SKRIPSI PTK THE USE OF ANIMATION MOVIE FOR DEVELOPING STUDENTS WRITING SKILL OF NARRATIVE TEXTS

(KODE : PTK-0588) : SKRIPSI PTK THE USE OF ANIMATION MOVIE FOR DEVELOPING STUDENTS WRITING SKILL OF NARRATIVE TEXTS

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Besides our mother tongue, Indonesian and Javanese language, we also learn English as our foreign language. English is very important because nowadays English already be one of the most important language. In other words by mastering English either actively or passively, we can grasp a half of this world, not only in business world but also in politics and also in education. Our government is aware of how important of English is, so they made English be one of the subject which is taught from playgroup until the university.

We can see the importance of writing in daily life and also in social life, like in education and business aspect. Writing also gives some other benefits. Besides being means of communication, writing can also create jobs. In beginning writing, it is just an activity to express our idea, opinion, or feeling in the text. Writing can also be a hobby to spend our time, but finally in this modern life, people can get money from doing their writing, for example a journalist, novelist or script writer. 

Although, writing is very important for us, it is a difficult subject especially for the student. The reason is because writing is a mixture of our idea, vocabulary and also grammar, we also must pay attention to the grammar, so it is normal if the student think that writing is a difficult subject because they must pay attention to many things (idea, concept, vocabulary and grammar). 

Besides that reason, there is another factor that makes writing be the most difficult subject. The other reason is that there are a lot of many kinds of texts in English, such as narrative, descriptive, recount, and many more. Each text has different characteristics. There are generic social function, structure and language features.

To solve that problem, the teacher also must try to develop the ability of writing, grammar and structure of the student, and they also must find out an interesting method or visual aid to teach writing, so they will be interested in writing class. According to Kreidler (1965 : 1) visual aid can be useful to the language teacher because;

1. They create situations which are outside the class room wall,

2. They introduce the students to unfamiliar cultural aspects,

3. They give reality to what might be understood, verbally by the students,

4. They change situations quickly and easily in a drill, provide decoration for the classroom.

Any kinds of visual aid that teacher uses must make the students comfortable with the material or the class so they can easily understand the lesson. Kreidler (1965; 41) also has another opinion, he said that : 

Using any kind of method has goals to give the students the opportunity to express their own idea, using the language pattern that they have learned. And that the students need this kind of opportunity in order to begin to use English in a way that enables them to express their ideas, interest, feeling and needs, clearly, correctly and confidently.

Based on Kreidler opinion, the writer can conclude that visual aid has an important function that the teacher can use in teaching and learning process, visual aids can also give the students an opportunity to extend their ability and also to explore their talent. Since long time ago teacher already use any kinds of visual aid for example; in book, picture, song, real object, etc. In this final project the writer chose a film, Brother Bear in a writing class, the writer hopes that by using film the students will be more interested in learning writing in a class. According Charles et al (1985 : 129), he had an opinion : 

A narrative is a story, a narrative writing is writing that tells about a story. We use narrative writing when we tell a friend about something interesting that happened to you at work or in school, when you tell someone a joke, or if you write about the events of the day in the privacy of a diary or journal.

A narrative text is very suitable for the students in writing class because they can easily express their own idea drawn from their own experience at school, house or anywhere, in their narrative writing.

SKRIPSI AN INVESTIGATION OF THE STUDENTS ABILITY AND DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING A NARRATIVE TEXT

(KODE : PENDBING-0056) : SKRIPSI AN INVESTIGATION OF THE STUDENTS ABILITY AND DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING A NARRATIVE TEXT

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION

The chapter presents general points of the study including background of the study, research questions, aims of the study, scope of the study, significance of the study, method, and organization of the paper.

A. Background

Writing is very important in learning language. Writing also plays a very significant role in the success of learning Thomson (1978) in Emilia (1996 : 5). Therefore, it is not surprising in Indonesia that writing has been paid more attention to by the government. This can be seen from the last two curricula of English for secondary school (Kurikulum berbasis kompetensi (KBK/Curriculum Based Competence) and kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (KTSP/ Curriculum of Educational Unit)). These two curricula put a strong emphasis in writing. The students are told to write different text types including, recount, descriptive, procedure, exposition, discussion, report, Narrative, news item, etc.

The current curriculum for senior high school released by BSNP (Badan Standar Nasional Pendidikan) states that one of the main purposes of English in this stage of education is comprehending and creating various short functional text types and monolog and also essays of procedures, descriptive, recount, Narrative, report, news item, analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, spoof, explanation, discussion, review, and public speaking. From the BSNP, it can be seen that the curriculum gives emphasis in writing various text types, unexceptionally Narrative.

However, research on the students' ability and difficulties in writing has not been well documented by expert in Indonesia. Thus, this research tried to investigate the students' ability and difficulties in writing those texts, particularly Narrative.

Narrative is one of the two modes of our thinking (Bruner 1986, cited in Abdulmanan 2008 : 2). While communicating with others, we may describe an incident as a way of explaining his/her thought or a part of his/her argument. As much, (cited in Abdulmanan 2008 : 2) Narrative is usually an essential text type required to practice in writing class for learners of English as a foreign language. However, when it comes to the first graders' composition in X, some students who are lacking in practice and having limited vocabularies to tell their imagination often do not have much to say.

In this research, the writer focuses on analysis of a Narrative text written by first graders of one SMAN in X. Based on the writer's observation the students still found it difficult to make a Narrative text, moreover there was limited research that revealed about the reason why they have difficulties in writing a Narrative text.

Regarding the above phenomenon, it is thus necessary to conduct research which focuses on the students' ability and difficulties in writing a Narrative text. This research is also expected to investigate ability and what difficulties that the students encountered. Knowing what difficulties that the students usually found, teachers are expected to know what to do to their students.

In the end, this study will show the ability of the first graders of senior high school who write a Narrative text.

B. Research Questions

In line with the purposes of the study above, this study will attempt to address the following questions :

1. How is the ability of students in writing a Narrative text ?

2. What difficulties did the students find in writing a Narrative text ?

C. Aims of The Study

The aims of this study are : 

1. To identify students' ability in writing a Narrative text

2. To identify students' difficulties in writing a Narrative text

D. Significance of the Study

The writer expects this research can enrich the literature on research dealing with ability and difficulties of students in writing a Narrative text. The result of this can also give valuable information to teachers of teaching writing and to the students on the need of realizing the weaknesses in order to improve their ability in writing a Narrative text.

Moreover, for the teacher professionalism, it requires teachers to find teaching approach to develop students' ability in writing a Narrative text.

E. Organization of the Paper 

Chapter One : This chapter presents general points of the study including background of the study, research questions, aims of the study, significance of the study, and organization of the paper. 

Chapter Two : This chapter elaborates theoretical overview that supports this study. 

Chapter Three : This chapter provides details on method that will be applied on this study. 

Chapter Four : This chapter presents, analyzes and discusses the finding. 

Chapter Five : This chapter explores the summary of the study and also some suggestions for further better study.

SKRIPSI THE USE OF SERIES OF PICTURES IN STUDENTS NARRATIVE WRITING PROCESS

(KODE : PENDBING-0052) : SKRIPSI THE USE OF SERIES OF PICTURES IN STUDENTS NARRATIVE WRITING PROCESS

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION

This chapter briefly describes the contents of the study including background, research questions, aims of the study, the scope of study, significance of study, research methodology, clarification of the key terms, and organization of the paper.

A. Background of the Study

Writing is often considered as a difficult skill to master. Students who learn the writing skill need to be able to deal with some writing elements. The elements are the combination of a number of diverse elements namely content, form, grammar, style and mechanics (Harris, 1968). In other words, the students are required to be able to develop the ideas, organize the content of the text, employ appropriate grammatical form, choose structures and lexical items, and demonstrate appropriate spelling and punctuation in the text.

Dealing with the difficulties in writing can be carried out by implementing strategies in teaching writing. The strategies should make the students be able to develop their writing skills. Moreover, the strategies need to have the ability to motivate the students to write and allow them to have enough practice in writing so that the difficulties can be minimized.

Strategies in teaching writing can be various. Teachers may use teaching media as their strategies to support them presenting the materials. Teaching media are defined as equipments to support teaching and learning activities and help teachers to present the materials (Saiful, 2006). By using teaching media, teachers can increase the students' motivation and create an interesting learning atmosphere (Kamaludin, 2009).

Using teaching media is not merely about using supporting equipments in the classroom. The teacher should be able to choose appropriate teaching media in order to achieve the benefits of using teaching media. The teaching media should be chosen by considering the goals of the lessons and the characteristics of the students. Specifically, there are several aspects that should be considered in choosing teaching media : the age, interests, type of intelligence and experience of the students; the physical circumstances of the classroom; the cost of the media; and convenience of the materials available (Wright, 1976). By considering those factors, the teachers can determine what teaching media can be used in certain teaching and learning process.

Determining the appropriate supporting equipments in the classroom can also be done by choosing common teaching media. One of the common teaching media is pictures. They tend to be practical and easy to use. Teachers can deliver certain questions and ask the students to explain a word or concept (Haycraft, 1978) simply by showing or pointing on pictures while the students are paying attention to what happens in the pictures. Moreover, the information served by pictures can possibly avoid boredom and lack of interest in the classroom (Jonassen, 1982).

As the common teaching media, pictures may be presented in many ways. Besides presenting the picture as a single picture, presenting pictures in form of series of pictures is also a good choice. The use of series of pictures not only provides the students with the basic material for their compositions but also stimulates their imagination powers (Heaton, 1989). Moreover, teachers can use the series of pictures to guide the students to write well-organized text. The series of pictures contains a number of pictures that are joined into one another to explain certain events.

In relation to the teaching writing narrative text, a series of pictures is useful to use. The series of pictures can support the process of teaching writing narrative text. It helps teachers to serve the important aspects in teaching narrative genres that are to introduce the genres and to point out some distinctive characteristics of the genres such as the social purposes, generic structures and the language features of the text (Kim, 2006). In doing so, the teacher can start by showing the pictures while introducing the genre and explaining that each picture in a series indicates the sequence of events in the story. Showing the series of pictures before writing the narrative text also can help the students to predict the sequence of events that happen in the story. Later, when the students are in the writing stage, the series of pictures is hoped to lead the students to arrange the events of the story based on the arrangement of the pictures with appropriate generic structures. At the end, the students can write a narrative story with well-organized events.

Considering the explanation above, this study is conducted to find out the benefits of using series of pictures in narrative writing process and to describe the students' attitudes toward the use of series of pictures in narrative writing activity. It is hoped that this study can be one of references for English teachers to teach writing narrative text in interesting and enjoyable ways so that the students can be motivated to write. It is also hoped that by using series of pictures, the students can be stimulated to think creatively in gathering the ideas and learn narrative writing enthusiastically.

B. Research Questions

This study is conducted in order to answer the following questions : 

1. What are the benefits of using series of pictures in students' narrative writing process ?

2. What are the students' attitudes toward the use of series of pictures in narrative writing process ?

C. Aims of the Study

Based on the research questions above, the aims of this study are to find out : 

1. The benefits of using series of pictures in students' narrative writing process.

2. The students' attitudes toward the use of series of pictures in narrative writing process.

D. Significance of the Study

This study is expected to give theoretical, practical, and professional benefits.

1. Theoretical Benefits

The results of this study can be used to enrich the theories in English teaching media and become one of references for further studies related to the use of visual media in narrative writing.

2. Practical Benefits

For teachers, students, and readers who practically deal with the use of series of pictures in narrative writing, this study can be useful. For the students, they will able to write better and be motivated to practice their English skills. Moreover, for teachers and readers, the results show the implication of the use of series of pictures in narrative writing activity, provide information related to the students' attitudes toward the use series of pictures in narrative writing, and become evidence that series of pictures give benefits during the process of writing narrative texts.

3. Professional Benefits

In professional benefits, teachers and schools can hopefully get the benefits from the results of the study. The teachers are informed that series of pictures can be useful media to be used during the process of teaching and learning. Moreover, they can improve the strategy on teaching writing narrative texts. For the schools, this study can be used as a consideration that series of pictures are needed as one of teaching media. Thus, series of pictures can be provided in the schools.

E. Organization of the Paper

This paper is organized as follows. 

Chapter I : Introduction

This chapter discusses the background of the study, the limitation of the problems, the research questions, the purpose of the study, the significance of the study, and the organization of the paper.

Chapter II : Theoretical Foundation

Chapter II provides the theoretical review served as the base for investigating the problem in this study.

Chapter III : Research Methodology

This chapter explains the research design, the site and participants, the data collection techniques, the research procedures, and the data analysis.

Chapter IV : Findings and Discussions

In chapter IV, the analysis and discussions of the result in the study are presented.

Chapter V : Conclusions and Recommendations

This chapter presents the conclusion of the study and provides recommendations in accordance with the study.