| The purpose of this study is to measure, describe, analyze, and explain the ability of students in writing persuasive business letters at the Banking Department, of UPN VETERAN, Economics Faculty, in Jakarta and the correlation between the direct and indirect measures used in this study. Writing English Business Letters in an important skill for bank employees. Acquiring this skill, however, requires great effort. Learners whose native language is not English are often confronted with the difficulties in writing English business sentences and other aspects of persuasive business letters. To gain insight in the proficiency of the banking students' in writing business letters, this study is conducted. Two research questions are put forward do direct the investigations (1) How will do students write effective business letters? (2) Is there a correlation between the scores taken from the direct and indirect measurements, where the direct measurement is obtained through the test on writing effective business letter, while the latter one is obtained through objective test. This study is descriptive in the sense that it aimed at describing students' knowledge of letter-writing and the letter-writing skill of banking students in writing the persuasive business letters. The kind of data are correlated by using the Spearman Rank Order Formula. The subjects of this study are forty five sample students selected from the second semester Banking students who attend the English business letter writing course, in Faculty of Economics, UPN VETERAN Jakarta. The data consists of forty five persuasive business letters obtained from an essay test and an objective test. Each of the two tests are given to the UPN raters and they are expected to rate the letters by using a primary trait scoring scale. The result of the essay test indicates that the subjects who obtain scores 4 are 6.66% and those who get scores 3 are 20% and 46.66% of the subjects get scores 2 or the passing grades. Therefore, the percentage of the subject who get above the cut off is 72.66%. Next, the result of the objective test shows that the subjects who get 4's are 13.33% and those obtaining 3's are 24.44% and 42.22% of the subjects get 2's which are exactly ate the cut off. Consequently, the percentage of the subjects obtaining scores above the cut off is 79.33%. The overall results shows that the subjects have lower scores on subjective test than on objective test. In response to the second research question, there are a positive correlation between students' scores on their knowledge of letter-writing and the scores of the business letter-writing skill. In other words, it seems the mastery of the subjects on the knowledge of letter-writing is highly correlated with their ability in writing business letters. The finding revealed that of the 11 points of analysis encountered in subjects' letters, the difficulties in terms of content and tone occurr the highest (40%), the problem in you-attitude and diction were the second highest (35%) and the problem in sympathy and gratitude occurr the third highest (25%). To help students overcome their difficulties are recommended. In addition, research on the students' ability in writing other aspects of effective business letters such as appearance and letter format are also suggested. The purpose of this study is to measure, describe, analyze, and explain the ability of students in writing persuasive business letters at the Banking Department, of UPN “VETERAN”, Economics Faculty, in Jakarta and the correlation between the direct and indirect measures used in this study. Writing English Business Letters in an important skill for bank employees. Acquiring this skill, however, requires great effort. Learners whose native language is not English are often confronted with the difficulties in writing English business sentences and other aspects of persuasive business letters. To gain insight in the proficiency of the bankin. |