The Effect of Using Personal Photographs as Learning Media to Enhance the Students' Writing Achievement at Eleventh-Grade in SMAN 3 Tarakan
Writing is recognized as an important skill for effective communication and the expression of ideas. However, many students still struggle to develop this skill. This research was conducted due to the low writing achievement of students and it aimed to determine the effect of using personal photos as a learning medium on the writing achievement of eleventh-grade students at SMAN 3 Tarakan. This research used a pre-experimental design with a one-group pre-test and post-test model, involving 36 students from class XI-A. The instruments used written test in the form of a pre-test and post-test. The data were analyzed using SPSS version 16.0. The research results indicated an improvement in students’ writing achievement. In the pre-test stage, the average score of 58.5 was below the school's minimum standard (KKTP), indicating that most students had not yet reached the expected competencies in writing skills. However, after giving the treatment through the use of personal photos as a learning media, the mean score improved to 71.98, which means it had exceeded the school’s standard score and indicated a significant improvement in students’ writing achievement. The Wilcoxon test results showed a significance value of 0.000 (p 0.05), which means the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted and the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected. These findings showed that the use of personal photograph has a statistically significant effect in improving the writing achievements of eleventh-grade students at SMAN 3 Tarakan.