THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING SEQUENCES OF PICTURE IN TEACHING WRITING NARRATIVE TEXT AT THE SEVENTH GRADE SMP

 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background of the Study

Writing skill is a skill is required in many contexts through life. You can write an email, reflect on what happened during the day in your personal diary or write essay for your homework.  The essay is a very difficult genre. Professors and lecturer also write essay but the call them “papers”. It is not unusual for academic staff to spend weeks, and even months (sometimes year!) working on a paper. No one finds the proses of essay writing easy. Part of the difficulty is that is important to say exactly what is required in a limited word limit. Most people could cover the topic with an unlimited word limit and unlimited time. Being brief and succinct- and yet covering everything that needs to be covered- is always a challenge. This is the main difficulty in writing essay.

Writing is a visual representation of spoken language. Whatever specific form of writing a writer is engaged in, they will have to be able to transcribe language according to the conventions of a particular writing system, and be able to decode visual symbols into their corresponding meanings. Learning how to do this is not a trivial achievement: It is a main focus of early years education and, in modern literate cultures, is the subject of huge investments of economic and social resources. It is also something which, unlike speech, significant number of people across the world fail to master, either for socio-cultural reasons or because of cognitive difficulties like dyslexia[1].

Writing as a productive skill is a very important skill in English for students because writing has some benefits for them. Students can express their idea trough writing, for example in writing a narrative text. In writing a narrative text, students may find some difficulties and make some mistakes. Teachers should help them to solve problem so student can improve their narrative writing ability.

Considering the above conditions, it is necessary to create a strategy that can involve both the teacher and the students and that invites them to participate in the learning activities. Some methods and strategies are developed to construct a meaningful teaching and learning in writing. One of the strategies that can be used in order to help the students in gathering and developing their ideas in writing is Sequences Picture. It can also make the students more involved in the learning process that leads to understanding so that they can make sense of the writing activities  in their real life and they can be more motivated

The Sequences Picture depend on the involvement of teacher and students together. The teacher must help students by giving the necessary input, which means a close analysis of each drawing making sure students have the needed for the simple exercises which follow.  It is a good idea to read over the exercises before presenting the lesson to your students.  That way you know that will be studied in the exercises[2].

Another  difficulty  found  is  related  to  the  writing  mastery. Inability to use correct tense instead of past tense. In writing narrative story, most of the students still used present tense, instead of past tense. Then vocabulary mastery  is the last difficulty faced by the students in writing.  They  directly  wrote  the  meaning  of  the  words  found  in  the dictionary  without  paying  attention  whether  those  words  are appropriate with the contexts.

As  conclusion,  it  is  true  that  writing  is  considered  as  the difficult  skill  to  master  but  there  are  some  efforts  that  can  be  done  to overcome  this  problems.  Based  on  the  researcher  and  teacher’s discussion  on  how  to  solve  the  students  problem  in  writing,  sequence pictures  was  chosen  as  one  of    the  effective  efforts  used  to  dealt  with the students’ writing difficulties in the teaching and learning process of writing under the title THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING SEQUENCES OF PICTURE IN TEACHING WRITING NARRATIVE TEXT AT THE SEVENTH GRADE SMP .

B.     The Reason of Choosing the Title

There are some reasons for me to choose the study. First is the function of generic structure of the Narrative text (goal, material, and steps) has not been explored largely yet by the students so that it is necessary to  be explored more. The second is the students still get confusion in using the writing in the narrative text. And the third is the pictures in the sequence can make the conclusion as the steps to develop rhetorical devices in the written from. Last, the study can be used to solve the problems in writing the Narrative text because a recipe means the directions for making Narrative.

C.    Definition of the Key Term

1.      Writing Ability

The definition of writing ability can be formed depending on teachers’ own experience as teachers and philosophy of writing, taken into consideration characteristics of learners and aims of pedagogy in a given context. It may also be formed according to pedagogical approaches to the teaching of writing which each teacher adopts[3].

2.      Sequences Picture

Sequence  pictures  is  recommended  because  it  has  many benefits in the teaching and learning process of writing. The advantage of  using  sequence  pictures  is  that  it  will  make  the  students  interested and stimulated in participating in the process of  teaching  and learning writing.

3.      Narrative Text

Narrative is the ability to tell a story, whether spoken or written, is a common and often complex form of communication. The primary purpose of narrative to describe an experience, event, or sequence of events in the form of a story and set the story up for your listener, describing the time, place, and your own involvement.

D.    The Problem

1.      Identification of the Problem

In practicing English writing, there are various ways or techniques that have been used but still remain mistakes, the students’ ability to write sentence in English was very poor. It was seen thought the means score that was fair. The law ability of the students were concluded based on five criteria of writing, they are: content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanic. It means that the students need something difference which can improve their motivation in English learning process.

On the other hand, students as beginners in learning English usually make many mistakes in writing a text. Sometimes they find difficulties in finding idea, they do not know how to arrange the sentences that they have into a good text. In this case, the teacher should find out solution by creating efficient and effective strategies of teaching writing that can make the writing class more interesting, exciting, and enjoyable. It can be done by choosing the material appropriate with the students and take a strategies in increasing the writing ability if the students.

2.      Limitation of the Problem

The final project is in titled The Effectiveness of Using Sequences of Picture in Teaching Writing Narrative Text at the Seventh Grade SMP   I limited the scope and the set problem of the study so that the problem would not be wide and the study will be effective. In this final project, I only focused on the use of picture in sequence of Content and Organization. I also wanted to observe whether or not they improve significantly on their ability of writing the Narrative text after using picture in sequence.

3.      Formulation of the Problem

Based in the limitation of the problem above, the research will be conducted to answer the question “How is the effectiveness of Sequences of Picture in teaching writing narrative text at the seventh grade SMP ?”

E. Objectives and Needs of the Research

1. The Objectives of the Research

Based on the formulation of the problem above, the objectives of the study is to find out the effectiveness of Sequences of Picture in teaching writing narrative text at the seventh grade SMP .

2. The Needs of the Research

The results of the study are expected useful for some side. For the first is for the student. In the study, students are not only encouraged the end result or a good value. But students also need to understand Sequences Picture to improve the quality of writing.

For the second, it is important for educators to pay attention to the knowledge; especially the Sequences Picture will be very helpful in dealing with their students. It is expected that educators were able to arrange a fun learning strategies that can be addressed properly by the students so as to obtain maximum learning results.

The last is for other researcher, it is hope that this study will be of any value to other researcher in conducting further research of the similar topic. This research may need some references that might useful.

F.     Hypothesis

The hypothesis of this research was formulated as follows:

Ho:  there is no significant difference of achievement between the students who are using sequences picture

Hi:  there is significant difference of achievement between the students who are using sequences picture and those are not.