Using Digital Photographs to Mediate Senior High School Students in Writing Descriptive Texts

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to improve the X-IPA 2 students’ writing descriptive achievement by using digital photograph at SMA Negeri 1 Arjasa, Jember in the 2018/2019 academic year. Based on the result of the preliminary study which was done before conducting this research, there were 24 students (66.6%) getting score ≥ 75 while 12 students (33.33% of the students) getting score less than 75 in the writing test. Based on the result of the informal interview with the English teacher, most students had a difficulty in writing, the students had difficulties in finding ideas, organizing ideas, finding appropriate vocabulary and writing grammatical correct sentences. The researcher proposed digital photographs to help them in writing. Scoter (2004) claims that photographs can reduce discomfort in the classroom, attract students' attention, empower students, and create fun. This research proposed two research questions: 1) How are the writing tasks mediated through digital photographs help senior high school students at SMA Negeri 1 Arjasa produce an outline, draft and revise descriptive texts? 2) How is senior high school students’ writing quality at SMA Negeri 1 Arjasa having received actions through the writing tasks mediated through digital photographs? The first answer was to describe the contribution of digital photograph assisting students in writing an outline, and drafting and revising the descriptive text using their own words. The second answer was to describe a quantitative result of students’ progress of students writing achievement in writing a descriptive text. There were two methods which were applied to collect the data, namely writing test and observation. The data obtained from writing test were analysed by using a formula that could show the percentage of the students who achieved the criteria of the success. This research is categorized successful if at least 75% students got score at least the same as or above 75 in writing test. The data of observation were obtained from fieldnote during teaching and learning process to collect the contribution of digital photographs in assisting the students to write an outline, draft and revise a descriptive text by using their own word. The result of the action in cycle 1 and 2 showed that by using digital photograph as a media in teaching writing was able to improve students’ descriptive text writing achievement. In teaching writing, there were improvisations to students in learning writing descriptive text through digital photograph. Digital photograph (DP), representing the real picture of an object such as people, places, building, things, and many more, is visual media useful for the English teachers to develop writing tasks that potentially facilitate students gain writing skills. Photograph brings the information of the place, time, culture and the others where the photo is taken to the students’ world (Sieber, 2012). The result showed that there was improvement of the students’ writing achievement. In Cycle 1, the mean score was 78.44 and 72% of the total number of the students succeeded in achieving the target score (≥75). It means that Cycle 1 was categorized unsuccessful yet. In Cycle 2, the improvement of the students’ mean score was 79.02 and 75% of the students succeeded in achieving the target score (≥75) in the writing test. The result of observation showed that digital photographs helped the students make an outline, by listing the contents of identification and description parts. By writing an outline, the students were capable of distinguishing between identification and the description parts of the descriptive text. Digital photographs helped the students draft and revise a descriptive text by using their own words based on the digital photographs viewed. By using digital photographs the students got ideas and inspiration to write a descriptive text by using their own words.