IMPROVING THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL IN DESCRIPTIVE TEXTS BY USING PICTURES MEDIA AT SWASTA GKPI MEDAN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54367/kairos.v3i1.829Abstract
Writing as one of the language skills is not as easy as one thinks because it needs some exact requirements to create topic sentence, controlling idea, supporting sentences, concluding sentence, etc. It is not surprising that students have difficulty in writing. The students could not describe thing, place or person because they could not express their ideas and they have limited vocabulary. Thus, they need some ways or media which could help them write descriptive texts. The teacher should be creative to search for interesting media to teach writing descriptive texts. Pictures media can help students to express and elaborate their ideas into a writing. The objectives of this study are to prove that the use of pictures media can improve the students’ skill in writing descriptive texts and to describe the responses of the students towards the use of pictures media in writing descriptive texts. The subjects of this study are the eleventh grade students of SMA Swasta GKPI Medan Class XI IPS 1 in the Academic Year of 2017/2018. In conducting this research, the writer used Classroom Action Research (CAR) as the method of research. Tests were used to gather the quantitative data. In addition, field notes and observation sheet were used to gather the qualitative data. Based on, the findings of this study, there were 4 students (12%) who passed the Mastery Minimum Criteria (Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal) 75 in pretest, 12 students (36%) in formative test and 29 students (87%) in posttest. The result of this research revealed that there is a significant improvement of the students’ achievement from pretest, formative test and in the post test. This improvement was shown by the comparison between the students’ mean score of pretest (43.75), formative test (70.6), and posttest (84.4). Based on the questionnaire results, the students’ responses are very good. They agreed that using pictures media could improve their achievement in writing descriptive texts. Furthermore, the students found it interesting to learn how to write descriptive texts by using pictures media. It can be seen from their full attention during the learning teaching processes. Therefore, it is recommended for the teachers to use pictures media in improving their students’ writing skill especially in writing descriptive texts.References
Arikunto, S. 2002. Prosedur Penelitian Suatu Pendekatan Praktek. Jakarta: Rineka Cipta.
Boardman, Cynthia. 2008. A Writing to Communicate Paragraph and Essays. New York. Fayetteville: Pearson Education.
Burns, A. 2009. Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. Sydney: Macquarie University Press.
Chairena, Mei Setya. 2007. The Use of Pictures to Teach Writing Descriptive Texts: Experimental Study at the Eighth Year Students of SMP Negeri 13 Semarang in the Academic Year of 2006/2007. A Sarjana’s Thesis, Faculty of Language and Arts: State University of Semarang.
Harmer, J. 2004. How to Teach Writing. New York: Longman.
Heaton, J . B. 1988. Writing English Language Teaching. London: Longman.
Kane, S. Thomas. 2000. The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kemmis, Stephen and Robin McTaggart. 1988. The Action Research. Victoria: Deaken University.
Knapp, Peter & Watkins. 2005. Genre, Text, Grammar Technologies for Teaching and Assessing Writing. Sydney: National Library of Australia.
Mukarto, et al. 2006. English on Sky 2 for Junior High School Students Year VIII. Jakarta: Erlangga.
Rusmanhaji. 2004. Kinds of Genre. Surabaya: Sebelas Maret University.
Siahaan, S & Shinoda. 2007. Generic the Structure. Yogyakarta: Graha Ilmu.
Wahyuningsih, Arum. 2011. Improving Students’ Writing Skill through Picture Media in Grade X of Office Administration 2 of SMK NEGERI 1 TEMPEL. A Sarjana’s Thesis, Faculty of Language and Arts: State University of Yogyakarta.
Weigle, S. C. 2002. Assessing Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, Andrew. 1989. Pictures for Language Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zahara, Sofiana. 2014. The Effectiveness of Teaching Descriptive Text by Using Picture Media on Students Ability in the Tenth Grade of SMK Tunas Grafika Informatika Jakarta. A Sarjana’s Thesis, Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teachers Training: Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University.
