Improving Eight Graders' Writing Skills of Recount Text through Picture Series

ABSTRAK Amalia, Keke . 2018. Improving Eight Graders’ Writing Skills in Recount Text through Picture Series. Thesis, English Department, English Language Teaching, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang, Advisors: (I)Dr. UtariPrabaAstuti, M.A. (II)Nur Hayati, S.Pd., M.Ed. Key Words: Improving, Writing, Recount Text. English is a compulsory subject in Indonesian secondary schools.Theobjective of English teaching is to facilitate the development of the students’ four language skills which are listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Among the four skills, writing is often considered the most complex and challenging for English foreign learners. The preliminary study showed that VIII-G graders of SMPN 8 Malang had problems in writing. The problems were in generating and organizing the ideas, the usage of tenses and appropriate dictions. The problems were caused by some reasons, mainly the lack of interesting media used in the teaching and learning activities. To overcome the problems, the researcher proposed a strategy to improve students’ writing ability by using picture series. This study aims to know how picture series can be used to improve the students’ writing skill, especially in recount text and how the students’ participation is in the implementation of picture series. The research design of this study was CAR or Classroom Action Research which consists of one cycle consisting of four meetings. The subject of this study was 32 students of VIII-G class of SMPN 8 Malang in the second semester of academic year 2017/2018. The instruments used in this study were writing tests, field notes, observation checklists, and interview with the English teacher. The picture series were implemented using Genre Based Approach which consisted of four stages. The first stage was Building Knowledge of the Field. In this stage, the students were introduced to a recount text. Together with the teacher, the students actively discuss the purpose, generic structures, and language features of a recount text. Also, the students were shown a set of picture series which was described in a recount text.The second stage was Modelling of the Text. At this point, the students were paired with their chair mates and were shown a set of picture series. They had to identify the keywords on each picture. After they gave the keywords, the teacher gave a model of how to compose the keywords into sentences and organize them into paragraphs or a text. The third stage was Joint Construction of the Text. The students with their partners were given a set of picture series. They had to identify the keywords on each picture and compose a short and good recount text based on the keywords of the picture series given. When the students create their own recount texts, they appeared to be more motivated to open their dictionaries to look up some vocabulary. The last stage was Independent Construction of the Text. Here, the students had to compose a recount text by themselves. According to the research finding of this study, the implementation of picture series had successfully improved the students’ writing ability in recount texts. Since the criteria of success of this study was at least 80% of the students got score ≥75, there were 90.6% students achieved the criteria of success in the end of this study. Futhermore, the students’ active participantion was very good in the teaching and learning activities. Based on the findings of this study, it is suggested that English teachersuse picture series as a strategy in the teaching and learning activities, especially in writing. Also, it is recommended that future researchers implement picture series strategy in different genres of texts, skill focusand with different participants