Improving Students' Writing Skills Using Brainstorming at SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman

: The present study is quantitative research to find out writing skills of the student in descriptive text using brainstorming in the ninth-grade of SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman. The components that were analyzed in the descriptive text written by the students were the content of the descriptive text, grammar, and vocabulary. The participants of this research are 25 students in ninth-grade at SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is any significance in brainstorming on the descriptive text of writing skills at SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman. The result of the study shows that there is a significant effect of brainstorming on the students’ writing achievement. Brainstorming could be an alternative for teaching writing, especially for helping students to learn more about the content, grammar, and vocabulary.


Introduction
English is one of the most important languages that students should study.The importance of English is evident in many ways: for numerous people, learning English is a gateway to knowledge, information, connections, and opportunities, and English as a student permits many people to communicate, especially with teachers and friends, and helps them learn about other cultures.Students' English is divided into four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.Writing skills are one of the English skills that are still hard for students to master.Rass explains: "Writing is a difficult skill for both native and nonnative speakers as writers must be able to write crossways different areas of suggestion, content, reasoning, vocabulary, and technique", Spelling, accentuation, and capitalization".Writing allows writers to tell an experience or express themselves using many different kinds of words.As a result, writing is a useful skill for someone to have.Effective news is Writing abilities may be acquired, enhanced, and refined.At all stages of planning, drafting, rewriting, and editing, teachers must provide suitable classroom activities that advance the development of certain writing skills.
Based on the 2013 Curriculum for senior high school, the students need to make communicate in oral and written text.Through writing, students can deliver their arguments in many aspects or fields.According to Harmer, "Being able to write is a vital skill for speakers of a foreign language as much as for everyone using their own first language".Harmer states that "the students are reluctant to write because they rarely write, even in their own language."If students are motivated to learn writing every time, their writing abilities can be enhanced.
Writing is a mandatory subject in junior high school; it is an important topic for learners since it can help them achieve a functioning level in terms of being able to communicate in writing to address daily difficulties.According to Blanchard and Root, brainstorming is an easy technique for generating a large number of concepts about a certain topic.The purpose is to create as many ideas as possible without concern for how they will be implemented.It is very useful for guiding authors in organizing their thoughts, whether they have too many or too few.Rao discovers learners who practiced writing instructions using the brainstorming method performed better than those who did not.Furthermore, the attitudinal survey suggests that students enjoy the brainstorming process and believe it helps them better their English writing skills.
To encourage people to think in new ways is the aim of brainstorming and to think outside the box.Brainstorming is the spontaneous act of noting ideas in preparation for various stages of writing.Brainstorming is an easy approach to teach writing to learners who are still struggling with it.Teachers might employ brainstorming, clustering, and short writing activities to help learners build ideas.Because writing is a thinking activity, writers must first unlock their minds' hidden thoughts before beginning to write.Due to the concerns stated above, the researcher is inspired to perform classroom research in which she will implement a brainstorming strategy in the writing instructions.Students can be using the brainstorming technique to help them to use their previous data in their writing task and determine what abilities and information they have and what they need to know.Brainstorming is a useful strategy for generating students' ideas before they begin their writing work.One of the most crucial elements of brainstorming is that no preparation is required and that it may be utilized at any level of education or in any setting.
There are few previous studies about this research, the first one is from Tossy was conducted research by using brainstorming entitled "The Effect of Brainstorming Technique as A Pre-Writing Activity on The Students' Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text At Sman 1 Pringsewu" the researcher reported that the writing of the students improved by using brainstorming.The researcher used qualitative methods in this research by observing the teaching, and learning process and interviewing the students of class VII B at SMPN 1 Piyungan.The result showed there is a difference statistically significant between the pretest and post-test with a significant level is 0.05.This is proven that this research is successfully carried out.Another research conducted by Eti Dwi entitled "Roundtable Brainstorming: A Technique to Improve the Writing Ability of Students in Writing Descriptive Texts" this research using a quantitative method with the population SMAN 1 Pringsewu 2018/2019 with 4 meetings of the students.The researcher used T-Test with pretest, treatment, and post-test meetings with students.The researcher proved that brainstorming can improve students' writing skills in writing descriptive text at SMAN 1 Pringsewu.The difference between previous studies with my research is the researchers' wants to do research in SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman, to find out if brainstorming can be effectively used there.The researchers used quantitative methods to collect the data by using pre-test and post-test.Because in class 9 A SMP Muhammadiyah Taman still lacks in writing skills, especially in descriptive text.So that the researchers wants to do research there.The researchers want to do the same things as the previous study above but with a different method and data population.
Based on the pre-observation in SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman the students still lack writing skills.Therefore, the researchers want to do research based on the problem.Since the teacher still has not use the brainstorming method so the researchers want to apply the method for teaching writing in the classroom.Theoretically, using brainstorming can effectively improve the students' writing ability.Besides, it is believed that brainstorming technique helps the students to generate ideas and organize them into paragraphs.They could manage the time for writing more effectively and perform the writing task more maximally.Therefore, the researchers want to improve students' writing skills because, at SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman, some of the classes still use basic English learning methods, so the students still have lack of writing skills.Thus, the researchers formulate the research question: Does brainstorming have an effect on the students' writing skills.

Methodology
This research design is quantitative research.According to Aliaga and Gunderson the goal of the research is to learn about phenomena to analyze existing conditions in the field.Gay, states that "descriptive quantitative research includes obtaining quantitative data to https://edu.pubmedia.id/index.php/jpbitest hypotheses or answer questions concerning present status performed either via selfreports gathered through questionnaires or interviews or through observation".The researchers used descriptive writing assignment to collect data from 25 students of the ninth-grade students (Class A) at SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman who used brainstorming to know whether it improved their writing skills or not.The tests that was given to the students' were pre-test and post-test.
Pre-test was given to the students before the treatment.This test could be defined as checking the student's ability to write before the treatment.In the pre-test, students chose a topic on things that they are interested in.Then, the students were given 45 minutes to produce their descriptive writing text containing 100 words.Meanwhile, the post-test was given to students after the treatment.The post-test is used to see if the score after giving the treatment is higher, same, or lower.In analyzing the data, the researchers used the T-Tests.In scoring the students' writing assignments the following rubrics were employed.Then after each score is added up to the final result Table 1 describes the indicators of the scoring of the researchers and raters, how to score is the researchers and raters Hughes stated that the choice between holistic and analytic scoring depends in part on the purpose of testing.
The data description and ability to respond to the study questions follow from the indicators mentioned earlier.The researchers and the raters use the data as a tool in scoring the students' tests.The researchers could apply these characteristics to examine the test results and see how well the students performed.The researchers use Hughes's theory to score the data, from very poor scores to excellent scores with the help of the raters (the teacher), the researchers scored the worksheet of the students based on the indicator scoring.

Result and Discussion
In this part, the researchers discussed the data that were collected.There are three main components in this research that were analysed: content, grammar, and vocabulary.Quantitative data describes the number of scores of the student's works.The researchers and the raters evaluated the students' worksheets: the pre-test and post-test.
The data were evaluated from excellent to very poor scores, as the worksheet of the students' shows in the table.5 explain there is significant difference between pre-test and post test students' on brainstorming technique for their writing skills.So that explains that brainstorming can make students improve their writing skills through descriptive text.The percentage of this research in this school has not used this method for teaching writing skills so this method is effectively used by students and the teacher.Such as the previous studies before this research shows students can improve their writing skills using the brainstorming method.
If the t-value above the t-table with an acceptable level of significance of 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected.It was apparent from Table 5's statistics that 0.00< 0.05.As a result, the research hypothesis was supported and the null hypothesis did not qualify for the hypothesis.This indicates that there were statistically significant differences in the writing success of the students after brainstorming.The researcher discovered that every component of the students' work was improved by the brainstorming approach.
The aim of this study is to find out whether there is any significance in brainstorming on the descriptive text of writing skills at SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman.Gerot and Peter mention that "there are two components in the descriptive text, (1) identification; identifies phenomenon to be described, and (2) description; describes parts, qualities, and characteristics".There are two correctors in this research, the first is the researchers and the second is the teacher.This research's objective was to determine whether brainstorming techniques had any impact on students' writing ability.The results showed that brainstorming techniques had some beneficial impacts on students.accomplishments in five writing-related areas: content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics.It was drawn from the testing of hypotheses.It meant that the proposed theory was approved.In this study, the sample for the research was restricted to only one class.Pre-testing was carried out to start the research, and post-testing was done in order to finish it up.One-time treatments have been given to the students.The post-test results were examined using SPSS for analysis.This study discovered that using the brainstorming approach to teach writing was successful.
The table above explains the mean rank of the data.Using brainstorming can help the students be more active and allow them to think more freely.Students feel more confident with their story in writing descriptive text, they can explore more with the teacher's help.The limitation of this study is some of the students still lacking in choosing words, so the teacher can help their students to produce more words by reading some books.As a result, the observer provided them with instruction and information that was appropriate for their abilities.Statistics show its performance has significantly improved.It was due to the teacher's step-by-step direction.The teacher gave them instructions on how to construct sentences using the words generated during the brainstorming phase as well as how to create paragraphs.
As Tossi stated before in the previous study, the Brainstorming method can be useful for students to improve their writing skills by observing and interviewing the students at SMPN 1 Piyungan.Also, Eti Dwi, entitled that brainstorming technique in SMAN 1 Pringsewu was successfully carried out, using a T-Test with pre-test and post-test the researcher proved that brainstorming can improve students' writing skills in writing descriptive text.Therefore, just like the researcher study stated that brainstorming can improve students writing skills in SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Taman.
The results of the current study and the studies mentioned above demonstrated that the brainstorming approach had some beneficial impacts on students' writing success in the areas of content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics.It is possible to draw the conclusion that the use of brainstorming might assist the students in successfully and creatively coming up with and writing a descriptive paragraph.

Conclusion
The objective of this research is to find out if is there any impact of using brainstorming to improve students' writing skills.The conclusion is brainstorming technique give a positive effect on students with the aspect of content, grammar, and vocabulary.Brainstorming helps students focus on their minds so they can write fast on paper.It was drawn from the testing of hypotheses.It meant that the proposed theory was approved.Students receiving treatment effectively had a mean rank of 35.10.The use of the brainstorming process increases students writing ability [22].Achievement in the grammar, vocabulary, and content elements of writing.Students require a step-by-step writing approach that includes all aspects of writing and guides them through the whole writing process.The limitation of this study is some of the students still lacking in choosing words, so the teacher can help their students to produce more words by reading some books.Students should learn more about writing and reading because it can help them have more vocabulary.In order to uncover the characteristics that will enable more thorough research findings, it is anticipated that the study will inspire and urge other researchers to carry out more research.The development of English writing is also

Table 1 .
Indicators of ScoringExcellent: clever selection • Appropriate register; effective word/idiom choice and usage; mastery of word forms Good: a sufficient range • Occasional mistakes in word/idiom form, selection, and usage, but the message is still clear Fair to good: limited scope many mistakes in word/idiom form, selection, and usage; unclear or muddled meaning

Table 2 .
The Students' Results of Pre-test and Post-test Table 2 above shows the scores of the student's pre-test and post-test.There are significant transformations for the pre-test and post-test.The highest score is 97 and the lowest score is 82.

Table 3 .
Test of Normality

Table 4
above explains the mean rank of the scores of the students after being given the treatment. https://edu.pubmedia.id/index.php/jpbi

Table 5 .
Paired Samples TestTable Table2shows there was a significant change in students' scores.The data indicate that the use of brainstorming is effective in improving students' writing skills in writing descriptive text.This is proven by of the pretest is 15.90 and the mean rank of the post-test is 35.10.The treatment is successfully given to the students, the highest score is 97 and the lowest score is 90 with the mean rank being 35.10.