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and the social function of the text. After that, the
students were asked to compose a text such as an
example with the free topic. The last, they submitted
the text without any revision before so that they did
not know what mistakes they made with their
writing product. As the result, most of the students
were not interested in learning writing.
Implementing appropriate teaching approach is
one of the fundamental factors which can affect the
students’ interests in learning writing. Therefore, the
teachers should improve their knowledge related to
the various approaches which might be suitable to
implement in their writing class. Then, they are
demanded to be creative in making their lesson plan.
Furthermore, they also should apply other
approaches besides conventional approach which
can make the students active in learning activities.
This is one of the basic characteristics of Scientific
Approach, known as student-centered.
According to Education and Culture Minister
(2013), scientific approach is a teaching approach
aims to support and motivate the students to think
critically, analytically, and precisely in recognizing,
understanding, solving problems, and practicing the
learning materials. Hosnan (2014) says that there are
five steps of implementing the scientific approach in
the teaching-learning process, they are observing,
questioning, experimenting, associating, and
communicating. In scientific approach, these steps
involve listening, speaking, reading and writing
skills to gather the data and information with the
final outcome is written product. At the end of the
scientific activity, the product will be presented in
front of class seen by all students in that class.
In brief, by using scientific approach for the
writing activity, the students will be involved in
some interesting activities such as determining the
purpose, the process, and the result. Therefore, the
students are not considered as passive receivers but
they have to be given chances to find ideas and
concepts. In summary, by using this approach the
students are expected to have good skills,
knowledge, and attitude.
Besides scientific approach, the appropriate
approach for learning writing is Scaffolding
Approach. Scaffolding is an approach in which the
teacher assists the students temporarily to complete
the task so that they can do it by themselves. This is
in line with the opinion of Maybin et al. (1992) that
scaffolding is the temporary help but essential nature
of the teacher’s assistance in supporting students to
carry out the tasks successfully. Scaffolding has
relation with the concept of Vygotsky (1980).
Vygotsky (1980) in his concept named Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD) state that
development is the space among the child’s level of
independent performance and the child’s level of
maximally assisted performance. From that concept,
the students need teachers to assist them in
developing their knowledge or skill. Therefore,
scaffold writing is needed to make the students
being an independent writer. It also helps the
students to become actively engaged in assessing
their needs, progress, achievement, and effort in
learning writing. In summary, by using scaffolding
approach the students are able to write
independently after getting temporary guidance from
their teacher.
In addition, some studies have been done to
explore the effectiveness of scientific and
scaffolding approaches in teaching and learning
English. Zaim (2017) aimed at implementing of
scientific approach in the teaching of English at
senior high school in Indonesia. The findings
showed that among the five steps of scientific
approach, the teachers have implemented
experimenting, associating and communicating well
in teaching English. As a result, the students’ ability
in English improved.
Yasinta (2014) studied at covering the effects of
scaffolding techniques on writing proficiency among
VIII grade students. Moreover, it seeks to explore
the relationship between the effectiveness of
scaffolding technique and writing proficiency. It was
experimental research and the result showed that
independent t-test and paired t-test revealed the
experimental group improved significantly and
indicated that writing proficiency was a significant
factor in the effectiveness of scaffolding technique.
The above studies deal with scientific and
scaffolding approaches in teaching English.
However, those two approaches have not been
known effective in teaching writing for grade VII
students at SMP N 1 Brebes. In this research, hence,
the researcher focuses on the effectiveness of
scientific and scaffolding approaches in teaching
writing for grade VII students at SMP N 1 Brebes.
2 METHODS
This research was quasi-experimental using pre-test
and post-test control group design. There were two
variables involved, i.e. the approaches used in
teaching writing of descriptive texts as the
independent variable and the students’ ability in
writing of descriptive texts as the dependent
The Effectiveness of Scientific and Scaffolding Approaches in Teaching Writing
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