SKRIPSI PTK THE USE OF PICTURE SERIES TO HELP THE STUDENTS WRITE A RECOUNT TEXT

(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.

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.