Electronic Theses and Dissertation

Key Words: Contextual Teaching and Learning, Writing Skill and Business Letters.

This study is about the application of Contextual Teaching and Learning approach in teaching writing skill of business letters. This research was conducted as the researcher found that the students were lack of skills in writing business letter. The difficulties were mainly found in terms of getting started to write a letter and not being confident in doing some activities given by a lecturer.

This research was conducted to improve students' writing skill of business letter. It applied Classroom Action Research (CAR) and was carried out in two cycles. The procedure of research consisted of four main steps; planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. The instruments used in collecting the data needed were tests, observation checklists for both the researcher and the students as well as questionnaire for the students. The improvement is indicated by the indicators.

The data were obtained from 18 students of Administration Class program, Politeknik Negeri Lhokseumawe. The result of the research revealed that implementing Contextual Teaching and Learning was effective to improve the students writing skill particularly in business letter. This can be proved from the result of the test conducted where in the pre-test; the students' mean score is 52.5. The mean score increased to 66.67 (cycle 1) and reached the improvement indicators at the end of cycle 2 (78.89). In implementing Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL), the researcher based it on the concept proposed by some experts.
The application of Contextual Teaching and Learning approach focused on seven elements; Constructivism, Inquiry, Questioning, Learning Community, Modeling, Reflection, and Authentic Assessment. These elements are related to each other.

Furthermore, from the observation checklist, it was also known that the participation of the students during the teaching learning process in writing class increased gradually. This was proven from the result of the observation checklist taken where at the beginning of cycle 1 meeting 1 , the percentage of the students' involvement was only 68,3% and increased to 88,3% in cycle 2 meeting 5. This means that the strategy applied had successfully improved the students' activeness during the teaching learning process. In addition, the list of the questionnaire given to the students indicates that the students' responses toward the implementation of CTL in writing class can be categorized to the level of 'Agree'
which means that they responded positively to the model of learning implemented. Thus based on the findings, it is suggested that other researchers and teachers who have problems in their teaching try to implement CTL approach as it might help to solve the problems encountered by the teachers as well as students in English language teaching and learning.

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