THE EFFECT OF TEACHING STRATEGIES AND LEARNING STYLE ON STUDENTS WRITING ACHIEVEMENT

Writing plays a central role in human life in conveying messages. Unfortunately, most of students just write without knowing how to write well. Teaching strategies (POWER and 3-2-1) and learning styles (read/write and kinesthetic) affect the strategy and way that the students prefer to learn writing. This research examined teaching strategies and learning style as one possible factor affecting the students’ writing. The objectives of this research are to see if (1) the students’ writing achievement taught by using POWER strategy is significantly higher than that taught by using 3-2-1 strategy, (2) the students with read/write style get higher writing achievement than those with kinesthetic learning style, and (3) there is significant interaction between teaching POWER and 3-2-1 strategies and learning styles on the students’ achievement in writing. The subjects for this research were the eleventh grade students of SMKN 1 Kutalimbaru Pasar IX Kutalimbaru, North Sumatra. The instrument of this research was writing paragraph test and questionnaire sheet. The data were analyzed by using ANOVA. Based on the analysis, there were found that (1) the students’ writing taught by POWER is higher than those who taught by 3-2-1 strategy. It is proven by the value of Fobserved= 4.44, Ftable = 4.00 for df (1.60) and α = 0.05 significance level, found that Fobserved= 4.44> Ftable = 4.00. Thus Fobserved > Ftable, (2) the Read/Write students’ writing is higher than the Kinesthetic students’ writing in which Fobserved= 4.82 , Ftable =4.00 for df (1.60) and α = 0.05 significance level, found that Fobserved= 4.82 > Ftable = 4.00, (3) Teaching strategies and learning style interactively affect the students’ writing. Generally, POWER is more effective than 3-2-1 but significantly the combination of POWER and read/write style is more effective than the others, so there is interaction between teaching strategies and learning styles.