Improving Eight Grade Students’ Writing Ability By Using Raft Strategy At Mts Arkanul Islam Situbondo In Academic Year 2018/2019

The aim of improving students' abilities is to write descriptive texts by applying the Role, Audience, Format, and Topics strategies (RAFT) for class VIII / 8 MTs Arkanul Islam Situbondo.
In this researcher, the problem is “how can RAFT strategy improve the Eight grade students’ Writing mastery at MTs Arkanul Islam Situbondo in the 2018-2019 academic year?” and the objective of this research referring to the researcher prob-lem is to find out how RAFT can improve writing mastery. based on the reserach problem and the relevant theory, the hypothesis of this research is described as follows: debate method improves the eight grade students' writing mastery at MTs Arkanul Islam Situbondo in the 2018-2019 academic year.
The design of this research is classroom action research. The research subject is VIII class consisting of 20 students. The data are collected using test method, and the instuments used test items. In order to analyze the data-students’ vocabulary score-persentage formula used.
The implementation of RAFT strategy ascompetitive in cycle two. All of the students were active in the teaching and learning activities, and they didn’t feel bored again. Those caused the result of cycle 2 achieved the criteria of success. RAFT strategy improved the students writing ability in two cycle from percentage of students ≥ 75 (E = 25%) in cycle 1 to (E = 80%) in cycle 2
Based on the research result, it can be concluded that RAFT strategy is able to improve the students’ Writing at MTs Arkanul Islam Situbondo in the 2018-2019 academic year.
Key Words: Descriptive Writing, RAFT Strategy