THE USE OF THE WORLDS SEVEN WONDERS PICTURES TO TEACH DESCRIPTIVE WRITING TOTENTH GRADERS

THE USE OF THE WORLDS SEVEN WONDERS PICTURES TO TEACH DESCRIPTIVEWRITING TO TENTH GRADERS

Nindia Dara KartikaEnglish Department, Language and Arts Faculty, State University of Surabaya

nindiadara@yahoo.comFahri

English Department, Language and Arts Faculty, State University of Surabayafahriahli267@yahoo.co.id

AbstractThe present study aims to teach how does the implementation of the worlds seven wonders pictures, how theirresults, and how their responses. This study is descriptive qualitative. The tenth graders of SMA NEGERI 19Surabaya are the subjects of the study. The data was gained through observation checklists and field notes, thestudents writing compositions, and questionnaire. The research was conducted in two meeting. In every meeting theteacher gave them task in groups. From the result of the study, the use of the worlds seven wonders pictures helpthe students to encourage and stimulate their writing ability in producing written descriptive text easily and properlybased on the generic structure and linguistic features. It can be proved from the progression of students writingwhich scored in the term of each component. Thus, it can be concluded that the use of the worlds seven wonderspictures was run well, because the students had progression in their writing ability.Keywords: the worlds seven wonders pictures, teach, and descriptive writing.

AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengajarkan tentang bagaimana mengimplementasi media tujuh keajaiban dunia, lalubagaimana hasil siswa, dan bagaimana tanggapan mereka setelah diajari. Penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kualitatif.Subjek dari penelitian ini adalah siswa kelas X SMA NEGERI 19 Surabaya. Data diperoleh melalui observasi ceklisdan catatan, hasil komposisi menulis siswa, dan kuesioner. Penelitian ini dilakukan dalam dua pertemuan. Dalamsetiap pertemuan, guru memberikan siswa tugas secara berkelompok. Dari hasil penelitian, penggunaan media tujuhkeajaiban dunia dapat membantu siswa mendorong dan merangsang kemampuan menulis mereka di dalammenghasilkan tulisan teks deskripsi dengan mudah dan baik berdasarkan struktur umum dan unsur kebahasaan. Itudapat dibuktikan dari kemajuan hasil menulis siswa yang dinilai sesuai dengan tiap komponen. Jadi, hal ini dapatdisimpulkan bahwa penggunaan mediagambar tujuh keajaiban dunia telah berjalan dengan baik, karena siswamengalami kemajuan pada kemampuan menulis mereka.Kata kunci: gambar tujuh keajaiban dunia, mengajar, dan tulisan deskripsi.

INTRODUCTIONEducational problems always occur together

with developing and increasing the ability ofstudents, situations and environmental conditions, theinfluence of information and culture, and also thedevelopment of science and technology. In essence,the main function of language is a communication.Communication is a process of transferringinformation form one entity to another.Communication holds the important act for people tosocialize with others. Thus, a good communication

will bring somebody into a good life. There are twoways of communication, verbal and nonverbalcommunication. Mehrabian says that verbalcommunication impact more than fifty percents bynonverbal communication (1967: 248). LaRoche putswriting a skill that ensures students success in everyaspect of learning and successes (LaRoche: 2004).Raimes (1983) added that writing also helps studentsin learning language skills.

Joel Salzman simply defines writing as ataking on paper (Salzman on LaRoche: 2001). But itis not simply speech written down on paper. People

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must learn it. It must be someone to teach it. It isbecause people learn to speak the first language athome without systematic instruction, where as theyare taught at school to write (Raimes: 1983).

Moreover, sometimes the students face thedifficulties in writing. For instance, writing adescriptive text, it is as one of the aspects of languageis actually very necessary in daily life . Writing adescription is not only because of academic demands, but also because of the demands of everyday life.Indirectly, in fact we often writing descriptiveparagraphs about something or event. For example,when we are in love, we often describe peoplethat we love with the right choice of words.Generally, the men will describe the women whothey love specifically, such as about hair , smile ,expression, behavior, body shape, and etc. All thisoverview make the people can imagine the real objectsomeones profile easily.

However, when the students were asked tocreate a descriptive paragraph, generally they willencounter obstacles due to hit by a number ofconcepts and rules that must be understood orfollowed. Students must write a descriptive paragraphsystematically based on the the teachers formats.Whereas, sometimes descriptive paragraphs examplesgiven are also very abstract and not at all known tothe students. So, how could the students can imaginethe description penguins for example, because theyseldom or almost never see the real object or drawingpenguins.

Another case, when the students wereassigned to make an overview of their headmasterwho is getting mad, definitely they will be able towrite descriptive paragraphs with his own style assoon. Constraints in writing descriptive paragraphcan actually be overcome with the help of media inlearning activities. Using media in learning activitiesis very important for teachers. The benefit of usingmedia is media helps to enhance the quality inlearning. Using media can support the teachersmaterials. Well-designed material takes the wisdomof different accepted learning theorist into accountwhich result in active and effective learning (Kumar,1998:7). As a result, media is an integral part of thelearning activities in order to achieve educationalgoals. The worlds seven wonders pictures are one ofkind of media that can be used for teachers to teachwriting about descriptive text. If the students wereassigned to make a paragraph description of TheGreat Wall of China, for example, they would bemore easily complete the paragraph when providedan interesting picture. The students easily present thedescription of The Great Wall of China spesifically,because of the media available. Besides, the students

will easily describe the history of that building, theshape, the length and width, the characteristics, andso on.

A study of Indah Estu Wilujeng (2008) haselaborated the effectiveness of using pictures inteaching and learning of writing. Her study entitledPictorial Stories Implementation to Improve the SixthGrade Students Writing Ability at MI Darun NajahJatirejo Mojokerto. She formulated her researchquestions as follows: (1) How are the procedures ofusing pictorial stories in teavhing writing to the sixthgrade students of MI Darun Najah JatirejoMojokerto? and, (2) Can the implementation ofteaching writing using pictorial stories improve thesixth grade students writing ability?. At the end ofher study, she found that the students had significantimprovement from the 1 cycle to the last cycle. Shebelieved that the teachnique of presenting pictorialstories in teaching writing was effective and efficientin motivating and increasing the students writingability.

In this study, the writer focuses on usingpictures of seven wonders of the world fordescriptive writing, in which the descriptive has anaim to provide clear descriptions about a certainthing. By using pictures, they display the ideas invisual form. It can helps the students in describingsomething. Pictures are used in the writing class tohelp the students in finding her idea and generate itfor their writing. This fact will help the teacher inguiding the teaching and learning process while usingpictures.METHODS

This study is a descriptive qualitativeresearch, because the main aims of the technique areto describe and to explain a natural phenomenon:what is happening?, what is it happening?, why is ithappening?, and how is it happening? (Chariri,2009:9). It is suitable with the objectives of thisresearch, they are to describe the implementation ofthe worlds seven wonders pictures in writingactivity, the students writing results, and thestudents responses.

The data of a qualitative research are servedas interview transcript, field notes, photo, videorecording, memo or writing (Hasan, 1990; 27). Thus,the writer is only used the observation checklists andfield notes, the questionnaires, and the studentswriting composition.

The students of X MIA 6 of SMA NEGERI19 Surabaya were the participant of this study. It wasbased on the consideration that they had a distinct

THE USE OF THE WORLDS SEVEN WONDERS PICTURES TO TEACH DESCRIPTIVE WRITING TOTENTH GRADERS

demand of curriculum with the eleventh and twelve,that the students are supposed to learn how to writedescriptive easily in a specific time allocation was.

The data were collected to answer how theimplementation of the Worlds Seven WondersPictures to teach the tenth graders to write descriptivetext. There are three sets of data to analyze. The firstis the teacher actions as well as the student learningactivities during the class, then the second is thestudents responses toward the implementationthrough their opinions, and the last is the studentswriting compositions.

The first data were covered by a set ofobservation. The observation recorded the teachersactions as well as the students learning activitiesresponding to what the teacher does, starting from thebeginning until the end of the class. It was thenfollowed by observations on some aspects of theteaching materials. The data, gained using checklistand field note, are to answer the first researchquestion.

The second data was taken when theresearcher passes a close-structuredquestionnaire to each student. It captured thestudents opinions toward the teachingimplementation. This was then to be brought todescribe the students responses, in regard to answerthe second research question.

The third data was the data in the form ofESL Composition Profile was used to find out therelation of the topic with the content, through thestudents writing composition. This data is to answerthe third research questionRESULTSHow is the results of the tenth grade students ofSMA Negeri 19 Surabaya after being taught byusing the worlds seven wonders pictures?

The result of students' writing compositionwas used to know that the implementation of picturepuzzle helped the students in writing descriptive text.The researcher collected the students' writingcomposition from the first and second-dayimplementation. In this case, the researcher suggestedgrading the students' writing by using ESLComposition Profile. There were five components ofESL Composition Profile; content, organization,vocabulary, language use, and mechanics: Eachcomponent was categorized into four criteria. Thosecriteria were excellent to very good, good to average,fair to poor, and very poor.

Here were analysis and example of studentswriting composition in first and second meeting.

Organization was become one of theimportant component which we must be concerned inwriting. It was scored based on how well organized,fluent expression ideas, good understanding ofgeneric structure, logical sequencing, and cohesivethe students organized the composition.

Here, the reseacher discussed and gaveexample of students composition that improved interm of organization in first meeting.

From the text above, the organizationcomponent was excellent to very good because thetext had given good understanding of genericstructure, one sentence to another sentences wererelated each other, and well organized.

Then, the reseacher gave another example ofthe students writing composition which scored invery poor in term of vocabulary in first meeting.

Vocabulary was also part of importantcomponent in writing, because in vocabulary dealtword/ idiom choice and usage, word from mastery,and appropriate registeer used.

Here was the example of the studentswriting composition in term of vocabulary.

From the text above, the vocabularycomponent was very poor because the text had given

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little knowledge of English vocabulary, such verb;adjective; adverbial, and the ideas not enough toevaluate.

Beside, the researcher gave another exampleof the students writing composition which in term oflanguage use component.

The component of language use dealt withtense, number, word order or function, articles,pronouns, and preposition. Since, the compositionanalyzed was descriptive text, the evaluation oflanguage use included the use of simple presenttense, subjective opinions, abstract nouns, adverbs,modals, connective, emotive words, compound andcomplex compound.

Here was the example of the studentswriting composition in term of language usecomponent in first meeting.

From the text above, the language usecomponent was fair to poor because the text hadmajor problems in simple construction, frequenterrors of agreement, incorrect of tense (SimplePresent Tense). Like in the text, which wasincorrected of generic structure. Then, the tenseshould be used Simple Present Tense, but in the textthe students used Past Continuous.

Moreover, the reseacher gave anotherexample of the students writing composition thatimproved in term of content in seond meeting.

Content was an important component incomposition, since it conveyed the main ideas of thewriter, The criteria were how knowledgeable the text,given complete important ideas and supportingdetails, and relevant to assigned topic/ genre are.

Here, the reseacher gave the example of thestudents writing composition which improved interm of content component.

It can be seen from the text above that thecontent component was good to average because thetext was giving some knowledge of subject andadequate important ideas.

Furthermore, the students should payattention to another components in writingcomposition, that was mechanics, so that their writingcomposition readable. It dealt with mastery ofconvention, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, andparagraphing.

Here was the example of the studentswriting composition which improved in term ofmechanics component.

From the text above, it can be seen that themechanics component was excellent to very becausethe text was demonstrated mastery of convention, butstill hade few errors of spelling. Like in the text, it iswritten of the word Jawa, it should be Java, andthe word Supa in the text, it should be Stupa.

THE USE OF THE WORLDS SEVEN WONDERS PICTURES TO TEACH DESCRIPTIVE WRITING TOTENTH GRADERS

From the explanation above, it was shownthat the students had progression in their writing.Most group of students could create bettercomposition than previous writing. It can be said thatThe Worlds Seven Wonders Pictures wasappropriate aid to teach descriptive writing to thetenth graders to help them stimulate their ideas towrite desciptive writing easily.CONCLUSIONS

Having analyzed the whole data in theprevious chapter, the reseacher summarizes the resultif this research as follows:1.The implementation did run well. The teacher hadsuccessfully conducted the class to have allactivities that were outlined in the lesson plan.

2.After helping the teacher in analyzing data obtainedduring the research, the reseacher concluded thatpictures were effective and useful in helping thestudents to compose descriptive texts. Theadvantages offered by this media could motivatethe students willingness to write. The studentswere always enthusiastic whenever the teachershared different pictures in each meeting. In short,the goals expected by both the teacher and thereseacher are completely reached.

3.At the end of the second meeting, the students hadreached the better score.

In short, the reseacher concluded that thisstudy had successfully achieved its goals by seeingthem from the teaching and learning process and thestudents achievement.REFERENCESHasan, Zaini M. 1990. Karakteristik Penelitian

Kualitatif. Malang: Yayasan Asah AsihAsuh.

LaRoche, Kelly Morisson. 1993. A Focus onPrewriting and Knowledge LevelStrategies and Skills to Improve theAttitudes and Writing Skills of MiddleSchool Students (report). PracticumReport. Nova University

Reimer, Casey Nicolle. 2001. Strategies for Writingto Primary Students Using the WritingProcess. Masters thesis. BiolaUniversity

Raimes, Ann. 1983. Technique in Teaching Writing.New York: Oxford University Press

Wilujeng, Indah. (2008). Pictorial StoriesImplementation to Improve the Sixth GradeStudents Writing Ability at MI Darun NajahJatirejo Mojokerto (Unpublished S-1Skripsi). State University of Surabaya