The Link between Speech Mastery and Writing Achievement: The Case of Madrasah Students in South Sumatera

This study investigated the link between students’ parts of speech mastery and their achievement in writing skill. This study was aimed at finding out whether or not there was any significant link and significant influence among the two variables. The population of the study was tenth grade Madrasah students in South Sumatera. There were 330 students from five classes as the population in this study. However, 96 students were taken as the sample of this study. There were two variables involved in this study, students’ parts of speech mastery (variable X), and writing achievement (variable Y). The score of parts of speech mastery was taken from multiple choice questions, while the student’ writing achievement was taken from the test which was scored based on experts’ judgment. Based on the data analysis, it was found that the r-obtained (.293) was higher than r-table (.200). Then, the level of probability (p) significance (sig.2-tailed) was .443. It means that p (.004) was lower than .05. Thus, null hypothesis (H0) was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. Based on the findings, it was concluded that there was significant link between students’ parts of speech mastery and their writing achievement. The obtained R-square was .083 indicated that students’ parts of speech mastery was likely to contribute with 8.3% contribution and to affect writing achievement.

The Implementation of Self-Assessment in EFL Writing Classroom: An Experimental Study

Writing skill is an essential requirement to lifelong learner success, yet the way teachers provide feedback for their students on writing is quite challenging. One of the new trends in writing skill instruction is Self Assessment. Self-assessment methods in writing instruction present meaningful ways to promote student writing achievement through reflection and meta-cognition during the writing process. This paper describes the findings of an investigation on using self assessment in EFL writing classroom. For the purpose of conducting this research, 48 Iranian upper intermediate students, all male and with age range of 20 to 23, were chosen to participate in this investigation. These participants were divided into two equal groups: an experimental group (N=24) who worked on their writings through self assessment and a control group (N=24) who worked on their writings based on the traditional ways. It was found that participants in the experimental group significantly improved their writing proficiency means score, whereas improvement in the control group was not significant. The results confirm that self assessment is successful with EFL students.