Fostering Students’ Descriptive Text Writing Ability: Please Strategy Vs. Idea Details Strategy

The aim of this research is to investigate whether is there significant difference between the use of PLEASE Strategy and Idea Details Strategy in increasing students’ descriptive text writing ability. This research methodology used was static group comparison. The population of this research was 8th grade students of second semester at SMP Negeri 2 Menggala. The total sample in this research was 64 students, chosen by using cluster sampling: VIII A as experimental class A taught by using PLEASE strategy and VIII B as experimental class B taught by using Idea Details strategy. Pre-test and post-test were implemented to collect the data. From the data analysis computed by using SPSS, it was found the result of independent sample t-test Sig. = 0.008 and α = 0.05. It meant that Ha was accepted. There was significant difference between the use of PLEASE strategy and Ideas Details strategy in increasing students’ descriptive text writing ability.


INTRODUCTION
Writing is a skill in which we use eyes, brain and hand to convey ideas, emotions, and thoughts organized in words, phrases, and paragraphs. It implies that writing is used to convey the emotions and thoughts. Brain will be used to generate concept, hand to write, and eyes to look at the consequence of writing to achieve that (Raimes, 1983). Further, writing is regarded to be the most challenging skill because the right grammar and the coherence of the sentence must be combined in writing (Siahaan, 2008;Wijaya, 2017). It implies that writing becomes one of the hard lesson for students because writing abilities are not simple to master, as students need to know not only grammar but also all elements of writing.
Many components should be regarded and noticed in the production of a piece of writing, such as content, grammar, syntax, mechanics, organization, or word selection. It implies that when students write, some aspects of writing should be considered. They will be able to write properly based on the criteria if students have mastered these elements (Raimes, 1983). Indeed, many students discovered it difficult to write because they did not understand how to properly convey their concept. Mostly, students think writing is one of challenging abilities because this is a complicated skill. Students are required to master language components. Additionally, they discovered complexities in writing when they discovered problems in understanding the elements of writing. Students in SMP Negeri 2 Menggala also found these issues.
Based on the preliminary studies conducted at SMP Negeri 2 Menggala particularly the eighth graders, some issues were discovered in studying English specially writing. Based on interviewing one of English teachers there, Aria Agustina, S.Pd., the students still discovered difficulties to write. The student was still unable to organize their thoughts for writing, so are vocabulary and grammar. It made them unable to write properly, and another issue was the low motivation of the students to learn English.
In addition to interviewing the teacher, some eighth grade students were interviewed at SMP Negeri 2 Menggala. When learning English, the students thought they felt bored because the teacher did not use an exciting strategy to teach writing. The students also had trouble in expressing their thoughts or organizing their thoughts, and they did not master vocabulary and grammar. It can be concluded from the outcome of the interview that some students encountered learning writing problems. The researcher also received the information from that interview indicating the descriptive text score of the students was still below average. There were 65 students who passed the minimum completion requirements (KKM) while there were 142 students who did not.
In this case, to overcome those problems, the suitable strategy should be implemented to assist students boost their involvement in the class and make them interested in writing. In teaching writing, there are several strategies that can be implemented, two of which are PLEASE and Ideas Details strategies.
PLEASE is an acronym of six methods for each mnemonic letter (Welch, 1992), which are: pick, list, evaluate, activate, supply and end. These steps assist students develop their writing skills. PLEASE is efficient in enhancing the capacity of students to write text. It was supported by previous research (Dyah Aminatun, Ngadiso, 2018;Liza & Refnaldi, 2013;Sartika & Nery, 2018) investigating PLEASE towards students' writing achievement. Based on those research, the outcomes showed that the use of PLEASE strategy had an important impact on students' writing accomplishment. Another research (Basri, 2016) managed to enhance seventh grade student writing abilities using PLEASE showing that it was an appropriate strategy to enhance students' writing abilities. Based on those explanations, it could be concluded that PLEASE was a strategy that was appropriate for teachers to enhance students' writing skills and had the impact on improving their writing skills. In addition, there was a different strategy namely Ideas Details Strategy.
Idea Details strategy is a very simple strategy that is much more powerful than it looks. Helps writers add detail but it can also be used to create entire pieces of writing all of it (Peha, 2003;Siringoringo et al., 2017). It was approved by prior research (Jelantik, 2017) attempting to enhance students' writing skills through Ideas-Details. The result of that research showed that it succeeded in improving students' writing skills both narrative text and report text. Further, it is said that Idea Details makes it simple for students to produce their concept in writing. Prior research (Yohana, 2013) attempted to figure out the impact of using Idea Details approach towards the capacity of students to write. Before they write, they are provided to think about the details of their concept. The results of her studies have had an important impact on the capacity of students to write using Idea Details Strategy. Based on these explanations, Idea Details strategy can also enhance the writing skills of the students and contribute to the development of the writing skills of the students. Also suitable for students, this approach is to create writing something simple as well.
Regarding those previous research, the distinctions between all prior studies and this research are all prior research implemented PLEASE and Ideas details strategy for teaching writing in general, but in this research, PLEASE strategy and Ideas Details were implemented specifically in teaching descriptive text writing. It required that the writing of descriptive text as this text is suitable for eighth grade junior high school relying on the English curriculum materials. Then, a comparison was performed in this study to compare both approaches by seeing the proportion of student achievement increases or decreases after both strategies have been implemented for students. PLEASE Strategy and Ideas Details Strategy have been introduced to discover the most efficient strategy to increase the descriptive capacity of students to write text.
Referring to the discussion about students' problems in writing descriptive text, PLEASE strategy and Idea Details strategy, this research would like to investigate on the use of PLEASE strategy and Idea Details strategy in increasing students' descriptive writing ability at SMP Negeri 02 Menggala". The aim of the research was to find out if there was a difference between PLEASE Strategy and Idea Details Strategy to increase students' descriptive text writing ability at SMP Negeri 02 Menggala.

The Concept of Writing
Writing skill is aimed at communicating information to the reader, that her or his skills are also realized by her or his capacity to apply linguistic rules, that they write to pass the information, and that she or he has efficiently in her or his mind (Asri, 2011;Iftanti, 2016;Ningrum & Rita, 2013;Siahaan, 2008). It implies writing is one way of conveying data in written form to others. Thus, writing is a result obtained through a process to construct certain aspects of writing such as the knowledge or experience of grammar and writers. The students should be able to produce the language in writing skill based on the rules of writing. In addition, writing is one of four English abilities that students need to master. Writing is the language skill most individuals use least (Davies, 2002;Supiani, 2017). It is also a skill that is generally formally learned at college, and that many individuals do not handle well. It implies writing is one of English skills and it becomes one of the subjects learned by the school of students.
On the basis of these statements, the researcher concludes that writing is a productive ability to express the idea in writing to deliver a message to the readers. Because writing is not only unrelated phrases or phrases, but also needs to be cautious and grammatical-related, so readers can properly capture the writing message.

Descriptive Text
Description is a text to present a verbal portrait of a person, place, or thing (Liza & Refnaldi, 2013). It means that it will discuss how to describe a person, place or thing when we talk about description. In this type of text, the students should clearly write down an object's characteristics in written form to make the reader understand the described object. The students are asked to write down an introduction about the object in writing descriptive text and describe the object's appearance details. Further, descriptive text is the text describing an object's data that can be the object such an individual, or an animal, or plan, or a vehicle, may be a concrete object (Siahaan, 2008). It implies descriptive text is a text used to clarify items. Usually we use descriptive to define or describe some location, individual or stuff. Descriptive is also an English text to describe objects of living things that we describe either the appearance or texture of it (Halim, Hartati, & Lestari, 2019;Hilman, 2019;Muthoharoh & Anita, 2018).
It can be concluded on the basis of these explanations that descriptive is a written English text in which it describes the characteristics of something, it can be a person, a place or something. We describe something more detailed and specific in the descriptive text.

PLEASE Strategy
PLEASE strategy is to use mnemonic letter: P for pick, pick a topic. L for List, list the topic's ideas. E assess the list of ideas and plan the best way to organize the ideas. A for Activate, use a topic sentence to activate the paragraph. S provides the supporting sentences for supply. E for End, finish writing and evaluate your work with the final sentence. It means that when they write, these steps help and guide students (Welch, 1992).
The PLEASE strategy has been developed to address types of written expression deficits related to prewriting planning, composition and revision (Welch, 1992). The teacher can adapt this strategy and use it in writing a text (Liza & Refnaldi, 2013), because this strategy is the same as writing process. This strategy guides the students how to start writing and generate their idea until their writing is finished. It means PLEASE strategy will assist students write, collect the data, start the first sentence, put the data and information in their writing, and review and finish their writing.
It can be concluded that in writing, PLEASE is a strategy. PLEASE strategy is the teacher's strategy for guiding students when making a paragraph or text. In this strategy, students can pick, list, evaluate, activate, supply and end each step on PLEASE stand. Using this strategy will help students start writing and help them write step by step until a descriptive text is finished.

Idea Details
Idea details make it easy for students to write down the details of their ideas. The Idea-Details strategy is a very simple strategy, which is much more powerful than it looks (Peha, 2003). It helps writers to add detail, but it can also be used to create whole pieces of writing. It means that details will help the reader understand the meaning of the writer. Idea details are one way to make it enjoyable and simple to write. The writer just thinks of an idea that wants to write, and then the writer just gives the details that the idea to develop is appropriate.
Idea Details is a strategy that makes it simple for students to use the details to help their idea to develop their concept. It just picks the phrase from your piece that needs more support, write it down on an Idea-Details chart's "Idea" side. Then, make a list in the "Details" chart your details. It implies that Idea Details is a strategy for writing by making 2 Chart: the first graph works as concepts and the second graph as information (Peha, 2003).

Idea
In this phase, ideas are to select from your piece something significant and a phrase that requires more assistance, then write it on the chart's idea side (Peha, 2003). On the basis of these statements, it can be inferred that the activity of ideas mentions something important that you want other people to know.

Details
The next and last phase is details, information as create list on the side of "Details" of every detail that comes with it. A detail is the solution to a reader's query. Your audience might understand your thoughts, but they would like to learn more about them. They want to learn a lot about it if you tell them something exciting. Think about your audience's question in detail and attempt to answer them. Then believe about what needs to be known to your audience and make sure you include it. It can be presumed from this declaration that details write down everything you want to learn more about your audience (Peha, 2003).

METHOD
The researcher used a comparative study in this research. A comparative research is used to investigate the population of the parameter that has also been established as a comparison (Sugiyono, 2010). The aim of this research was to investigate the best outcome of two-class strategy by comparing them in increasing writing skills.
There are experimental research and nonexperimental research that divide the kinds of comparative research design into two categories. Experimental research uses Static Group Comparison and Ex Post Facto (Causal Comparative Study) is used by non-experimental research (Setiyadi, 2006). This research's design is a static group comparison design. The static group comparison design is the design that as an experimental class has two groups and receives different treatment. The researcher then used this design because the researcher did not have the data in this research, so it was necessary for this research to give the treatment for obtaining the data.
In this research, the population was 189 SMP Negeri 2 Menggala eighth grade students divided into six classes. Two classes have been used in this research, one as experimental class A and the other as experimental class B. The research sample consisted of two classes, VIII A as the experimental class A consisting of 32 students and VIII B as the experimental class B consisting of 32 students.
There were some techniques used to collect data, which were pretest and posttest. The pretest was carried out in order to find out before treatment scores of the student's ability to write in descriptive text. This test was conducted in class A and class B. The students were asked in the pre-test to write the descriptive text based on the topics given. Afgan, Clara Beach and A Dog were the topics. Posttest is a measure on some attribute or feature that is examined over a treatment for participants in an experiment. The posttest was done following the treatment given by the students in experimental A and experimental class B. Knowing the descriptive text writing ability of the learner was done after they taught using PLEASE strategy and Ideas Details. The themes were Agnes Mo, A Cat and Sari Ringung Beach.
The data were analyzed after the data was collected using independent sample t-test. Before analyzing the data, there were two tests to be done. They were testing for normality and homogeneity.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS Finding
At the first meeting pre-test was conducted in order to find out students' descriptive text writing ability prior to the given treatment. The statistics of pretest result can be seen on Table 1. Based on Table 1, it can be seen that the mean score of pre-test in experimental class A was 60.60. The median score was 62.50. The highest score was 72 and the lowest score was 43.
After implementing treatment (three meetings) of either in experimental A or B, the researcher administered posttest to both experimental classes. The researcher conducted posttest to recognize students' increased score.
The statistics of posttest result can be seen on Table 2. Based on the table 2, it can be seen that the mean score of posttest was 78.68. The median score was 79. The highest score was 87 and the lowest score was 68.
At the first meeting the researcher conducted pre-test in order to find out the previous students' descriptive text writing ability. The statistics of pretest result can be seen on Table 3. Based on Table 3, it can be seen that the mean score was 59.81. The median score was 60. The highest score was 75 and the lowest score was 47.
After giving three meetings of treatment the researcher administered posttest. The researcher conducted posttest to recognize students' increased score. The statistics of posttest result can be seen on Table 4. Based on the table 4.3, it showed that the mean score was 73.14. The median score was 75. The highest score was 85 and the lowest score was 60.

Gain Score Pretest and Posttest
Pre-test score and post-test score have been used to obtain gain score which would be used to analyze normality, homogeneity and independent sample t-test. A positive gain score showed that the posttest score was better than the score of the pretest. A negative benefit score showed that the posttest score was lower than the pretest score. The average gain score in experimental class A was 18.07, while the average gain score in experimental class B was 13.32 in experimental class B. This revealed that the experimental class A gain score was higher than the experimental class B gain score.

Fulfilment of the Assumptions
Parametric statistical significance measures, such as variance analysis and minimum square regression, are commonly used in many fields, including quantitative parametric tests to obtain accurate results. The principles underlying them, such as normality testing and homogeneity testing, must be met.

Result of Normality Test
The normality test was used to determine whether the data were normally distributed or not in the experimental class and control class. In this research the researcher used SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) version 16 to use statistical computation. Shapiro-Wilk was used as the normality measure because for every class the maximum number of students was less than 50 students.  Table 5 showed that in experimental class A p-value (Sig.) was 0.478 whereas in experimental class B p-value (Sig.) was 0.490. The result was higher than α= 0.05. It can be inferred that data were normally distributed.

Result of Homogeneity Test
The homogeneity test was used to determine whether or not the variance of both data homogeneous. The researcher used statistical analysis in the research using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science). The homogeneity test used was Levene Test.  Table 6 revealed that p-value (Sig.) was 0.173 and α = 0.05. It could be concluded that the variance of both data was homogeneous.

Result of Hypothetical Test
In this research quantitative analysis was used to see whether the use of PLEASE strategy and Idea Details strategy differed for that the descriptive text writing ability of students. Independent Sample t-test was deployed to analyze the data due to the data taken from the normal and homogeneous sample. It could be seen that Sig. (p-value) = 0. 008 < α = 0.05. Therefore, it could be inferred on the basis of the calculation that there was a difference between using PLEASE strategy and Idea Details strategy in increasing students' descriptive text writing ability at the Eighth Grade of SMP Negeri 2 Menggala.

Discussion
Referring to the result of the research, there was a significant difference between the use of PLEASE strategy and Idea Details strategy in increasing the students' Descriptive Text Writing Ability at the Eighth Grade of Second Semester at SMP Negeri 2 Menggala. Using PLEASE strategy gave better and higher results than using Idea Details which could be seen from the result. The result of PLEASE strategy in teaching descriptive text writing was higher than the result of Ideas Details strategy. The mean post-test score was 78.68 in experimental class A and 73.14 in experimental class B.
Based on data analysis and hypothesis testing, the calculation result showed that the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected while the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. The data analysis showed that the Sig (2tailed) of independent sample t-test was 0.008, lower than α= 0.05. This showed that there was a difference in achievement between students who are taught using PLEASE strategy and students who are taught using Idea Details strategy.
It can be inferred from the analysis that the students who received PLEASE strategy got a better result than the students who received Idea Details strategy. Therefore, in this case, it could be said that PLEASE strategy was a good technique for motivating students to learn English, particularly when writing descriptive text. PLEASE strategy could also enhance descriptive text writing for students. Thus, PLEASE strategy was a good strategy that could be applied to help students start writing until the end of writing. Then students were directed to write step by step. Students could therefore be more imaginative in writing.

CONCLUSIONS
The results was analyzed statistically at the end of the research. It could be inferred on the basis of the ending that there is an increase on students' descriptive text writing. In experimental class A, the mean post-test score was statistically higher than in experimental class B after-test. It could be inferred that there was a difference between those taught through PLEASE strategy and those taught through Ideas Description Strategy on students' descriptive text writing. It could be seen from the Sig.(2-tailed) was 0.008 < α= 0.05 which meant that Ha was accepted. It meant that there was a difference of using PLEASE strategy towards students' descriptive text writing of the second semester of the eighth grade students at SMP Negeri 2 Menggala