THE EFFECT OF USING POCKET CHART ON THE SEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS’ TENSES MASTERY IN WRITING ENGLISH SENTENCES AT SMPN 3 TANGGUL JEMBER

Abstract

Indonesian students, as EFL learners, often experience problems in writing English sentences; especially they find it difficult to apply correct tenses while writing an English sentence. Considering the importance of tenses in learning English writing, Indonesian students have to master the English tenses to be able to write a correct English sentence. Meanwhile, pocket chart can reduce the difficulties which are faced by the students on their English sentence writing. Pocket chart is a kind of teaching media used in teaching learning process which has pockets for word cards in which the students are able to arrange them into good sentences. In this study, pocket chart refers to a piece of vinyl material that was made 120 cm long and 90 cm high with the transparent plastic pockets stuck on for the place of the word cards. While, word cards are colorful papers that are written by one word on them for arranging sentences by placing them on pocket chart. They were made 12 cm high. By using pocket chart the students can learn how to apply English tenses in a sentence in easy ways. This research was conducted to investigate whether or not there was a significant effect of using pocket chart on tenses mastery in writing English sentences of the seventh grade students at SMPN 3 Tanggul Jember. The respondents of this research were the seventh grade students of SMPN 3 Tanggul Jember in the 2010/2011 academic year that was determined by cluster random sampling using lottery after conducting homogeneity test before. The total number of the respondent was 72 students, divided into experimental group and control group. The experimental group consisted of 36 students which were taught by using pocket chart as the media in teaching tenses on their sentence writing, while the control group consisted of 36 students which were taught conventionally by using blackboard as the media in teaching tenses on their sentence writing. The primary data of this research were collected from the students’ score of sentence writing test, while the supporting data of the research were gained through interview and documentation. The primary data were collected and then analyzed by using t-test formula on SPSS Computing program. The result indicated that the value of statistical Sig. (2-tailed) was 0.41 and the degree of freedom 70. Thus, it is lower than that of the significance level used (0.041 < 0.05). It means that the null hypothesis (Ho): “There is no significant effect of using pocket chart on Tenses mastery in writing English sentences of the seventh grade students at SMPN 3 Tanggul Jember” is rejected. On the contrary, the alternative Hypothesis (Ha) that is formulated: “There is a significant effect of using pocket chart on Tenses mastery in writing English sentences of the seventh grade students at SMPN 3 Tanggul Jember” is accepted. Furthermore, the results of each indicator showed that statistic probabilities (Sig. 2-tailed) for Simple Present tense was lower than the significance level (0.044 < 0.05) and for Present Continuous tense was also lower than the significance level (0.045 < 0.05). It means that there are significant effects of using pocket chart on Simple Present tense and Present Continuous tense mastery in writing English sentences of the seventh grade students at SMPN 3 Tanggul Jember. Therefore, it had been proved that that there was a significant effect of using pocket chart on tenses mastery in writing English sentences of the seventh grade students at SMPN 3 Tanggul. Based on the result of this research, it is recommended to the English teacher to also use pocket chart as an alternative teaching aid because it is relatively easy to make.