IMPROVING THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT BY USING SINGLE PICTURES AT SMPN 1 SUKOWONO IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2010/2011

Abstract

English as a foreign language is important to be taught as a compulsory subject at all schools up to universities in Indonesia. Recently, English is also taught at elementary school as a local content subject. There are four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and language components (grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation) that should be mastered by the students who are learning English as a foreign language. One of the ways to master the international language well is by writing. Writing is a form of written communication to express the thinking or feeling after speaking. This research is a classroom action research that was conducted collaboratively by the researcher with the English teacher. It used single picture to improve the seventh year students’ writing achievement of SMP Negeri 1 Sukowono. Before doing this research, the researcher did teaching practice program (PPL Program) for about three months in SMPN 1 Sukowono. The standard minimum score requirement of Seventh grade students at SMPN 1 Sukowono was 60. During the PPL Program, the researcher found students’ difficulties in writing a text. Students faced difficulties in generating and developing ideas. Because of the reasons this research was conducted. To overcome such problem above, the researcher and the teacher agreed on using single pictures as media as were believed to be able to attract students, to motivate them, and to contribute to the context in which the language is being used. The purpose of this research was to improve the seventh grade students’ achievement in writing descriptive text at SMP Negeri 1 Sukowono in the academic year 2010/2011 through single pictures. The data in this research were gathered by administrating a writing test and by having observation in the class in each cycle. The research design was Classroom Action Research (CAR) with cycle model. Each cycle consists of four stages of activities; the preparation of the action, the implementation of the action, classroom observation and evaluation, reflection of the action. This research was intended to improve the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text at SMPN 1 Sukowono in the academic year 2010/2011. The subjects were 37 students of class VII A. They were taken by using purposive method. Based on the results of the data analysis and discussion, it was revealed that teaching writing through single pictures could improve the seventh grade students’ achievement in writing descriptive text at SMP Negeri 1 Sukowono in the academic year 2010/2011. The improvement of the students’ writing could be seen from the percentage of the students who got score 60 or more increased from 66.7% in the first cycle to 78.1% in the second cycle. It was also shown that the use of single pictures could motivate the students and make them want to pay attention to the lesson. It proved that the students’ participation during the teaching learning writing process increased from 79.7% in the first cycle to 90.5% in the second cycle. Considering the results of the writing test by using single picture, it was concluded that single pictures were effective to overcome the problems in writing. So, it is suggested to the English teachers to use single pictures to teach English to the students, especially to teach writing.