The effect of using picture series with written questions and list of vocabulary with headings in teaching narrative writing on the students' narrative writing achievement : a comparative study

According to the 1994 curriculum reading is put as the primary language skill that should be learned by the Senior High School students. Even though in the teaching learning activity in the classroom, writing skill did not get much emphasis, it was also an important language skill that should be learnt. Writing skill could facilitate students to be able to communicate not only in spoken language but also in written one although it was not easy for them to master it. Some factors were found to be the sources of their difficulties in learning to write, either because of the limited knowledge about the subject or because they cannot find an idea to write. Students faced these difficulties even though they had to write only a simple narrative writing. It seemed that students need something that will help them to write better. Saputra (2004) who had investigated the use of picture series with written questions and list of vocabulary with headings found out that the two techniques were good to teach narrative writing to the second year students of senior high school. It is true that this researcher had done this study with the same field. However, the previous study discusses a different material with the present one. Therefore, the writer wondered if the result of the previous study was consistent enough if it was applied with the other material. Hence, the writer used the same technique with the other material. In fact, the results of this study support the findings of the previous study. In conclusion, the effect of using picture series with written questions did not differ significantly from the list of vocabulary with headings technique. In conducting her research, the writer followed some steps. First, as her samples, she took two classes consist of students with the same proficiency in English. It showed from the means of the English scores of the students based on their first semester report. After that, she gave treatments to each of the class with different teaching technique. One class was taught using picture series with written questions technique while the other class was taught using a list of vocabulary with headings technique. The treatments were given three times before the writer conducted her post test to both classes. To analyze the result of the treatments and post test of the two classes, the writer used t-test to find the answer to the question and simultaneously to the test hypothesis of the study whether the null hypothesis (Ho) is accepted or rejected. The null hypothesis of this study was there was no significant difference between the writing achievement of students who are taught using picture series with written questions and those using list of vocabulary with headings. The result of this statistical calculation indicated that class II-8 who was taught using picture series with written questions obtained higher score than class II-7 who was taught using list of vocabulary with headings techniques. The mean of class II-8 was 63.33 while the mean of class II-7 was 62.95. The obtained t-value of the post test conducted was 0.304 and the t-table was 1.1671. Since the obtained t was lower than the t-table, the writer could conclude that the null hypothesis is accepted. In other words, there is no significant difference between the use of picture series with written question and the use of list of vocabulary with headings technique to teach narrative writing