IMPROVING THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ SENTENCE WRITING ACHIEVEMENT BY USING WORD CARDS AT SMPN 3 BALUNG – JEMBER

Abstract

This chapter consists of some aspects in relation to the use of word cards to improve the students’ sentence writing achievement. This chapter is divided into four parts: background of the research, problems of the research, objectives of the research, and significance of the research.

1.1 Background of the Research Writing plays an important role in English language teaching (ELT). By writing, students can communicate each other in daily life. They can also express their ideas, thoughts, opinion, and feeling or emotion through writing. This can be one of the media for students to learn something, for example to learn language and culture. Writing is still an important act and an essential tool for learning and social participation (DeVoss, 2010:1). As a tool for learning, people, including students, learn certain knowledge by writing it. They share their knowledge in their writings to be something useful to other people. As a tool for social participation, students write to communicate with each other. They build a social relationship by using their writings as the media. In learning English, writing is included to be one of the four language skills which have to be mastered. According to Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP), English as a learning subject is learnt through four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In schools, English has become one of the subjects which have to be learnt by the students. Students can learn English through writing as a tool for learning, and build social communication with their friends by using written English as a tool for social participation. They have to learn how to write English well because they need it to build a better learning and communication. Langan (2004:5) states that any report, paper, review, essay exam, or assignment someone is responsible for should be written in the best standard English he can produce. 2

Unfortunately, according to my Teaching Practice experience at SMPN 3 Balung, most of the students still experienced difficulties to write in English. This could be seen during the English teaching and learning process in the school. The students were still confused in arranging a text, even in making a sentence correctly. Most of them seemed to work harder in writing sentences correctly. DeVoss (2010:1) states that writing is still understood to be hard work. It is recognized as a complex work to do. This brings effect to the students’ outcome and scores in English. The students’ outcome was not yet satisfying, while the students’ average scores still could not reach what was expected. Therefore, students need to learn more how to write well because writing is a skill which is complex and consists of many components. Because writing is considered complex, including some components, it requires the students to master the written language and ability of how to organize the ideas so that it can be understood by all the readers (Byrne, 1979:1). According to the curriculum, Junior High School students mainly learn to write short functional texts, but every text must begin with a sentence. In other words, to make a good text, they have to learn how to organize their ideas into a sentence first. Learning to make sentence is the basic of learning to make a text. In writing a sentence, there are some aspects which have to be concerned, such as grammar or structure, mechanics or punctuation, and vocabulary. Knowing the traditional rules of grammar, punctuation, and usage will help students write clear sentences when communicating with others (Langan, 2004:3). If the students can make a sentence correctly, it will be easier for them to arrange a paragraph or even a text. The complexity of writing makes teaching writing uneasy. Writing needs more than conventional ways to be taught. There are a lot of media which can be used to teach writing. According to my observation at SMPN 3 Balung, the teachers did not use various media in teaching. They prefer teaching in a conventional way to teach English. The media used were limited only on pictures or real things. The teachers always followed textbook when they were teaching. Therefore, the students 3

were not motivated to participate actively in teaching learning process and not be able to get good scores. Prior to this research, a preliminary study was conducted three times on November 18 th , 2013, March 20 th, 2014, and April 26 th , 2014 at SMPN 3 Balung by interviewing the English teacher, doing an observation during teaching-learning process in class, and holding a pre-test. This preliminary study was intended to collect information from the English teacher about the English teaching-learning process in SMPN 3 Balung and to know the students’ score in English writing. It was also intended to know the condition of the class and the students’ participation during writing teaching-learning process. The result of this preliminary study showed that the students of eighth grade at SMPN 3 Balung had problem in sentence writing. Their mean scores in writing pre-test were still low (60,9) and there were only 2 of 28 students (7%) got score ≥ 75 (see Appendix 4). Moreover, they did not participate actively during the lesson. The students still made many mistakes in the terms of sentence types, sentence patterns, grammar, spelling, and the use of punctuation. So, the researcher decided to focus on improving the students’ sentence writing achievement. To overcome the problem of teaching writing, one possible solution is to apply teaching aid in writing class. Usman (1995:27) states that learning can be more successful if it uses kinds of teaching aid than without using one of them. That is why the researcher would like to propose one media which can be used in teaching writing. The media is called word cards. Teachers can use them to teach writing sentence with correct patterns and construction. Zainudin (1984:11) states that the use of word cards in teaching writing is easy to show the changes of the position of the words in term of statements and questions by moving around the cards. The students can remember the pattern more easily by remembering the movement of the word cards. They are also can be used easily by the students. They just need to move around the word cards to make or change a sentence. They can stimulate the students’ 4

activeness because they are interesting for the students and they are fun to be used, especially for small group discussion. Wright (2006:87) adds that word cards can be used for teaching writing of many kinds of texts such as an article, a story, a joke, a poem, an essay, an argument, and many others. Besides, the teacher never used word cards as a writing teaching media before. Therefore, word cards were chosen as the media to overcome the students’ problem and to improve their achievement in sentence writing. Based on the description above, the researcher decided to apply a classroom action research to improve the eighth grade students’ achievement of writing sentence by using word cards at SMPN 3 Balung – Jember. The researcher chose classroom action research because there was a problem for the English teacher of SMPN 3 Balung to teach writing and for the students of SMPN 3 Balung to write well, and the fact that their sentence writing achievement was low. Therefore, the researcher wanted to solve the problem by using Classroom Action Research collaboratively with the English teacher. It was assumed that the problem of writing could be solved through the implementation of the research.

1.2 Problems of the Research As explained above in the background of the research, the problems of the research can be stated as follows: 1. Can the use of word cards improve the eighth grade students’ participation in teaching and learning process at SMPN 3 Balung – Jember? 2. Can the use of word cards improve the eighth grade students’ sentence writing achievement at SMPN 3 Balung –Jember?

1.3 Objectives of the Research Based on the problems formulation, the objectives of this classroom action research are: 5

1. To improve the eighth grade students’ participation in teaching and learning process by using word cards at SMPN 3 Balung – Jember. 2. To improve the eighth grade students’ sentence writing achievement by using word cards at SMPN 3 Balung – Jember.

1.4 Significances of the Research The results of this classroom action research are expected to be useful for these following people: 1. For Eighth Grade Students The results of this research are expected to be useful for the students, especially to improve the students’ scores in English writing and their active participation in English teaching learning process. Moreover, the use of word cards as the media in teaching writing are expected to be able to help them to write or create English sentences or text easier and better, and also help them to improve their motivation in participate during the teaching and learning process. 2. For English Teachers Hopefully, the results of this classroom action research could give English teachers new information which is useful for their teaching experience and performance. The use of word cards as the teaching-learning media is also expected to be useful for them to teach English better and in a more attractive way. 3. For Future Researcher The results of this classroom action research are hopefully useful for future researchers as information and reference to conduct a further research on certain English skill, especially in writing. The use of word cards as the media is also expected to be an inspiration for the other researchers to conduct other researches and motivation for them to create a new idea dealing with the media for teaching-learning process. For this research is limited only for sentence writing, the researcher suggests the future researcher to hold a research in paragraph writing.