THE INFLUENCE OF USING RUNNING DICTATION TECHNIQUE TOWARDS STUDENTS’ DESCRIPTIVE TEXT WRITING ABILITY AT THE FIRST SEMESTER OF THE EIGHTH GRADE OF SMP NEGERI 1 WEST KOTA AGUNG IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2017/2018

Writing is skill in which we express ideas, feelings, and thought in written form. The students’ writing ability of SMP Negeri 1 West Kota Agung is still low especially in writing descriptive text. To solve this problem, the writer applied running dictation. Running Dictation is a short dictation text typed in a large font posted on the wall outside the classroom. In teaching learning by using running dictation the students work in small group that consists of three students. One member is responsible for writing the text while other members took turns to read out the text sentence by sentence. The objective of this research was to know the influence of using running dictation to wards students’ descriptive text writing ability at the first semester of the eighth grade at SMP Negeri 1 West Kota Agung in the academic year of 2017/2018. The research methodology was quasi experimental design. The population of this research was the eighth grade students at the first semester of SMP Negeri 1 West Kota Agung. The sample was chosen by using cluster random sampling technique. The writer chose class VIII E as the experimental class, and another one class VIII D as control class of this research. There were three steps in conducting this quasiexperimental research; pre-test, treatment, and post-test. The treatment held in three meetings in which 2x40 minutes for each class. The writer used pre-test and post-test to find out students’ descriptive text writing ability before the treatment and after the treatment. In collecting the data, the writer used writing test. From the data analysis computed by using SPSS, it was obtained that Sig = 0.030 an