The effect of using picture series on the narrative writing achievement of the English Department students of Widya Mandala University

Learning English as a foreign language is not only a matter of learning how to speak, read and listen but also to write. The ability to write itself plays an important role to the educational purposes. However, the fact shows that writing is a difficult skill to learn. There are many students still face difficulties when they are asked to write a composition. This condition also happens to the English Department Students of Widya Mandala University. Many of them often feel unmotivated and uneasy to write since they are often faced with difficulties in getting ideas to write and developing the ideas coherently and chronologically to form a good writing organization. Based on the above condition, the writer realizes that in teaching writing students should be provided with “something” that can encourage them to get ideas and help them to compose their composition in a good writing organization. That is why in this present study, the writer would like to find out whether the use of picture series as a means to teach writing can assists the students in getting ideas and organizing them coherently and chronologically. In applying this writing technique, there are several steps that the writer follows. As the first step, the writer takes the first semester English Department students of Widya Mandala University as the subject of her present study. While for samples of this study, the writer takes two classes or groups which are heterogenuous. In conducting the experiment the writer gives different technique towards these two groups to find out whether there is a significant difference in their writing achievement later on. Then, both groups were given different treatments. The experimental group was taught using picture series while the control group was taught using lists of vocabularies. These treatments were given in three meetings. After the treatment phase was over, these two groups were finally given the post test. The scores served as the representation of the students’ writing achievement. The result of the post test of the two groups are then analyzed using t-test in order to find out the answer to the question and directly to test the hypothesis of this study. The result of this statistical calculation shows that the students taught using picture series (experimental group) obtained better scores than those taught using list of vocabularies. The calculated t-value is 3.0017 and the t-table is 1,725 (df=20). Since t-calculation is higher or greater than the t-table, the alternative hypothesis is accepted and the null hypothesis is rejected. This means that there is a significant difference between the writing achievement of the students taught using picture series and that of the students taught using lists of vocabularies. Finally, due to some limitations in this study, further researchers and related studies are encouraged to be carried out so that more conclusive statements and more generalizable results can be obtained