Conclusions CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS

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CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND SUGGESTIONS

A. Conclusions

The research was aimed to improve students’ writing skills through board games, conducted in class X-3 of SMA N 1 Pengasih and begun with the researcher did an observation in the teaching and learning process and interviewed the English teacher. The results from the English tests during PPL were also taken as considerations. From the data collected, the researcher found many problems occuring during the English teaching and learning process. The problems were then selected to later be solved. They we re students’ low writing skills and motivation in learning, the monotonous class, and the lack media usage during the teaching and learning process. The researcher decided to solve the problems with board games. The research was done in two cycles, conducted from October 30 th to November 27 th , 2014. In cycle 1, the teaching was done following genre based approach’s learning cycle. The board game was applied in the stage of Independent Construction of the Text where it was used as editing stage of the students’ writing draft. The students played the games and did discussions in groups. However, some groups did not do maximally as they did not feel comfortable being in the group with classmates they did not get along with. That, along with their inability to find the mistakes of the sentences the researcher provided as the tasks, made the results of this cycle not as good as expected. However, since the students claimed that they enjoyed learning with this game, the researcher decided to keep using this game as the method to improve their writing skills. 91 As the learners found it difficult to learn in fully implicit method, the researcher decided to change the method of applying the game to be simpler for the learners. As the learners seemed to have already done well in writing conventions, the researcher determined to give the tasks related to grammar. The tasks were simpler. The learners only needed to change verb one into verb two, to correct fragments, and to pick verbs related to subject-verb agreement. They played the games in groups of four as done in Cycle 1, but they made the groups by themselves. As they worked with the classmates they get along with, the atmosphere became even more relaxed and the discussion ran well. The researcher also attempted to help the learners work better by giving them handouts of tenses and checklist. These helped the students being more focused on doing the tasks because they did not have to look around for dictionaries or to ask around the answers of the questions. They became more independent in doing the tasks and less dependent on others’ help. As the learners became more relaxed and focused in doing the tasks, their knowledge related to the materials they learned improved. It can be seen from the improvement in their writing. They rarely did overgeneralization and they used past tense better. Based on observation and interviews, there were some changes as the effects of the actions the researcher performed. The changes were related to the teaching learning process, the learner s’ behaviors, and the researcher’s behaviors. The changes can be seen as follows: 1. The changes related to the teaching and learning process Before the games applied in the teaching and learning process, the class was passive and the materials were not delivered well as the learners were too bored to to 92 listen to teacher’s explanations. The games made the class more relaxed and they could understand the materials better as they could learn from their peers. The handouts and checklist given were also helpful to make the learning more focused. 2. The changes related to the learners’ behaviors Before the games were applied, the learners tended to be passive during the teaching and learning process. They talked to their friends while the teacher was explaining, but were being quiet when they were asked to participate to the teaching and learning process. They also rarely asked questions although they had not understood the materials given. Working in groups with their own classmates made them more relaxed in discussing and asking questions about the matters they had not understood. Also, having the handouts and checklist themselves, the learners were being more independent in doing the tasks. 3. The changes related to the researcher’s behaviors In doing the research, the researcher studied theories about teenage learners’ behavior and the implications in teaching them. The researcher became more aware of teenage learners’ characteristics and became more patient in coping with teaching teenage learners. Teaching teenagers was not an easy job to do. However, knowing their ch aracteristics and applying experts’ suggestions in teaching teenagers, the researcher finally understood better the reason of their behaviors and the methods to get them learn better inside the class.

B. Implications