THE EFFECT OF INQUIRY-BASED STEM LEARNING STRATEGY ON STUDENTS’ WRITING ABILITIES AT EIGHTH GRADE OF SMP 15 KOTA BENGKULU

This study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of Inquiry-Based STEM
Strategy toward students’ writing ability, students’ interest, and students’
enthusiasm at the eighth-grade students of SMP Negeri 15 Kota Bengkulu.
This research used a quasi-experimental design. The sample in this study
were randomly selected of the population who were 40 students. The results
showed that the Sig. (2-tailed) of independent sample test was 0.000 < 0.05,
so it can be concluded that H0 was rejected and H1 was accepted. Therefore,
it can be concluded that there was an effect of using Inquiry-Based STEM
strategy to improve students’ writing ability. The results of questionnaire also
revealed that there is no significant effect in interest partially toward students'
writing skills, and there is significant effect in enthusiasm partially toward
students' writing skills. However, interest and enthusiasm simultaneously
affected students’ writing skill by using Inquiry-Based STEM Learning
Strategy. The prove that Inquiry-Based STEM strategy gave positive effect
towards student’s ability in writing English can be seen from the calculation of
pre-test and post-test result. The post-test mean score of experimental group
was higher than control group. Therefore, it can be concluded that Inquiry-
Based STEM strategy gives positive effect toward students’ writing ability and
is proved to be effective strategy in teaching writing. Finally, it is suggested to
English teachers to implement this strategy in teaching writing.
Key Word : Inquiry-Based Learning, STEM, writing skill