THE USE OF SERIES OF PICTURES IN STUDENTS NARRATIVE WRITING PROCESS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter briefly describes the contents of the study including background, research questions, aims of the study, the scope of study, significance of study, research methodology, clarification of the key terms, and organization of the paper.
A. Background of the Study
Writing is often considered as a difficult skill to master. Students who learn the writing skill need to be able to deal with some writing elements. The elements are the combination of a number of diverse elements namely content, form, grammar, style and mechanics (Harris, 1968). In other words, the students are required to be able to develop the ideas, organize the content of the text, employ appropriate grammatical form, choose structures and lexical items, and demonstrate appropriate spelling and punctuation in the text.
Dealing with the difficulties in writing can be carried out by implementing strategies in teaching writing. The strategies should make the students be able to develop their writing skills. Moreover, the strategies need to have the ability to motivate the students to write and allow them to have enough practice in writing so that the difficulties can be minimized.
Strategies in teaching writing can be various. Teachers may use teaching media as their strategies to support them presenting the materials. Teaching media are defined as equipments to support teaching and learning activities and help teachers to present the materials (Saiful, 2006). By using teaching media, teachers can increase the students' motivation and create an interesting learning atmosphere (Kamaludin, 2009).
Using teaching media is not merely about using supporting equipments in the classroom. The teacher should be able to choose appropriate teaching media in order to achieve the benefits of using teaching media. The teaching media should be chosen by considering the goals of the lessons and the characteristics of the students. Specifically, there are several aspects that should be considered in choosing teaching media : the age, interests, type of intelligence and experience of the students; the physical circumstances of the classroom; the cost of the media; and convenience of the materials available (Wright, 1976). By considering those factors, the teachers can determine what teaching media can be used in certain teaching and learning process.
Determining the appropriate supporting equipments in the classroom can also be done by choosing common teaching media. One of the common teaching media is pictures. They tend to be practical and easy to use. Teachers can deliver certain questions and ask the students to explain a word or concept (Haycraft, 1978) simply by showing or pointing on pictures while the students are paying attention to what happens in the pictures. Moreover, the information served by pictures can possibly avoid boredom and lack of interest in the classroom (Jonassen, 1982).
As the common teaching media, pictures may be presented in many ways. Besides presenting the picture as a single picture, presenting pictures in form of series of pictures is also a good choice. The use of series of pictures not only provides the students with the basic material for their compositions but also stimulates their imagination powers (Heaton, 1989). Moreover, teachers can use the series of pictures to guide the students to write well-organized text. The series of pictures contains a number of pictures that are joined into one another to explain certain events.
In relation to the teaching writing narrative text, a series of pictures is useful to use. The series of pictures can support the process of teaching writing narrative text. It helps teachers to serve the important aspects in teaching narrative genres that are to introduce the genres and to point out some distinctive characteristics of the genres such as the social purposes, generic structures and the language features of the text (Kim, 2006). In doing so, the teacher can start by showing the pictures while introducing the genre and explaining that each picture in a series indicates the sequence of events in the story. Showing the series of pictures before writing the narrative text also can help the students to predict the sequence of events that happen in the story. Later, when the students are in the writing stage, the series of pictures is hoped to lead the students to arrange the events of the story based on the arrangement of the pictures with appropriate generic structures. At the end, the students can write a narrative story with well-organized events.
Considering the explanation above, this study is conducted to find out the benefits of using series of pictures in narrative writing process and to describe the students' attitudes toward the use of series of pictures in narrative writing activity. It is hoped that this study can be one of references for English teachers to teach writing narrative text in interesting and enjoyable ways so that the students can be motivated to write. It is also hoped that by using series of pictures, the students can be stimulated to think creatively in gathering the ideas and learn narrative writing enthusiastically.
B. Research Questions
This study is conducted in order to answer the following questions :
1. What are the benefits of using series of pictures in students' narrative writing process ?
2. What are the students' attitudes toward the use of series of pictures in narrative writing process ?
C. Aims of the Study
Based on the research questions above, the aims of this study are to find out :
1. The benefits of using series of pictures in students' narrative writing process.
2. The students' attitudes toward the use of series of pictures in narrative writing process.
D. Significance of the Study
This study is expected to give theoretical, practical, and professional benefits.
1. Theoretical Benefits
The results of this study can be used to enrich the theories in English teaching media and become one of references for further studies related to the use of visual media in narrative writing.
2. Practical Benefits
For teachers, students, and readers who practically deal with the use of series of pictures in narrative writing, this study can be useful. For the students, they will able to write better and be motivated to practice their English skills. Moreover, for teachers and readers, the results show the implication of the use of series of pictures in narrative writing activity, provide information related to the students' attitudes toward the use series of pictures in narrative writing, and become evidence that series of pictures give benefits during the process of writing narrative texts.
3. Professional Benefits
In professional benefits, teachers and schools can hopefully get the benefits from the results of the study. The teachers are informed that series of pictures can be useful media to be used during the process of teaching and learning. Moreover, they can improve the strategy on teaching writing narrative texts. For the schools, this study can be used as a consideration that series of pictures are needed as one of teaching media. Thus, series of pictures can be provided in the schools.
E. Organization of the Paper
This paper is organized as follows.
Chapter I : Introduction
This chapter discusses the background of the study, the limitation of the problems, the research questions, the purpose of the study, the significance of the study, and the organization of the paper.
Chapter II : Theoretical Foundation
Chapter II provides the theoretical review served as the base for investigating the problem in this study.
Chapter III : Research Methodology
This chapter explains the research design, the site and participants, the data collection techniques, the research procedures, and the data analysis.
Chapter IV : Findings and Discussions
In chapter IV, the analysis and discussions of the result in the study are presented.
Chapter V : Conclusions and Recommendations
This chapter presents the conclusion of the study and provides recommendations in accordance with the study.
