CAHPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

English is one of the most used languages in the world. Even outside of countries like

the USE and the UK, many people can speak and understand English. If you include

people who speak it as a second language, an estimated 1 billion people worldwide speak

English. On top of this, 67 countries have English as their official language and there are

27 countries that have English as their secondary official language. 1 Studying English as

a foreign language is gradually getting more important. In Indonesia government,

English is considered as a first foreign language and compulsory subject to be taught in

secondary schools.2

In addition, writing is an essential tool for communicating with people and, as a result,

is critical to contemporary society's prosperity and survival. It is the use of symbols to

communicate thoughts or ideas. It converts thoughts and ideas, sounds, or pictures into

some tangible trace. It needs a well-structured way of presenting ideas prepared and

planned.3 Although the written language is founded on oral language, it is more

sophisticated than its oral equivalent. Written language is an encoding of spoken

language, including characteristics that have evolved to express various concepts. Printed

symbols encode the phonemes of a language in an alphabet, but the prosodic

characteristics of spoken language are primarily encoded through punctuation.4

1
The Importance of English Language
2
Depdiknas, Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional, No 22 tentang Kerangka Dasar dan Struktur
Kurikulum Bahasa Inggris SMP dan MTS, (Jakarta: 2003), p. 11.
3
Javed, M., Juan, W., & Nazli, S. (2013). A Study of Students' Assessment in Writing Skill of the
English language. International Journal of Instruction, 6, 16.
4
Heggie, L., & Wade-Woolley, L. (2018). (Prosodic awareness and punctuation ability in adult readers.
Reading Psychology, 39(2), 188–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702711.2017. 1413021
 Furthermore, narrative text is a series of related events-a story. 5 Narrative text is a

kind of text used to retell the story in the past tense. It means that narrative text is a true

or an imaginary story containing conflict and resolution which function to entertain the

listener or readers. Besides that, narrative text is a story with complicated or problematic

events and it tries to find the resolutions to solve the problems. The purpose of the text is

to entertain or to amuse the readers or listeners about the story (fairy tales, legends,

fables, etc.) and take some moral values on it.

Based on Kurikulum Tingkatan Satuan Pendidikan 2016, learning in the junior high

school, in learning writing, students are expected to write some texts for example letters,

short messages, greeting cards, monologs such as descriptive, recount, narrative,

procedure and report texts. To produce those writing products, especially monologs,

students have to follow the writing steps. Jeremy Harmer states that process writing as a

classroom activity incorporates the four basic writing stages – planning, drafting

(writing), revising (redrafting), and editing – and three other stages externally imposed

on students by the teacher, namely responding (sharing), evaluating and post-writing.6

The facts above frequently happen in many schools. Based on the observation in a

school in Surakarta, that is SMP Negeri 3 OKU at class IX, based on the teacher’s

information that the students were rarely taught to write in English. They just did the

assignment and discussed the answers together. When the students were asked to write,

they were reluctant to write even a very simple text, and the products of their writings

were far from the expectation. Actually students were expected to be able to write a good

text with good content and coherence, but in fact, they could not do it well. Students did

not have any ideas to write. In other words, they had blank minds when they were asked

to write a text, for example a narrative text. There is no medium in teaching the learning
5
Thomas S. kane, Essential Guide to Writing, (Oxford University Press; New York, 1988)
6
Harmer, Jeremy. 2004. How to Teach Writing. England: longman. P. 4-5
 writing process. Teachers have no time to search for the suitable media for the teaching-

learning process. The teacher just used the traditional way to teach. Therefore, some

media were needed to bring out their ideas. Some media here could be picture series. Of

course each medium has its advantages and disadvantages. One medium might be

appropriate for teaching a certain skill and it might be unappropriate for teaching other

skills.

In teaching narrative texts, picture series are better to be used as media. 7 The result of

her research indicated that the use of picture series effectively improved the students’

skill in writing narrative texts. Picture series are more interesting because they are color

pictures, so students will see the situation in the pictures. Picture series have some

advantages in teaching writing, one of them is that pictures have several functions in the

teaching and learning processes. That picture series is very important in helping students

to retell experiences or understand something since they can represent place, object,

people, etc. Picture series help students to understand a more general context, which may

be made of pictures, the teachers‟ actions, the students‟ actions, sound effects and

words. This overall context of the new language will have meaning to the students.

Starting from the problems arising in teaching English writing and the student’s

achievements of writing which are unsatisfactory, the researcher decides to conduct a

research entitled, “BY USING TEACHING MEDIA TYPE PICTURE SERIES CAN

IMPROVE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL OF NARRATIVE TEXT AND THEIR

LEARNING ACTIVITIES AMONG SMP NEGERI 3 OKU GRADE IX.” This

teaching learning media uses integrated teaching with focus on teaching writing of

7
Yulia, Erika. 2014. The Use of Picture Series to Improving the Writing Skills of Tenth Grade Students
of SMA N 1 Srandakan in Writing Narrative Texts in the Academic Year of 2013/2014. English Education
Department Faculty of Languages and Arts Yogyakarta state University
 narrative text by using picture series. The researcher’s purpose is that the students are

able to make a good composition of narrative text better than before.

B. Problem Identification

The problems can be identified, as follow:

1. The students are still difficult in developing ideas.

2. Students have low motivation to write in narrative text.

3. The students have insufficient narrative text writing ability.

4. The students are not interested in writing activities

C. Problem Limitation

Based on the identification on the problem above, the researcher limits the problem in

the students' insufficient narrative text writing skill. Therefore, the researcher used

Picture Series as a teaching media to improve narrative text writing skill among the ninth

grade students at SMP Negeri 3 OKU.

D. Problem Formulation

Based on the background statement above, the researcher can be formulated the

problem as follows:

1. Can Picture Series Media improve the narrative text writing skill among the ninth

grade students at SMP Negeri 3 OKU?

grade students at SMP Negeri 3 OKU?

E. Objective and Benefits of the Study

In line with the problem statement above, the objectives of the study are as follows:

1. Determine whether the use of Picture Series Media can improve the narrative text

writing skill among the ninth grade students at SMP Negeri 3 OKU.

2. Investigate whether the use of Picture Series Media can improve students’ learning

activities among the ninth grade students at SMP Negeri 3 OKU.

In line with the problem statement above, the objectives of the study are as follows:

1. For Students

By Picture Series Media, it is hoped that the students are more interested and

improve the narrative text writing skill. They can change their mind about writing

and change in writing lesson is not difficult lesson to do anymore.

2. For Teacher

It is hoped that media can be one of references in the teaching writing. Learning

writing is not always home assignment and the teacher can control the development

of the students’ writing skill as classroom activity.

3. For the School

The headmaster can convey to the teacher that they should know about students’

problem in order to reach learning process effectively.

4. For the Others Researcher

new media in teaching writing to improve students writing skill. Furthermore, it can

give a reference to other researcher to improve this research.