring knowledge to
students. It is a huge responsibility that teachers have to do the activities
professionally. Therefore, facing the everyday problems may acquire creativity and
innovation. As Ingram and Kilmer (1958:67) said that a good teacher is a creative
teacher. Creativity and innovation derives from sufficient knowledge of experience.
By recalling information obtained from some experiences, teachers can be creative
and innovative if it is also supported by good opportunities such as facilities.
Teaching English as a foreign language surely needs creativity because the
language is not students’ first or second language which is used in every day

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communication. Teachers have to apply suitable methods, techniques, or strategies to

assist students to cope the materials. Media are also important to be utilized to
provide students more opportunities mastering English (Spodek and Saracho,
2003:141).
However, teachers are not the only one factor which determines the success of
students in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Their internal factors
including students learning problems in getting involve to the material are also the
things which cannot be neglected.The problems faced by students in EFL may
happen to all countries in which English status is as a foreign language. In Indonesia
and other countries, students’ problems, as revealed in the previous researches,are
caused by negative attitude toward English and the level of language mastery
(Megawati, 2016:45; Lavidas, Alexiou and Sougari, 2013:23). Active students prefer
speaking but passive students prefer writing skill. Chinese also have difficulties
specifically in writing English text. Essays wrote by English learners in China faces
dilemmas (Chen & Chang, 2014:528). They are lack of vocabulary and grammar
mastery as well as lack of systematic training experience in high school.
Writing can be difficult for students because it requires idea organization by
recalling prior knowledge of someone. It has to be well organized so that it may
create a good writing to read. Writing skill is complex and sometimes difficult to
teach, requiring mastery not only the grammatical and rhetorical devices but also the
conceptual and judgment elements (Heaton, 1998:212). Writing needs more thinking
in producing the composition. Thus, writing in the formal style is harder to do.
Therefore, pair work can be effectively applied to enhance students writing skill
because the skill requires more practice. In a pair work may assist students to solve
the problem together with a partner without involving too many students that will
cause unconfident feeling.
PASSwrite model is one of teaching model which apply some sessions with
the purpose to develop students’ academic writing abilities through cooperation with
others (Williamson & Godlsmith, 2013:67). The model has been applied in many
parts of the world in a higher education. For high school students, the model can be
adapted to the level of high school students’ ability. The application of the model is a
challenge for the researcher in conducting the research by adapting the model to
junior high school students of SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowoso in Academic Year
2016/2017.

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LITERATURE REVIEW
Teaching Writing
Temple and Nathan (1993:13) state that writing is a way of making marks that
call to mind the ideas, which you had when you write. Writing has many functions,
such as the media to express feeling, media to record important this, etc. Writing as a
social activity, that is writing is one of the way of using a language to interact with
others. Through writing someone may easily communicate to others in social
communities.
Writing is one the ways to reach academic goals so that it requires knowledge
and experiences. Not all people are capable in writing, especially writing by using
other languages that they do not speak everyday. Writing requires sufficient
vocabulary mastery, grammar mastery, cohesiveness and coherence, actual
information, etc. Those things may be leant through some period of times.
The skill leads students to develop their ability because in writing activities
they will recall information that they have and lay it down on a paper. They have to
learn to string up the ideas with the writing devices. They are forced to solve the
difficulties that they face when writing turns to be confusing. Writing also opens a
communication access between teachers and students because teacher may know
about their students individually from the writing that they do.
Writing is not only concerning to process but also presenting a final product.
It cannot be neglected that to create a good product, students have to be creative. This
challenge is a little harder for teachers because every student is different. Facing the
process, teachers have to be focus on the attention and approach to gradually develop
students’ ability.
In teaching writing, as in other teaching activities,there must be a feedback in
teaching and learning activities. It is important to conduct feedback in the activities in
which it finally shows the outcome. Yale Center for Teaching and Learning (n.d)
mentions some feedback which can be also applied in writing class such as reflective
teaching (concern on variants approaches to identify improvements), midterm student
course evaluation (observe the class sessions and discuss them with students), end-of-
term evaluations (manage the classroom through the Online Course Evaluations
(OCE) system), teaching inventories and classroom observation protocols (assist
teachers through a variety of published tools), peer evaluation of teaching (observe
teacher’s activity one another), and small group feedback session (visit a class and
conduct a group discussion with students).

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Narrative Writing
According to Sudarwati (2007:62), narrative text is a text to amuse the readers
with actual or imaginary experience in difference ways. Narrative always deals with
some problems which lead to the climax and then turn into a solution to the problem.
Narrative text consists of the text organization and language feature. They are as
follows:
1. Text Organization
a. Orientation means that who were involved in the story, when and where.
b. Complication means that a problem arises followed by the other problem.
c. Resolution means that solution of the problem.
2. Language Feature
a. The use of noun phrase
b. The use of connectives
c. The use of adverbial phrase of time and place
d. The use of simple past tense
e. The use of action verbs
f. The use of saying verbs
g. The use of thinking verbs, feeling verbs, verbs of senses.
Narrative writing can be in form of short stories, novels, fables, fairy tales and
many others. The story tells readers about amazing things that will entertain the
readers and make them imagine the plot of the story.

PASSwriting (Peer Assisted Study Sessions) Model

Peer assisted has developed and implemented since many years ago. It is
expected to be beneficial for students in improving performance and widening
retention (Black & Mackenzie as cited in Green, 2011:90). PASS or Peer Assisted
Study Sessions model is one of learning model to improve reading and writing skill
of learners. It implements the peer learning which train students based on the
discipline. It has been applied by many modern countries such as Australia, US and
UK. In Australia, it is well-known as a mainstay for undergraduate students and has
been implemented in 33 institutions.
In brief, PASS sessions provide students with the opportunity to deconstruct
academic texts in terms of meaning and structure; apply what is learned to their own
writing; give and receive feedback on their academic writing in an informal and
collaborative environment; and practice writing within the session. The role of the
facilitator is to model successful academic-writing approaches, give feedback in small

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groups and move the attendees through structured writing activities (Williamson and
Goldsmith, 2013:3).
In the sessions they have an opportunity to collaboratively work with others in
which all students will participate to cooperative activities. Starting from pairing the
students and give them topic, teachers as facilitator have to be active approaching
students activity by giving advice and feedback. In this sharing idea and writing
activity, they are provided with information from a short text. The next stage is
feedback on their writing editing. Then students reflect what they learnt and teacher
summarizes the session and previews the next session.

Related Previous Study

The similar study in applying PASS model was conducted by Mita Susanti in
2013 in using peer technique. The title of the research was “Using Peer Review Panel
Technique in Teaching Writing to the Tenth Grade Students of SMA Negeri 5
Lubuklinggau.”
There are similarities and differences between Susanti’s study and the writer’s
study. The similarity is both used peer learning to teach writing. The differences are
the result of the writer’s study showed that the students’ mean in the pre-test was
62.13 and the students’ mean in the post-test was 68.17. The result of paired t-test
calculation showed that t-score was 6.40 which was higher than t-table 1.687. It
means that it was effective to teach writing by using Peer Review Panel Technique to
the tenth grade students of SMA Negeri 5 Lubuklinggau in the academic year of
2016/2017.

RESEARCH METHOD
In this research, the writer applied a pre-experimental method with one group
pretest-posttest design. The pre-experimental method uses only one group of students.
In other words, it does not use two groups but only one group or one class. In the
one-group pretest-posttest design, a single group is measured or observed not only
after being exposed to a treatment of some sort, but also before (Fraenkel, and
Wallen, 2009:269). It means the group will be treated twice after pretest and before
posttest. It just tries to investigate the achievement before the treatment and after the
treatment. The design is as follows:

Table 1. One Group Pre-test and Post-test Design

Group Pretest Treatment Posttest
Experiment T1 X T2

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Explanation:
T1 : Pretest
T2 : Posttest
X : Treatment
The population of this study will be all the eighth grade students of SMP
Negeri Sempol in academic year 2016/2017withthe total number of 97 students. The
sampling technique was cluster random sampling conducted by getting the sample
randomly in class groups. In the study the sample was class VIII B consist 27
students.
To collect the data, the writer used a written test which was given before the
teaching and learning activity (pre-test) and after teaching learning activities (post-
test). To get a good test, the writermeasured the validity of the test. The test was in
the form of composition and the students were asked to write a narrative text for 80-
100 words.The time allocation to do the test was 60 minutes.
The data analysis was conducted through calculating student’s individual
score. The scoring was administered by two raters using Heaton writing rubric. Then
the scores were converted to the passing grade. The next step was normality
calculation and paired t-test calculation.

FINDINGS
The findings present some results of calculation using the statistical procedure
such as students score in pretest and posttest, normality and paired t-test calculation.
A comparison of test scores are presented in the section to show the difference
between test results from both tests as listed in the chart bellow.
Chart 1Pre-test and Post-test Scores Comparison
100

80

60
Pre-test
40
Post-test
20

0
0 10 20 30
-20

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From the chart above, it was known that the treatment was success in
improving students’ writing skill significantly. It can be seen through the significance
different of students’ score in pre-test ad post-test.

The Result in the Pre-test

The result of the pre-test showed that the highest score was 87.5 obtained by
only one student and the lowest score was 50 obtained by one student. The
calculation of the mean was 69.29 which were under the school passing grade. It was
known that students’ writing skill was low.
In scoring, it was done by two raters, namely, the teacher and the researcher.
The calculation in the pre-test indicated that there was one student who got 50 as the
lowest scores and one student who got 87.5 as the highest score.

Chart 2.Students’ Pre-test Score Conversion to Passing Grade

60

50 31% 69%

40

30
Chart
20

10

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

The Result in the Posttest

Based on the calculation in the post-test from 2 raters, there was an
improvement of students’ skill in writing because there was significance difference of
students’ scores obtained in post-test. The lowest score in the post-test was 64.5
reached by 3 students and the highest score was 96.5 reached by one student. The
mean in the post-test was 75.67.
The writer also presented the comparison of students’ scores based on Passing
Grade. There were 68% who passed the criteria in the post-test and there were 32%
students who were failed. The score is presented in the following chart.

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Chart 2.Students’ Post-test Score Conversion to Passing Grade

80
70 68%
60
50
40
Chart
30 32%

20
10
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

Normality Test
Normality in Pre-test
The calculation through the statistical procedures presented X² scorewas -
16.459 with degree of freedom (df) 6 (7-1). Since level is 95% (0.05), and the X²table
was 6.33, it can be concluded that it is normal because X²obtained was-16.459 < X²table
was 5.49.

Normality in Post-test
Based on the calculation of normality testing in the post-test, the result
presented X² score was -20.75with degree of freedom (df)4 (5-1). Since level is 95%
(0.05), and the X²table was6.33. It can be concluded that it is normal because
X²obtained was -20.75< X²table was6.33

Paired t-test Calculation

The statistical procedure of paired t-test calculation presented that tscore was
4.52. Then it was compared to the ttable with the significance level 5% was 1.703.
Therefore, tscore was higher than ttable (4.51>1.703 ). Based on the criteria of
hypothesis testing, if tscore was higher than ttable, it means that Ha was approved and Ho
was rejected. In the other word, it was effective to teach writing skill through PASS
write to students of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol Bondowoso in academic year
2016/2017.

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DISCUSSION
Teaching English as foreign language has some difficulties to face. For
English teachers, they have to teach the material in appropriate ways to attract
students’ attention to follow the material easily. EFL students often face some
problems in learning English which is different from their first and second language.
One of important skill in productive skills is writing. Writing tends to be academic
activities that have to be done to get involved in various sectors.
Having analyzed the data obtained from the test, the writer interpreted the
result of the data analysis. The result of both pre-test and post-test showed that there
was significant difference between students score before the treatment and after the
treatment. Before the treatment, the students’ mean in writing was 69.29 whereas the
students’mean in the post-test was 75.67.
The result revealed that teaching English is rather complicated. Teaching a
foreign language, especially English, is pretty hard because in Indonesia, English is a
totally different language. They are confused in writing English because it has
different elements with Indonesian language. And of course, teaching English needs a
bigger effort. Students usually get difficulties in learning English so they cannot
understand English well.
Some difficulties faced by students are in the mastering of skill and other
aspects. But writing is one of the most difficult things in learning English. As stated
by Chen & Chang (2014:528) that Chinese students in their research also faced some
dilemmas in writing English. It happens regularly because in writing we need a
creative ideas and a lot of supporting aspects like grammar and vocabularies. These
important supporting components in writing were faced by students. Therefore to
support the teaching and learning English, the teachers have to find out the ways to
improve students’ difficulties.
In the research, the writer applied one of teaching technique, namely PASS
write. This technique was intended to improve writing skill of students at SMP
Negeri Sempol Bondowoso. The reason was the writer found out that student there
were having difficulties in writing. The problems were they felt hard to get the idea to
write. They have lack of vocabularies. They could not arrange the idea into a good
paragraph. Finally they fail to write something in English. Those problems commonly
happened to the students who were learning English at school.The information was
obtained when the writer had the interview with the English teacher there.
Before apply the technique in the treatment, the writer conducted a pre-test. In
the test, the students were asked to write a narrative text entitled “Sleeping Beauty”.

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And the result of the test was far from the score of Passing Grade of 66.67. The mean
in the pre-test was 69. 29.
After doing pre-test, the writer treated the students by applying PASS write
model. This model was applied in several steps. It needed teacher’s guidance to apply
the model with several steps when students have to change the position from
individual session to group session. The sessions really guided students to write step
by step instruction until they reached the final writing of narrative paragraph.
Finally, after doing the treatment, the writer did the post-test to test students’
improvement. The test was in the same form with the test in the pre-test. The
difference was only on the topic given. After scoring the test, finally the result
showed the improvement of students’ writing. It proved that PASS write as the way
to teach English writing is effective as well as stated by Williamson and Goldsmith
(2013) because it provides students with the opportunity to deconstruct academic
texts in terms of meaning and structure; apply what is learned to their own writing;
give and receive feedback on their academic writing in an informal and collaborative
environment; and practice writing within the session.
The research ultimately proved by the result of paired t-test calculation in
which the t-score was higher than t-table score. The t-score was 4.51 and the t-table
was 1.703 with the significant level 5%. It means the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was
approved. It can be concluded that PASS write model was effective to teach writing
tostudents of class eight of SMP Negeri Sempol in academic year 2016/2017.

CONCLUSION
English teaching is challenging in a country in which it is a foreign language
for the people. Teachers cannot stay and stuck to the old methods. They have to be
innovative and always be creative to improve their students’ English skills. To reach
the goal of improvement especially in writing skill, a model can also be applied. A
model may used in teaching and learning process within one semester by adapting it
into the needs to both teachers and students.
Through a pre experimental design, the application of PASS write model has
proved to be effective to teach writing to students of class eight of SMP Negeri
Sempol Bondowoso. The result was obtained through some statistical procedure
indicated a satisfying result. The significant scores different is 6.38 by calculating
mean of pretest and posttest mean. Data verification is also derived from the
calculation of paired t-test which shows the effectiveness of this model to teach
writing narrative text to class eight of SMPN Sempol in academic year 2016/2017.

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