Abstract
This study was motivated by the low persuasive writing skills of eighth-grade students in Class E at SMP Negeri 14 Denpasar. The students struggled to determine writing topics, organize the structure of their speeches systematically, integrate facts and data into their arguments, and use effective persuasive sentences. The purpose of this study is to improve students’ skills in writing persuasive speeches through a problem-based learning (PBL) model focused on school environmental issues. The research conducted was Classroom Action Research (CAR) and was carried out in two cycles with 42 eighth-grade E students at SMP N 14 Denpasar as the research subjects. Data collection techniques include tests, observations, documentation, and questionnaires. Data is analyzed descriptively using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative analysis is used to determine the average scores and the percentage of student learning completeness, while qualitative analysis is used to describe the learning process and changes in student behavior during the implementation of the actions. The results of this study indicate that the application of a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) model based on school environmental issues was able to improve students’ skills in writing persuasive speech texts. The students’ average score in Cycle I was 60.33, and in Cycle II, it was 83.14. This indicates that using school environmental issues as a learning context helped students develop ideas and arguments and compose systematic persuasive speech texts.