Improving Students’ Writing Ability on Recount Text by Using Scrambled Sentences

Improving Students’ Writing Ability on Recount Text  by Using Scrambled Sentences 

(A Classroom Action Research at the Eighth Grade Students of MTs Negeri Surakarta 2 in the Academic Year of 2012/2013)

                                                                        by Any Rahmawati

Language is primarily an instrument of communication among human being in a community. Larsen-Freeman (2003: 2) states that language is a means of interaction between and among people. Here, it has function as a tool which connects them in their surroundings. People realize that without language they cannot interact to each other.  

Language can become a bridge to connect one another that live in different places and cultures. People can gain information, knowledge, and express one’s feeling, and emotions using the language. Nowadays, many people learn the international languages. One of the international languages is English.

For Indonesian students, understanding English was not easy because it was different from our native language, Indonesian. The differences were found in the system of sound, vocabulary and structure. These differences may bring about some problems in language learning and influenced the students’ acquisition in mastering English. The objective of English instruction was to develop students’ communicative competence. English communicative competence covers four skills, namely reading, listening, speaking, and writing. The four language skills, both spoken and written, were taught in an integrated way supported by some language aspects, such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and spelling. 

When we learned a second language, we learned to communicate with other people: to understand them, talk to them, read what they have written and write to them. The fact that people frequently have to communicate with each other in writing was one of the reasons to master writing skill well. 

Writing is a complex activity since it requires students’ comprehensive abilities such as mastering grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation. Besides, to write well, the students expected to be able to present their ideas in the written form as writing is a means of communication. However, some think that writing was not only delivering ideas to others but also using a sheer energy to complete the writing process itself: thinking the ideas, preparing the outline, transferring the outline into draft, revising the draft, and finally proofreading the draft to prepare for the final outcome. 

Fegerson and Nickerson (1992: 7) state that writing is a skill that is acquired through study. Writing is one of English skills that should be taught integrated, but it is regarded as the most difficult language skill to learn for learners. It is often perceived as the most difficult language skill since it requires a higher level of productive language control than the other skills. In fact, the students were not capable to make a good writing. The reason that they did not make a good writing was caused by poor in vocabulary, difficulty in generating their idea, poor in grammar, and so on. Most of Indonesian students had difficulties in mastering writing ability, it also happened to the students of MTs Negeri Surakarta 2. It was very difficult for students of MTs Negeri Surakarta 2. It faced from the result of pre test implemented by the researcher to the VIII-I class. The pre tests’ result of VIII-I class failed the passing grade. Based on the standard competence of English writing at the eighth grade of junior high school in second semester is to show the meaning of functional written text and short simple essay in the forms of narrative and recount texts for having interaction with surrounding environment. Based on the result of the pre-research by interviewing English teacher and observing while English teaching learning in MTs Negeri Surakarta 2, the researcher identified some problems faced by the eighth grade students in learning writing: a) They had low level of writing ability so that they found difficulties in developing their ideas into the written language. The indicators of this problem saw from their attitudes towards writing lesson. They complained whenever they were asked to write. Besides, they also said that they were unable to write although they had not tried it. (b) They seemed to be discouraged to have writing lesson. In short, they tried to avoid it because they were afraid if they make many errors in writing. The English teacher told the researcher that the problem faced by the student when the students are asked to make a written text, because of the lack of vocabulary and grammar structures mastery, and the lack of creativity they just copied the example of the text teacher gave and changed a little about it. Moreover, the students had low motivation in learning writing since they thought that writing was a very difficult lesson to be learned. There were several possible causes of the problem that can be identified by the researcher because the teacher never used certain method to make the students interested in writing. There was no variation in the teaching writing. The students only get the materials from texts books and exercise books.The English teachers can use some techniques to teach writing. By applying the techniques, the teacher can encourage the students to participate in the classroom activities. The teacher should be able to encourage the students to express their ideas into good writing. The teacher gives opportunities to the students to write their ideas without being afraid of making mistake. It can be done by introducing topics and a good writing process.The writing process has steps or procedures which must be carried out by the learners. According to Oshima and Hogue (1997: 2), writing is never a one-step action; it is a process that has several steps. In other word, writing has more than one step. The steps in writing process are prewriting, planning, writing and revising draft, and writing the final copy to hand in. A good writing is done from a set of rules and principles.Endang Fauziati (2009:142) stated, the students are given a text in which the sentences are in a scrambled order. This may be a text they have worked with or one they have not seen before. They are told to unscramble the sentences so that the sentences are restored to their cohesion and coherence properties of language (discourse competence). They learn how sentences are bound together at the supra-sentential level through formal linguistic devices such as anaphoric, which unify a text and makes it coherent. In addition to written passages, students might also be asked to unscramble the lines of a mixed-dialog or asked to put the pictures of picture strip story in order and write lines to accompany the pictures. Based on the background above, the researcher interested to conduct a study on “Improving Students’ Writing Ability on Recount Text  by Using Scrambled Sentences (A Classroom Action Research at the Eighth Grade Students of MTs Negeri Surakarta 2 in the Academic Year of 2012/2013)”.

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