THE
USE OF PICTURE SERIES TO IMPROVE THE SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ WRITING
ACHIEVEMENT OF NARRATIVE TEXT.
This essay will
discusses about the use of picture series to improve the secondary school
students’ writing achievement of narrative text. In junior high school, writing
is difficult problem that students face. Students always feel confuse and do
not understand about what they are going to write, especially to write a
narrative text. Moreover, the most suitable way to improve student writing achievement
on narrative text is by using picture series. Picture series can make the
students interested in writing skill. Picture series also make the students
easier to catch the idea of the story, so the students will be competence to
write narrative text.
Based on 2006 School
Based Curriculum (KTSP) there is some materials that are arranged appropriately
to develop Indonesian students’ ability to understand and create spoken and
written discourse. It is manifested in four basic skills: listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. Considering to those four skills, writing can be said as
an uneasy skill to be mastered by the students. The objective of learning
English is enable the students to communicate either in oral and written form.
Thus, considering the objectives of learning English, students should mastered the
four language skills.
Writing is very
important also for the students, because by writing something they can express
their mind. Writing is also the action for the students to discover their idea.
By writing the students can produce language that comes from mind. According to
(Stanley, Shimkin, Lanner;1992)the purpose of writing is to communicate about a
subject to a reader. Students have feelings, knowledge, ideas about both the
subject matter and the reader. Based on that theory, writing is important for
the students to communicate with each other.
There are several
stages that the students should do in a writing process before they can produce
good writing. According to Halimatus (168:XXXX), the stages covers prewriting,
organizing, drafting, revising, and editing. Prewriting stages is the process
where the students should brainstorm and outline their ideas about what they
are going to write. In drafting stage, students should create their initial
composition by writing down all their ideas in an organized way to convey a
particular idea or present an argument. Then, in revising stages students
should review, modify, and reorganize their work by rearranging, adding, or
deleting the content of their writing. Lastly, in editing stages students
correct errors in grammar and mechanics, and edit to improve style and clarity.
Having another writer’s feedback in this stage is helpful in this stage.
In English language learning, there are a variety of text that are expected
to be mastered by the students, one of them is called narrative text.Narrative
text is a kind of text that tellsthe reader about the stories happend in the past. It purpose is either to inform orto entertain
the readers. As it tells the story ofpas event, it must be written in simple past tense. The narrative text explores;oorientation that iintroduce the participants and
inform the time and the place, cimplication
that describe the rising crises which
the participants have to do with,
and resolution that shows the way of participants to solve the crises, better or worse.
In case, students find difficulty in writing narrative text. According to
Byrne (1979 : 1) writing is an activity to produce a sequence of sentences
arranged in a particular order and linked together in certain ways. The
students find difficultyin conveying their idea. It is not easy for the
students to produce the sentences
coherently in written form. Moreover, the students cannot
produce good writing yet. Therefore,
the teachers are expected to be able to solve this problem.
Picture is one of media
that can be use in teaching and learning process. It can be away to help the
teacher to solve the student’s problem in writing. Picture is categorized as
one of visual aids in language teaching. Visual aids are a situation where the
learner can see what is named by the word to be learned (Allen,1983:33). There
are many kind of picture that can be used in teaching learning process, such as
composite picture, single picture, picture files, and picture series.
Based on the above kind
of pictures, picture series is the most appropriate media that can be used by
the teacher to solve the student’s problem in writing, especially in narrative
text. Yunus (1981 : 51) states that
picture series is a number of related pictures that are linked to form a
sequence. In addition, Wright (1989 : 74) notes that picture in series is a
sequence of picture illustrating a story
or a process. In other words, picture series can be said as the pictures that
are organized in order and it relates to one another to illustrate a story or
process. The main fuction of this kind of picture is to tell a story or
sequence of event.
Therefore, the most suitable media that can be used
by the teacher in the classroom based on the difficulties explained above is
Picture Series. Picture series can be used to gain students attention so they
can stay focus to the things they are going to write. Besides, picture is a
good realia to help students elicit their ideas so they can write easily than
before. As Walter (2004) states that providing visuals or realia helps
contextualize instruction in the classroom, picture series will make students
easier to elaborate their writing especially on narrative text. Picture series
also stimulate student’s imagination. Munadi (2008) says that pictures make it
easy for people to catch ideas or information conveyed in them clearly, more
than if merely expressed verbally. Thus, by showing the students picture
series, they will be able to build new ideas and write more as they observe and
interact with the picture series.
The implementation on the use of picture series to
improve students writing narrative text is determined in some stages. Firstly,
the teacher introduces the material about narrative text in general to the
students. Secondly, teacher show picture series to the students. The picture
series contain one narrative story. Thirdly, teacher assures the students
whether they understand the picture series well or not by asking them some
questions related to the picture shown. Fourthly, teacher asks the students to do
prewriting stage where students should brainstorm ideas and make a rough draft about
the story they can get from the picture series. Fifthly, teacher asks students
to organize the draft based on the picture shown. Sixthly, teacher asks
students to revise their story by rearranging, adding, or deleting the content
of the story. Lastly, students have to edit their story into a good narrative
text by editing some language aspects of the writing such as spelling,
punctuation, mechanics, and grammar. When the students finish editing their
narrative text, they have to submit their work to get feedback from the
teacher.
Feedback given from the
teacher is in the form of score and shows some mistake students made on their
writing. However, the assessment of writing is no simple task (Brown, 2003:
218). The assessment to someone’s writing can be done through holistic
(impression) or analytic method. Holistic (impression) method means that the
narrative texts made by the students are being examined by one or more markers
(Heaton, 1990: 147). On the other hand, analytic method means that the students
writing will be assessed by one marker (teacher) depends on a marking schemes
which has been carefully drawn up by the examiners (Heaton, 1990: 148). There
are five aspects includes to assess someone’s writing analytically, they are
grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, fluency, and relevance. Those five factors will
show the students improvement on their writing achievement especially on
narrative text.
In conclusion, the use
of picture series as the media can be determined as a suitable way to improve
students writing achievement of narrative text since it can help students build
new ideas and write more as they observe and interact with the picture series.
The writing processes of narrative text by using picture series consist of
prewriting stage, drafting stage, revising stage, and editing stage. In this
case, teacher has an important role during teaching and learning process by
using picture series. Teacher should give the students clear background
knowledge about narrative text. Then, teacher also needs to give guidance for
the students so they can write in an organized way.
Brown, H. (2003). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. New York:
Longman.
Byrne, D. (1979). Teaching Writing
Skills. Singapore: Longman Singapore Publisher pte Ltd.
Heaton, J.B. (1990). Writing English Language Tests. London and New York: Longman.
Munadi, Y. (2008). Media pembelajaran:
Sebuahpendekatanbaru. Jakarta: GaungPersada Press.
Rohani, A. 1997.Media InstruksionalEdukatif.
Jakarta: RinekaCipta
Walter, T. (2004).Teaching
English language learners.New York: Longman
Wright, Andrew. (1989). Pictures for
Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yunus, Nur Azlina.(1981). Preparing
and using English Language Teaching, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
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