USING COMIC STRIPS TO IMPROVE THE EIGHTH GRADE STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN WRITING NARRATIVE TEXTS AT SMPN 9 MALANG
| Main Author: | Norma Indah Lutfifati; Perpustakaan UM |
|---|---|
| Format: | PeerReviewed |
| Bahasa: | ind |
| Terbitan: |
, 2011
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| Online Access: |
http://karya-ilmiah.um.ac.id/index.php/sastra-inggris/article/view/12848 |
Daftar Isi:
- ABSTRACT Lutfifati, Norma Indah. 2011. Using Comic Strips to Improve Eighth Grade Students' Ability in Writing Narrative Texts at SMP N 9 Malang. Thesis, English Department, Faculty of Letters, State University of Malang. Advisor: Harits Masduqi, S.Pd, M.Pd, M.Ed. Keywords: comic strips, writing ability, narrative text Writing may be considered as the most difficult and complex skill among the four language skills, especially for junior high school students. The writing ability of the eighth grade students of SMP N 9 Malang was poor. According to the questionnaires given to the students in the preliminary study, it was found that the main problems that they faced were how to write sentences grammatically, how to choose appropriate words with the correct spelling, and how to develop ideas. Therefore, less than 50% of the students reached a minimum score 3 within the range score 1- 4. To overcome the problems, comic strip was proposed as an alternative strategy in teaching writing narrative text. Comic Strips are series of pictures that show a set of actions chronologically to form a story and sometimes use dialogs in the form of script or writing. This study was aimed to find out whether or not the implementation of comic strips strategy could create positive responses for 8th grade students and improve their ability in writing narrative texts. In this study, the researcher expected that 100% of the students scored 3 within a range of 1- 4 because that value represented the minimum criterion standard which is 70 point for language use, spelling, and organization. The research design of this study was a collaborative classroom action research. The classroom English teacher acted as the observer during the teaching and learning process, while the researcher acted as an English teacher taught in the class. The research was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of three meetings and had four steps namely: planning an action, acting on the plan, observing the action, and reflecting on the observation. The subjects were 26 students of VIII-D in SMP N 9 Malang in 2010/ 2011 academic year. The instruments used to collect the data were interview guides, questionnaires, observation checklist, field notes, scoring rubric, and students' final product. The result of the research showed that comic strips successfully improved the students' ability in writing narrative texts. All of the students had reached the minimum score of 3. Moreover, the majority of the students gave positive responses toward the implementation of comic strips and they said that comic strip was interesting and easy to understand because there were some dialogues related to the topic. In addition, it helped them to organize paragraphs and develop ideas in writing narrative texts. The scores of the students' writing products improved significantly from preliminary study to Cycle I and from Cycle I to Cycle II in terms of organization, language use, and spelling. The students' mean scores on organization improved from 2.1 in preliminary study to 3.2 in Cycle I and reached 3.6 in Cycle II. Furthermore, the students' mean scores on language use improved from 1.8 in preliminary study to 2.8 in Cycle I and 3.1 in Cycle II. Meanwhile, on spelling, the students' mean scores also improved from 2.3 in preliminary study to 3.1 in Cycle I and 3.4 in Cycle II. In conclusion, comic strips can be implemented to create positive responses for 8th grade students at SMP N 9 Malang and improve their ability in writing narrative texts. Moreover, comic strips are very helpful to develop the students' ideas and creativity. Based on the result of this study, the English teachers are suggested to use comic strips in teaching writing narrative and other genres because it could solve students' problems in writing. For future researchers, they are suggested to conduct further research using comic strips in other skills and genres on different grades and levels of education to see whether or not this media was effective to solve the problems of writing.