IMPROVING THE VIII G STUDENTS’ RECOUNT TEXT WRITING ACHIEVEMENT BY USING PICTURE SERIES AT SMPN 1 JEMBER

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to improve the VIII G students’ recount text writing achievement by using picture series as the learning medium at SMPN 1 Jember. Based on the result of the preliminary study before conducting this research, only 11.11% of students (4 of 36 students) got score 80 or higher, while 83.33% of students (30 of 36 students) got the writing score less than 80. The average of the writing score in that class was still 70.5. According to the results of interviewing the English Teacher, only half of the students were active during the teaching-learning process of writing. Furthermore, based on that interview, the students said that it was difficult to start writing and finding ideas to write. When they had difficulty in finding and developing ideas about what they are going to write, automatically they stuck at this step. To overcome the main problem, picture series was chosen as the instructional medium to improve the students' active participation and writing achievement. Yunus (1981:50) defines picture series as a number of related composite pictures linked each other to form picture sequences. It means that picture series can be used as the media to guide students to write recount text. In addition, picture series has already had a story. By looking at picture series, students can comprehend the story easily, since picture series consists of several pictures which are related to each other. It is because picture series have already contained ideas of the story and have already been organized chronologically. Besides that, Wright (1989:2) states that pictures can contribute to interest and motivation. Those were the basic consideration why the researcher proposed and believed that picture series could improve students’ active participation in teaching and learning process, and solve students’ problem in writing.