Improving The Students’ Skills in Writing Descriptive Text Through RAFT Strategy at MTs Islamiyah Medan

This research aimed to improve students’ skills in writing descriptive text through RAFT Strategy. The background of the study in this research was based on the students’ difficulties in writing descriptive text. In order to solve this problem, the teacher should have creative strategy. RAFT strategy can be used as creative strategy in teaching writing that will make students enjoy and easy to write descriptive text. In this research, the researcher conducted a classroom action research as the methodology. The subject of this research was the seventh grade students of MTs Islamiyah Medan. This research used two types of data, namely qualitative data and quantitative data. The qualitative data were obtained through an interview, observation sheet, field note and documentation. Meanwhile, the quantitative data used test that done before the implementation of the actions (pre-test) and after the implementation of the actions (post-test I and post-test II). The result of this research showed that there was increasing of students in writing descriptive text. The mean of the pre-test was 45.93, the mean of the first cycle was 69.8, and the mean of the second cycle was 79.06. It showed that the mean in the second cycle were better than the pre-cycle and first cycle. And by using t-test, the researcher found that tobservation (7.09) > ttable (1.09). Based on the findings, it can be concluded that RAFT strategy can be used to improve the students’ skills in writing descriptive text