The effect of teaching degrees of comparison of adjectives by means of pictures and without pictures on the students' structure achievement

Grammar is the basic of learning a language. Besides the four language skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) taught for academic purposes, the teaching of grammar still plays an important role to the success of learning English. However, the facts shown in teaching grammar to Junior High School students, the teachers there explain grammar only verbally along with some words/ sentences written on the blackboard. This condition makes them often face difficulties in receiving and understanding the long explanation from the teacher given in a monotonous way Gradually, they can lose their interest in the lesson. To overcome this problem, the teachers should be creative to improve their old teaching method in order to make the lesson more interesting and the class more alive. The teachers need to use some visual aids like pictures to support their teaching aids in the teaching-learning process. Teaching using pictures is much more easier than using words because in students’ image pictures are more concrete than words. In addition, they also can arouse students’ interest in learning English and help them clarify the meaning and the pattern of the grammar taught or explained. If they’re interested in learning English, they will try hard to understand it and also become active in class. And finally, the goals of learning will be achieved. In conducting the experiment, the writer uses the second year of Junior High School students at SLTPK St. Stanislaus I Surabaya as her subjects of her study. There are three classes namely II A, II B, and II C. Here the writer analyzed their sumatif test using t-test. She compared the mean of each class. The analysis itself was used as a clue for the writer to judge whether the groups were heterogeneous or not. It means that the groups chosen should have the same level of intelligence. While deciding which class became the pilot group, experimental group or control group, the writer used random sampling. She choose II B as the pilot group in trying out the test in order to know the validity and reliability of the test. For experimental group, she choose II C which was taught using pictures and II A as the control group which was taught without using pictures. All the groups consisted of 39 students. Based on the result of the post test, the data shows that there is a significant difference in the students’ structure achievement between the two classes. The students who are taught using pictures have better structure achievement than the ones who are taught without using pictures. This happens because teaching using pictures can help the students to receive and understand the explanation more easily and clearly. Besides that, pictures can brighten up the classroom, foster a high degree of interest, and increase the students’ motivation