The effectiveness of using pictures to the teaching of adjective degrees of comparison to the second year of SMP 15 students Surabaya

The English teaching is focused on the teaching English Grammar, which is one of very important parts in learning English, since it gives a great effect in mastering the four English skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing). The teaching of English Grammar needs much attention in order to create creative activities in the teaching learning process. So far, the improvement of the teaching of English Grammar has been neglected as an important part of language acquisition. The English Grammar is only taught by explaining verbally along with some words or sentences. Therefore, the students became bored when participating the teaching-learning process. Whereas the English Grammar is an essential part, the way of the teaching of English Grammar is beginning to be changed in order to present the material more creatively and attractively. The solution is that the use of a stimulus, visual aids cannot be ignored to improve the teaching-learning process. Teaching using visual aids like pictures is much easier to arouse the students’ motivation in the English learning. Some experts stated that the use of pictures could facilitate and increase the students’ interest in achieving, mastering English Grammar and improving the English proficiency. Moreover, pictures can give the examples and explanation more vivid and clear. These conditions arouse the writer’s curiosity on this study to find out whether the use of pictures gives significant difference between the Adjective Degrees of Comparison achievement of the students taught by using pictures and those taught without using pictures. This study used the research method of a quantitative study with the second year students of SMP 15 Surabaya of the academic year of 2005-2006 as the population. There are three classes namely VIII-A, VIII-B, and VIII-C chosen by analyzing their English mid test score using t-test. Those three groups have the same level of intelligence in order to decide which class became the pilot, control or experimental groups. To find the data for the study, the writer administered the test that was a multiple choice test as the research instrument used for the pre-test and posttest to find out and prove whether there is a significant difference between the Adjective Degrees of Comparison achievement of the students taught by using pictures and those taught without using pictures. She tried out the test to the pilot group (VIII-C) consisting of 44 students in order to know the validity and the reliability of the test. She subsequently administered the pre-test and posttest to the control group (VIII-A) consisting of 42 students taught without using pictures and the experimental group (VIII-B) consisting of 43 students taught by using pictures. From the analysis of the pre-test and posttests of both groups the writer concluded that the treatments given in each group bring the improvement in the students’ mastery toward the Adjective Degrees of Comparison. While the result of the pre-test of the two groups indicated that there is no significant difference between those two groups since both groups have the same level of intelligence. Whereas, the result of the posttest of the control and experimental groups showed that there is a significant difference between those groups. As the result, the null hypothesis is rejected since there is a significant difference between the Adjective Degrees of Comparison achievement of the students taught by using pictures and the achievement of those taught without using pictures. The result indicates that the Adjective Degrees of Comparison achievement of the students taught by using pictures is higher than those taught without using pictures. This happens since the teaching by using pictures can help the students to understand clearly and also relieve the boredom of the teaching-learning process. In contrast, the students in the control group who were taught without using pictures got lower achievement since they were often faced the difficulties in interpreting the explanation and examples since the teacher explained verbally and gave the examples in the sentences. In this circumstance, it can be concluded that the teaching of Adjective Degrees of Comparison through pictures is more successful than the teaching without using pictures