Abstract Name : Ria Mardilla Student No. : 0906102050013 Study Program : English Language Education Title : The Application of Cooperative Learning with Small Group Work in Improving Students’ Writing Ability (An Experimental Research at SMPN 18 Banda Aceh) Keywords: Cooperative Learning, Small Group Work, Writing Ability The objective of this research is to find out whether the students who are taught by small group work technique improve their writing ability. In order to achieve the objective of this research, the writer used a quantitative method which is called experimental research by using one group pre-test and post-test design. The population of this research was the second grade of SMPN 18 Banda Aceh. The writer took one class that consist of 24 students, but only 21 students as the sample in the experiment because they were absent in the pre-test and post-test. There were sixth meetings during the experiment. Before the experiment was conducted, the students were given the pre-test. At the end of the experiment, the students were tested in the post-test. The result of the tests shows that there was significant improvement of the students’ ability in writing descriptive text using small group work technique. To prove the hypothesis, the writer used t-score formula. Based on the data analysis, the t-score was 11.85 meanwhile t-table was 2.086. It meant that the obtained t-score was higher than t-table. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted and the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected. The writer concluded that the application of cooperative learning with small group work improves the students’ writing ability in form of descriptive text.