Effects of contextual teaching and learning (CTL) approach on analytical exposition writing skills of senior high school students in Indonesia

Abstract

The objectives of this study were 1) to explore the effects of analytical exposition writing skills of eleventh grade students after learning with contextual teaching and learning (CTL) approach, 2) to identify eleventh grade students’ opinions of learning with contextual teaching and learning (CTL) approach to improve their analytical exposition writing skills, and 3) to investigate the way in which CTL approach help improve eleventh grade students’ analytical exposition writing skill. The sample of the study were 35 eleventh grade students in the second semester from a public school in Ciawi, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia. The study was employed by using mixed method research design. The quantitative instruments consist of one-group analytical exposition writing pretest and posttest and three questionnaires. Meanwhile, the qualitative instruments consist of semi-structured interview, and reflection pages. Paired sample t-test was used to compare students’ analytical exposition writing skill before and after the treatment. The data from questionnaires were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, while the semi-structured interview and reflection page were analyzed with thematic and content analysis.

The findings from eleventh grade students’ English analytical exposition writing test showed that there was a significant improvement of students’ analytical exposition writing skill after implementing the CTL approach on process-based analytical exposition instruction at the significant level of .05. Students also revealed to have a positive perception toward the CTL approach as it could provide them to write analytical exposition text with the topic that was relevant to their real-life experience, thus making them to have strong understanding of the topic and good content knowledge to write according to correct structure of analytical exposition. Lastly, there are four ways that the CTL approach help improve students’ analytical exposition writing skill: making meaningful task, gathering information independently, working with group, and asking some questions.