Enhancing Students’ Writing Ability in Descriptive Text through Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD) Method: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD) method in improving students’ writing ability, particularly in writing descriptive texts. The research employed a quasi-experimental design involving an experimental class and a control class. Each class consisted of 30 eighth-grade students at MTs Darul Falah Islamic Boarding School, Enrekang.

The instrument used in this study was a writing test in the form of descriptive text tasks. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and an independent sample t-test to determine the significant difference between the experimental and control groups. The results showed that the mean score of the experimental group in the post-test (72.80) was higher than that of the control group (59.83).

Furthermore, the t-test results indicated that t-count (4.336) was higher than t-table (2.001) at the significance level of 0.05, meaning that the alternative hypothesis (H₁) was accepted and the null hypothesis (H₀) was rejected. It can be concluded that the STAD method has a significant effect on improving students’ writing ability.

Therefore, the STAD cooperative learning model is recommended as an effective alternative strategy in teaching writing, particularly in descriptive text for EFL learners.