Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui apakah ada perbedaan yang signifikan pada siswa sebelum dan sesudah menggunakan estafet writing method sebagai metode dalam pengajaran menulis pada siswa kelas VIII SMPN 1 Tarakan. Penelitian ini menggunakan rancangan eksperimental dan siswa kelas delapan di SMPN 1 Tarakan sebagai populasi. Jumlah sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah 29 siswa yang dipilih dengan teknik purposive sampling. VIII-5 menjadi satu-satunya kelas yang menjadi contohnya. Ada tiga tahap dalam penelitian ini yaitu pretest, treatment dan posttest. Dalam pretest, para siswa diminta menulis teks deskriptif berdasarkan topik yang mereka pilih. Setelah pretest, peneliti memberikan treatment. Kelas treatment diajar dengan menggunakan estafet writing method sebagai metode. Setelah memberikan treatment, siswa diminta kembali menulis teks deskriptif berdasarkan topik yang mereka pilih sebagai posttest. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa ada perbedaan skor rata - rata antara pretest dan posttest. Hal itu dibuktikan dengan hasil skor rata-rata siswa. Skor mereka adalah 60.31 di pretest dan 77.28 di posttest. Artinya, peningkatan nilai rata-rata siswa adalah 16.97. Dapat dilihat bahwa peningkatan nilai rata-rata siswa pada posttest lebih tinggi daripada pretest dan menunjukkan ada perbedaan yang signifikan dari nilai tulisan siswa antara pretest dan posttest. Selain itu, hasil dari paired sample test menunjukkan bahwa -7,317 lebih tinggi dari t tabel (2,048), artinya tulisan siswa mengalami perbaikan setelah memberikan treatment. Sedangkan hasil sig (2 tailed) 0,000 lebih rendah dari 0,05, artinya estafet writing method dapat memberikan kontribusi pada kemampuan menulis siswa pada teks deskriptif .Dari kedua hasil tersebut dapat disimpulkan bahwa terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan antara pretest dan posttest dalam penulisan teks deskriptif setelah treatment yang diberikan oleh peneliti dan estafet writing method sebagai metode efektif dalam pengajaran menulis teks deskriptif.

The objective of this research was to find out whether there was any significant difference on students before and after using estafet writing method as the method in teaching writing at the eighth grade students of SMPN 1 Tarakan. This research used pre experimental design and eighth grade students at SMPN 1 Tarakan as the populations. The numbers of sample in this research were 29 students which were chosen by using purposive sampling technique. VIII-5 become the only class that was being as the example.. There were three steps in this research namely pretest, treatment and posttest. In pretest, the students were asked to write a descriptive text based on the topic chosen by the students. After pretest, the researcher gave treatment. The treatment class was taught by using estafet writing method as method. After giving the treatment, students were asked to write descriptive text based on the topic chosen by the students again in the posttest. The research result showed that there was different mean score between pretest and posttest. It was proved by the result of the students’ mean score. They were 60.31 in pretest and 77.28 in the posttest. It meant that the improvement of the students’ mean score was 16.97. It can be seen that the improvement of the students’ mean score in the posttest was higher than pretest and it indicated that there was significant difference from students’ writing score between pretest and posttest. In addition, the result of paired sample test showed that -7.317 higher than t table (2.048), it means that the students writing had an improvement after giving the treatment. Meanwhile, the result of sig (2 tailed) 0.000 was lower than 0.05, it meant that the estafet writing method can give any contribution to students’ writing skill in descriptive text. From both of the re sult it can be concluded that there was significant different between pretest and posttest in writing descriptive text after the treatment that was given by the researcher and estafet writing method as method was effective in teaching writing descriptive text.