The Influence of Interest in Writing on Kisaran State Middle School Students’ Poetry Writing Skills

Writing is difficult for students, especially writing poetry. One of the factors that influences this is how interested the students are in writing poetry. Therefore, this research was conducted to ascertain how interest in writing influences poetry writing skills, especially for state junior high school students in the city of Kisaran. This research is comparative quantitative research, with the design of this research using a one-shot case study. The population in this study were students in class VIII of Kisaran State Middle School who had used the independent curriculum, as the sample, 32 students had a high interest in writing and 32 students had a low interest in writing. Data were collected using writing interest questionnaires and poetry writing tests. Data analysis used the t-test formula assisted by the SPSS 25 application and the effect size test assisted by Excel calculations as a further test. The results of the research show that the ability to write poetry of students who have a high interest in writing is better than that of those who have a low interest in writing. Therefore, participation from teachers and parents is needed to increase students’ interest in writing in order to improve their writing skills, especially in writing poetry.