USING COMIC STRIPS TO IMPROVE THE ABILITY OF STUDENTS OF SMP NEGERI 2 MALANG IN WRITING RECOUNT

ABSTRACT Purwanitasari, Lili. 2010. Using Comic Strips to Improve the Ability of Students of SMP Negeri 2 Malang in Writing Recount Text. Thesis, English Department, Faculty of Letters, State University of Malang. Advisor: Anik N.Wulyani, S.Pd, M.Pd. Key words: comic strips, recount text, writing ability Writing may be considered as the most difficult and complicated skill among the four language skills. Nevertheless, it is should be mastered by Junior High School (JHS) students. According to the questionnaires given to the students in the preliminary study, it was found that the major problems they faced were how to develop ideas, how to choose appropriate words, and how to write sentence grammatically and to write spelling correctly. The teacher also never gave model of how to write recount because writing activities in class were dominated by arranging jumble sentences and jumble words. To solve the problems, comic strips was introduced to be applied in teaching writing. The media was chosen because it was easy to apply. Based on previous studies, it was found that the media that using picture such as comic strips was effective to help students to develop and organize ideas in writing composition. The objective of this study was to improve students’ ability in writing recount, which was focused on the improvement of the content, language use and spelling. This study used collaborative classroom action research. The researcher together with the help of classroom English teacher designed the lesson plans and set the criteria of success. The classroom English teacher acted as the observer during the teaching and learning process while the researcher taught in the class. The research was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of two meetings which covered: planning an action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting on the observation. The subjects were 38 students of VIII-E in SMP Negeri 2 Malang in 2009/ 2010 academic year. The instruments used to collect the data were interview guides, questionnaires, observation checklist, field notes, and students’ final product. The researcher introduced comic strips during the implementation of the action. It was followed by modeling how to make outlines from comic strips before starting writing, how to write the draft, how to revise the draft, and how to write the final product. In addition, the students are also asked to produce a recount composition through the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising and final version. The result of the research showed that comic strips successfully improved the students’ ability in writing recount text especially in terms of content, language use, and spelling. The scores of the students’ writing products improve significantly from preliminary study to Cycle I and from Cycle I to Cycle II on content, language use, and spelling. The students’ mean scores on content improved from 2.4 in preliminary study to 2.7 in Cycle I and it could reach 3.3 in Cycle II. In addition, the students’ mean scores on language use improved from 2.2 in preliminary study to 2.7 in Cycle I and 3.3 in Cycle II. On spelling, the students’ mean scores also improved from 2.4 in preliminary study to 2.7 in Cycle I and 3.1 in Cycle II. Based on the result of this study, it is suggested that the English teachers to use comic strips in teaching recount writing and other kinds of text types. For the students, it is suggested that they write outline before writing using comic strips especially in generating and developing ideas in writing recount composition. Moreover, further researchers are suggested to conduct research using comic strips for different text types and on different grades and levels of education to see whether this media was effective to solve the problems of writing or not