Improving Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text by Using Gencraft: A Classroom Action Research

Abstract

This study aims to improve students’ achievement in writing descriptive text by using Genraft. The study focused on helping students to improve their writing skill, particular in generating and organizing ideas into descriptive text. The participants in this study were students in the class with the lowest scores in writing. Many students struggled to describe objects, places, or people in detail so I used Gencraft to support the writing process. In each cycle, I carried out planning, action, observation, and reflection activities to evaluate the teaching and learning process. Gencraft was used during the lessons to encourage students to create and describe the images they had created by using Gencraft. The result of this study showed an increase in students’achievement from the pre-cycle to Cycle 1. In cycle 1, only 30% of the students met the minimum score, while 70% did not achieve it. After implementing Gencraft in Cycle 1, the percentage of students who met the minimum score increased to 40%, while 60% of the students still did not achieve. Furthermore, the improvement was even more significant in Cycle 2. The percentage of students who achieved the minimum score increased to 70%, while only 30% did not achieve. These results indicate that the use of Gencraft improves students’ writing skill, especially in writing descriptive text. The important key of this study was that Gencraft helped students improve their writing skills by stimulating their ideas through visual images. The images generated by Gencraft made students more interested and motivated to learn. In addition, students were able to describe images in more detail, which made it easier to compose descriptive text.