The implementation of language improvement program in uplifting students’ writing ability : a case of study in 7th grade of MTS Bilingual Pucang Sidoarjo

Writing is the productive skill and also the important skill among four English skills. Most of people who study English as their foreign language feel difficult in this skill, because writers should think hard in producing words, sentences, even paragraphs at the same time. It considered difficult because the writer should be mastered in writing aspects such as content, organization, purpose, vocabulary, grammar, spelling and punctuation. In MTs Bilingual Pucang Sidoarjo, there is a compulsory extracurricular program named Language Improvement. Language improvement program aimed to improve students’ English and Arabic ability. This study focused on English writing activity in Language Improvement program. The aim of this study is to know the implementation of Language Improvement program and to know whether this program improve students’ writing ability or not. Descriptive qualitative were used as research method in this study. To know whether this program improve students’ writing ability or not, the researcher used the student’ writing mark from the test before and after joining the program. The subject of study is 31 students from seventh grade students of MTs Bilingual Pucang Sidoarjo. Observation checklist was used to know the implementation of this program and students’ writing score to know the improvement between pre-test and post-test, it used writing rubric assessment by Brown. After analyzing the data, the researcher found that this program can support the students’ writing and also improve students’ writing ability. Based on the five components in rubric assessment, it can be seen that content aspect increased for about 19%, organization aspect increased about 18%, grammar aspect increased about 7%, vocabulary aspect increased about 13% and mechanic aspect increased about 5%. From their score, it can be concluded that the students improve a lot in content and organization components.