(KODE : PTK-0712) : SKRIPSI PTK THE USE OF PICTURE SERIES TO HELP THE STUDENTS WRITE A RECOUNT TEXT (MAPEL BAHASA INGGRIS KELAS X)
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
English is well-known as a global language used by people to communicate with other people around the world. If someone does not know English, he will get difficulties in having communication with other people that use English. Therefore, mastering English language is very important.
The fact that mastering English is very important becomes the background for the government of Indonesia to put English in the formal education curriculum. The government of Indonesia has put English as a compulsory subject since the fourth grade of elementary school. It is expected that every student will be able to master English so the student does not find any obstacles dealing with language when the student is having communication with other people from around the world.
Feez (1998) argues that enabling learners to develop the knowledge and skills which will allow them to engage with whole texts appropriate to social context is the aim of English language teaching. Because of that, the government of Indonesia is implementing the School Based Curriculum which focuses on texts both in junior and senior high school levels. In the curriculum, senior high school students are obliged to learn English through different texts which have different function based on social context. Therefore, the syllabus used in the learning and teaching activities is text-based syllabus. The genre-based approach is one example of approaches used in text-based syllabus (Feez, 1998). Some texts to be taught in senior high schools are recount, narrative, procedure, descriptive, news item, report, analytical exposition, spoof, hortatory exposition, explanation, discussion, and review (BSNP, 2006).
Those texts should be learned by the students in all language skills which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, each student has different types of difficulties related to those four skills. Some of them consider writing as the most difficult skill to be learnt. Tiedt (1989 : 6) states that "of all the language skills, writing is the most difficult and it is a hard work." As with speaking, the writer generates ideas. On the other hand, writing is important to be mastered to express ideas without the pressure of face-to-face communication (Raimes, 1983).
Unfortunately, based on the researcher's experience and observation when he was doing his Program Pengalaman Lapangan (PPL), many English teachers usually do not give equal portion of teaching to the four language skills when they are teaching the students. Many English teachers usually assign the students to write a text at home and then they submit their writing in the following meeting. The teachers do not understand that writing has to be done after several stages of writing starting from brain-storming until final draft of writing. They even do not give any feedback on the students' writing so that the students cannot know whether their writing is good or not. It can be the obstacle for the students to improve their writing skills.
The students in SMAN X also considered writing as the most difficult skill to learn. The researcher asked the students to write down their simple opinion towards writing on the back side of their drafts while the researcher taught the students. From the data, there were more than 50% students who stated that writing is difficult. They found a lot of difficulties in writing. Based on the researcher's observation, the students had problem in writing a recount text. They needed much time to start writing because they did not have any idea to write and they had very limited English vocabulary. Besides, the result of the students' recount texts was not really satisfying. Their ideas were not organized well. They also made mistakes mostly on the use of past tense, minimum requirements, and even some of them did not write proper recount text based on the generic structure of a recount text. It was so ironic since recount is one of the texts that have more value in the context of schooling (Gerot and Wignell, 1994) as cited by Mulya (2007 : 17). Feez (1998) adds that recount is classified as the simplest story text.
The reasons motivated the researcher to conduct a classroom action research to help the students write a recount text. Besides, the researcher, who considers that writing is not really difficult, wants to help the students in that class write a recount text so that they will not think that writing is difficult anymore.
The research offered a solution in the form of instructional media to overcome the problem faced by the students by using picture series. Picture series were chosen because they have many advantages. Using what appears in the pictures, the students can get ideas and opportunity to write in a connected way (Kreidle, 1968). It will help the students write a text without spending much time only to find ideas. Well-chosen picture series also give motivation to the students in learning situation, especially in learning how to write (Kieffer and Cochran, 1985). Besides, picture series provide material that offers guidance on vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization yet lets the students write about new subject matter (Raimes, 1983).
Some previous research dealing with the use of picture series in teaching writing showed good results. One of them was done by Setiawaty in 2003. Setiawaty used the picture series to help her students write a narrative text. Based on Setiawaty's research, the use of picture series helped her students write a narrative text. Understanding the advantages provided by picture series and also the problems in writing a recount text faced by the students, the use of picture series can be a good solution in the form instruction media for the students in this research in writing a recount text.