DEVELOPING THE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL AT THE TENTH GRADE THROUGH THEME-BASED TEACHING.

This research aimed at proving whether applying Theme-Based Teaching can improve the writing descriptive paragraph of the tenth grade students at SMA Negeri 1 Palasa. The researcher used a quasi-experimental design involving an experimental group (X Ipa 1) and a control group (X Ipa 3). They were selected by using cluster random sampling technique. Besides, the treatment (Theme-Based Teaching) was given to the experimental group, but not the control group. The result of the data analysis showed that there was a significant improvement between the pre-test and the post-test results. The mean score of experimental group increased from 62.38 to 76.90and the control group increased from 58.025to 63.46. It also showed that the t-counted (2.68) was higher than t-table (1.674), which indicated that the research hypothesis was accepted. Thus, applying Theme-Based Teaching can improve the writing descriptive paragraph of the tenth grade students at SMA Negeri 1 Palasa. Keywords: Theme-Based Teaching; Writing Descriptive Paragrap