THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DICTOGLOSS TO TEACH WRITING RECOUNT TEXT TO THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 4 JOMBANG

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DICTOGLOSS TO TEACH WRITING RECOUNT TEXT TO THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 4 JOMBANG Lilis Purwaningsih English Education Department, Faculty of Language and Art, State University of Surabaya. purwaningsihlilis@gmail.com Esti Kurniasih, S.Pd., M.Pd. English Education Department, Faculty of Language and Art, State University of Surabaya. estikurniasih87@yahoo.com Abstrak Menulis adalah salah satu keterampilan penting yang harus dikuasai oleh siswa dalam mempelajari bahasa. Keterampilan ini digunakan untuk menyampaikan idea tau gagasan dalam bentuk tertulis. Lebih jauh lagi, menulis dianggap sebagai keterampilan yang paling sulit diantari keterampilan lain dalam Bahasa Inggris. Proses menulis sering membuat siswa mudah bosan. Dalam hal ini guru diharapkan mampu meningkatkan motivasi siswa agar tetap tertarik untuk menulis. Dictogloss adalah teknik mendikte yang dapat digunakan untuk mengajar menulis secara berkelompok. Teknik ini memiliki empat tahapan, yaitu persiapan, mendikte, membuat, dan analisis dan koreksi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan implementasi dari Dictogloss dalam menulis recount oleh kelas delapan, respon siswa, dan hasil menulis siswa. Penelitian ini merupakan jenis penelitian deskriptif kualitatif dan menggunakan observasi, kuesioner, dan tugas menulis siswa untuk mendapatkan data. Data penelitian merupakan hasil deskripsi yang dijelaskan berdasarkan tujuan penelitian. Setelah melakukan observasi, peneliti mendeskripsikan tiga hasil penelitian. Hasil pnelitian pertama menunjukkan bahwa implementasi Dictogloss yang diaplikasikan guru di dalam kelas berjalan sesuai teori Dictogloss. Hasil kedua menunjukkan bahwa siswa memberikan respon positif terhadap tenik Dictogloss, dan hasil ketiga adalah tentang hasil tulisan siswa. Tulisan siswa dianalisis dalam hal apakah isinya sesuai dengan judul, baik tidaknya penyusunan tulisan, penggunaan bahasa yang sesuai dengan recount, kosa kata sesuai, dan cara menyajikan tulisan oleh penulis. Kesimpulannya, Dictogloss dapat digunakan untuk teknik mengajar menulis recount, khususnya bagi kelas delapan yang disebut sebagai pemula   Kata Kunci: Dictogloss, menulis, recount, respon siswa.               Abstract Writing is one of the important language skills that should be mastered by the students to convey their ideas or their opinion in written form. Moreover, writing is known as the most difficult skill in English. Writing process often makes students easily get bored. Here, the teacher is needed to maintain students’ motivation in order to keep students’ interest in writing. Dictogloss is a technique of dictation method that can be used for teaching writing cooperatively. It has four steps; those are preparation, dictation, reconstruction, and analysis and correction. This research is aimed to describe the implementation of Dictogloss in teaching writing recount text to the eighth grade students, the students’ responses towards Dictogloss, and the students’ writing task results. This research is a descriptive qualitative research. It used observation checklist, field note, questionnaire, and also student’s task result as research instruments to gain data. The researcher endeavored to record the implementation of Dictogloss and describe it. The description is explained based on three objectives of the study; those are the implementation of dictogloss to teach writing recount text , the students’ responses towards Dictogloss, and also the students’ writing task results. After observing, the researcher described three results. The first result was regarding the implementation of dictogloss the teacher applied. The steps how the teacher applied were as appropriate as how it is in the theory and it was done well. The second result was the students’ responses toward dictogloss and it resulted positive responses. And the third finding was the students’ writing task result that was analyzed by using ESL composition profile. It has five criteria; content which is appropriate with the topic, organization which is arranged well based on the generic structure, language use which is related to the language features, vocabulary which is appropriate to what have been listed by the teacher, and mechanics related to how well the writers write their writing. In conclusion, dictogloss could be used to teach writing recount text, particularly for eight graders as beginner English learner. It could be even used to keep students’ willingness in writing because of its steps.   Keywords: Dictogloss, writing, recount text, students’ response. INTRODUCTION Writing is one of the important language skills that should be mastered by the students to convey their ideas or their opinion in written form. However, writing is not a simple matter to learn since students need to have capability to convey their opinion in written form which is considered to be more difficult than spoken form. It is because there are some processes that have to be passed. As it is known that writing is very important skill, writing is needed to be taught. In writing, a teacher should encourage students to produce a text as a medium to communicate their ideas or opinions to others through written form. However, there are some problems that are found by the teacher. The first problem is the students try to avoid writing because it needs a long process to create a good writing and it is too complicated. It is supported by Pirangelo and Giuliani (2006:245) who state that students in educational system feel that writing process takes a long time, sothey are common to dislike or avoid writing activity. Moreover, writing process will make students easily get bored. Here, the teacher is needed to maintain students’ motivation in order to keep students’ interest in writing. The teacher’s role in writing class is to motivate the students, to create the right condition for generating ideas, and to encourage them to practice more to get the benefit (Harmer, 2004). The other problem is students get difficulties in organizing their ideas. In this case the teacher is needed to teach students how to manage their ideas and write them in order, so the students will produce a good writing. According to Knapp and Watkins (2005), it is important for the teacher and the students to have basic understanding of how English operates and functions as writing and the ways in which writing is different from speech. Besides two problems above, lack of vocabularies is also a problem for students to write, particularly for beginner writer. It is often that students cannot create a good writing because they do not know appropriate vocabulary for their writing. Since vocabularies make the students frustrated, the teacher should help the students by giving vocabulary preparation as their guided writing. Guided writing is an instructional writing context that mainly guides students in writing process through modeling, support, and practice (Tyner, 2004). Guided writing can be applied through a technique, such as dictogloss. Dictogloss is a technique of dictation method that can be used for teaching writing cooperatively. Dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where learners listen to a passage, note down key words and then work (Vasiljevic, 2010). This technique is more than just dictation since students focus on meaning rather than words and it also includes interaction among students. Dictogloss can be useful for integrated skills; those are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Dictogloss is initially designed to teach grammar and it has four stages, those are preparation, dictation, reconstruction, and analysis and correction (Wajnryb, 1990). However, there are only few teachers who implement dictogloss in classroom activity, particularly in teaching writing; one of them is an English teacher of Junior High School in Jombang. The teacher uses dictogloss in teaching writing recount text for eighth grade students. Thus, dictogloss is found useful to help teacher to teach writing recount text. From the explanation above, the researcher therefore wants to conduct a research related to the implementation of dictogloss in teaching writing recount text. The researcher formulates the research question as follows:  (1) How does the teacher implement dictogloss in teaching writing recount text to the eighth grade students of SMPN 4 Jombang? (2) How are the students’ responses towards the implementation of dictogloss in teaching writing recount text? (3) How are the students’ writing tasks resultsduring the implementation of dictogloss in teaching writing recount text?   Writing Writing is an activity that creates ideas or opinions in a composition by using writing convention, such as its ideas or thought that are produced in written form (Petty and Jensen, 1980). Moreover, writing nowadays becomes an important skill to face the global era. It conveys that writing is used widely in every aspect of life, particularly for interacting and communicating with people, whether formal or informal writing. It is also supported by Brown (2004) who states that writing skill is an important skill for achieving employment in this global era. Thus, learning how to write for students is crucial as input for them to face the future. According to Meyers (2005), writing is an action-a process of discovering and organizing ideas, putting them on a paper, reshaping and revising them. In other words, writing has to be coherent and cohesive where the ideas in the writing should make sense and be connected logically. That statement interprets that learning writing needs more steps.   The Steps of Writing There are some statements related to writing process. First, Boas (2011) says that writing is one of the English skills whose activities are planning, drafting, and revising texts. Second, Hedge (1993) argues that the processes of writing are pre-writing, while writing, and post-writing. In line with Hedge, O’Malley & Pierce (1996:254) say that there are three stages in writing process; they are pre-writing, drafting, and post-writing. Meanwhile, there are four common stages in writing process; those are planning, drafting, editing, and producing final version (Harmer, 2012:128-129).   Dictogloss According to Jacobs (2003:1), dictogloss is an activity in which short pieces of language are read out at normal speed to students. In line with that, Wajnryb (1990) also states that dictogloss is a technique in which short pieces of language are read out at normal speed to students. Dictogloss is a technique which has steps in the process. There are four steps to conduct dictogloss technique; they are preparation, dictation, reconstruction, and analysis and correction (Wajnryb, 1990). 1.Preparation At this stage, teacher prepares the material which is going to be taught. The teacher introduces the topic and lists some vocabulary for the students. Moreover, the students are divided into pairs or small groups and given brainstorming before coming to the next step. 2.Dictation At this stage, the teacher reads the text twice in normal speed and asked the students to listen. On the first dictation, the teacher reminds the students to listen only and not to write anything. While on the second dictation, the teacher asks the students to prepare notebook and write down some words which will be keywords for the next step; that is reconstruction. 3.Reconstruction At this stage, the teacher asks the students to reconstruct the text based on their keywords in pairs or groups. Those keywords are used as their guided writing to produce a text which has the same idea as the original text. Holdich and Chung (2003) indicate that guided writing offers greater opportunities for young writers to make valuable connections between text, sentence and word level decisions and help students shape and redraft texts with particular criteria in mind. In conclusion, the principle of guided writing strategy is to provide instructional materials or relevant media to help students write. 4.Analysis and correction While at this stage, the teacher asks the students to analyze and correct their text result. It is also done with the teacher’s help by comparing their version to the other group or pair result, and the last comparing with the original one to see the differences. According to Jacob (2003), there are many variations of Dictogloss in learning activities. They are explained as follows: a. Dictogloss Negotiation In dictogloss negotiation, the students have chance to discuss with the partner or group about what they have heard for each section of dictation. They will get twice dictation which means that the students have two chances to discuss. b. Student Controlled Dictation In student controlled dictation, the teacher acts as a tape recorder that can be played by the students. In other words, the students can ask the teacher to stop, go back, rewind, and skip ahead. c. Student-Student Dictation In student-student dictation, the students take turns to read the text to each other. Here, the teacher’s job is just monitoring the process. d. Scrambled Sentence Dictogloss In scrambled sentence dictogloss, the teacher jumbles the sentence of the text before, so that the students have to recreate and put it into logical order first. e. Dictogloss Summaries In dictogloss summaries, the students focus only on the key ideas of the original text. Here, as well as in other dictogloss variations, the teacher can provide visual aids (sketch, flow chart, photo, mind map) that represent some elements of the story.   f. Elaboration Dictogloss In elaboration dictogloss, the students go beyond what they hear to not only recreate the text, but also improve it. g. Dictogloss Opinion In dictogloss opinion, after the students reconstructed the text, they are allowed to give comment or opinion on the writer’s ideas. Those can be placed at various points in the text or can be written at the end of the text. In this research, the researcher focuses on using Dictogloss summaries to be implemented in the classroom.   Recount Text Based on Basic Competence of 2006 Curriculum (BSNP, 2006), recount text is a kind of text dealing with the experiences happened in the past and focuses on a sequence of events related to the occasion which has purpose to inform or entertain the readers. That is in line with Gerot and Wignell (1994) who explain that recount is a kind of text which has function to retell past events for the purpose of informing or entertaining. In addition, recount text is a text that tells the readers about something that happened or retells past events or activities and has purpose to give detail information about what and when of those events (Anderson and Anderson, 2003). Furthermore, According to Depdiknas (2004:33), recount text has function to tell or to retell past events for the purpose of informing or entertaining. From the explanation above, it can be made some points that recount text is about retelling a series of events, written by using past tense, and it aims to inform or entertain the readers. It is essential to know and understand the steps how to construct a recount text. Anderson and Anderson (1998:28) present the generic structure of recount text clearly as below: 1. Orientation Orientation in recount text provides all necessary background information about the event. To ensure that the orientation is detailed and thorough, use the question words (who, what, when, where, and why). 2. Series of events In series of events the writer writes the events chronologically. It begins from the first event, followed by the second event to the last event. The sum of events depends on the creativity of the writer and has to lead the readers or audiences to understand the topic well. 3. Re-orientation The final section concludes the recount by summarizing the outcomes or results, evaluating the results, evaluating the topic’s importance or offering personal comment or opinion. However, not all of recounts are closed by re-orientation. It is optional.   Meanwhile, recount text also has specific language features, they are using specific participant, involving some action verbs, using simple past tense, and often using linking words.   Using Dictogloss to Teach Writing Recount Text Dictogloss offers a context-rich method of assessing how much students know about writing and the topic of the text (Jacobs, 2003). The text reconstruction task provides learners with opportunities to display both their knowledge of the content of the text as well as of the organizational structure and language features of the text (Derewianka, 1990). This technique provides opportunities for the students to be more confident with their writing as there is vocabulary preparation for students as beginner learners to ease them in writing. The steps of using dictogloss during teaching and learning process are described as follow: • Pre activity: The teacher greets the students and checks the students’ attendance list to know the condition of all the students. Before starting the main activity, the teacher also does brainstorming to motivate students in learning English. • Whilst activity: The teacher introduces the technique to the students. This introduction covers introducing what the technique is, what the steps are, and also what the students should do in every step. Here are the brief explanations of dictogloss: 1. Preparation Here the students are introduced with the text, the title, and also some difficult vocabulary related to the text. 2. Dictation There are two dictations which are done by the teacher. On the first dictation, the teacher asks the students to listen only. While on the second dictation, the students are asked to jot down some keywords for their reconstruction of the text. When the students come to dictation step, the teacher’s roles as reminder and also controller are very important. It is caused by on the first dictation; the students tend to write something that they hear. While on the second dictation, they tend to cheat other students’ keywords. Therefore, the consistency of the rules is really important. 3. Reconstruction The students work in pair or group in reconstructing the same text based on what they have heard and it is helped by their keywords. It has to include generic structure of the text and also the language features. 4. Analysis and Correction The students are asked to analyze their writing by comparing it with the original text and make correction of it. They analyzed in terms of vocabulary, generic structure and language use, particularly the use of tense. • Post activity The teacherreviews all points which have been covered on that day. The teacher reviews the text and also mistakes which are commonly made by the students.   Previous Studies In this study, the researcher relates the study with previous studies which are dealing with dictogloss in teaching and learning process, particularly in teaching and learning writing. Rosi (2010) applied dictogloss in teaching writing narrative text to the eleventh graders. She wanted to know whether or not dictogloss could be used to teach that text. She found that students can enjoy the activities and dictogloss could be used as one alternative way to teach writing narrative text. Moreover, Rahayu (2012) conducted a research to know the implementation of dictogloss in teaching writing descriptive text. The result finally showed that dictogloss could also help the students in practice writing descriptive text.   Based on the success of those previous studies above about the use of dictogloss in writing activity, the researcher wants to conduct a further research. In this research, the researcher will use the same technique but different kind of text and subject level. In this case the researcher focuses on recount text in eight grade students of SMPN 4 Jombang.   RESEARCH METHODOLOGY In doing this study, the researcher used descriptive qualitative research, since it more focuses on the process rather than outcomes of the phenomena. The subjects of the study were the English teacher and the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 4 Jombang the setting of the study was SMP Negeri 4 Jombang which is located on Jln. Mawar No.4 Denanyar, Jombang.. The researcher collected the data through some instruments. The instruments were observation checklist to gaint the data for the first research question, closed-structured questionnaire to gain data for the second research question, and students’ writing task result analyzed with Jacob’s ESL Composition Profile for the third research question. Moreover, the data  were analyzed by using three stages, those are familiarizing and organizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting and representing. In the familiarizing and organizing, the data which have been gained were read and reread, checked and rechecked many times to familiarize initially and organize all of the data for easy retrieval. After that, the researcher came to the next stage, coding to categorize. The researcher sorted the data into three categories since there are three research questions in this study. The researcher also reduced some data that have no relation and could not be used to answer those three research questions. Finally, the last stage was interpreting and representing. This means that the researcher described the data and elaborated them referred to related theories and findings and represents them