ABSTRACT

Austin, Gieta Maulida. 2019. “The Effect of Roundtable Technique on The Students’ Writing Skill in Writing Descriptive Paragraph at SMKN 3 Banjarmasin.” Sarjana’s Thesis, English Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Lambung Mangkurat University. Banjarmasin. The first advisor: Dr. Jumariati, M.Pd., and the second advisor: Nasrullah, M.Pd Bi.

Keywords: Writing Skill, Roundtable Technique, and Descriptive Paragraph

            Writing is one of the crucial skills in English. It is one of the obligatory skills in learning English as a foreign language in Indonesia. However, the students in SMKN 3 Banjarmasin still find it difficult to write a descriptive paragraph. Therefore, Roundtable technique chosen as the alternative way to teach writing descriptive paragraph. This research aimed to find out whether there is any difference on the descriptive paragraph writing skill of the tenth-grade students of SMKN 3 Banjarmasin academic year 2018/2019 between the students taught by using Roundtable technique and Conventional teaching. This research used quasi-experimental design. The population of this research was the tenth-grade students of SMKN 3 Banjarmasin. Cluster random sampling was used in this research, the sample was the Computer Network Engineering X-A and X-B class, both classes consisted of 33 students. The result of this research showed that there was a difference on the mean score between the students after being taught by using Roundtable technique and Conventional teaching. The students’ mean score in Experimental class for pre-test was 49.39 and post-test was 84.96. Meanwhile, the students’ mean score in Control class for pre-test was 49.21 and the post-test was 73.09. Based on the hypothesis testing, it was found that the t-test value (5.65) was higher than t-table (1.99). Alternate Hypothesis (Ha) accepted in this research. In conclusion, Roundtable technique successfully affected students’ skill in writing descriptive paragraph. It is also suggested for the teacher to use Roundtable technique in teaching writing descriptive paragraph.