Identification of the Field Problems
ET : Kalau untuk mengajarkan materi sulit seperti narrative text susah juga.
Vocabulary masih rendah. Kita tidak diberikan waktu yang cukup untuk grammar. Kalau kita fokus untuk ngajar grammar nanti
fokusnya hanya disitu. Siswa juga hanya mengartikan kata per kata dari bahasa
Indonesia ke bahasa Inggris. To teach complex material such as narrative text is difficult. The
students’ vocabulary is poor. We do not have sufficient time to teach
grammar. If I only focused on teaching grammar, we will stick in there. The students
only translate words from Indonesian to English as well. R
:Apakah bapak pernah pake stratgey PWIM? Have you taught students using PWIM technique?
ET : Belum pernah. Ya memang perlu usaha untuk meningkatkan writing
ability siswa. No, I have not. We do need effort to improve the students’ writing
ability.
Int-1 12 May 2015 The researcher also interviewed some students to get more information.
The interviews were conducted on 12 May 2015. From the interviews, the students confirmed that they faced some difficulties in writing. They got limited
time to brainstorm their ideas. They stated that they could not organize their idea in well sequenced. Related with grammar, they realized that their grammar
mastery was low. They said that they had problems related with the word class and the use of simple past tense, especially irregular verb. According to them, the
writing activity is not interesting because they just directly did the assignment and presented it in front of the class. This statement can be seen in the following
interview transcript.
R : Menurut kamu diantara empat skill bahasa Inggris. Paling susah yang
mana?antara reading writing speaking listening?
In your opinion, what is the most difficult skill in English? Is it reading, writing, speaking or listening?
S : Tergantung konteksnya. Perintahnya apa. Tapi writing juga susah sih.
It depends on the context and the instruction, but writing is difficult indeed.
R : Kalo biasanya kalian disuruh menulis, kegiatan yang dilakukan apa?
What are activities that you usually do in writing practice? S
: Langsung disuruh kasih tugas, dikerjain, dipresentasikan, harus dipahami dan dihapalkan tanpa teks.
We go directly to do some assignments. We did it and we presented it. We have to understand and memorize it.
R : Apa kamu dikasih waktu buat brainstorming? Menulis hal-hal yang inti
untuk dikembangkan jadi paragraf? Do you have time to brainstorm which is to write
important things to be developed in the paragraph?
S : Ngga ada.
No, we do not have time to do it. R
: Ketika proses menulis kamu kesusahan di bagian apa? When you try to write something, what is the difficult part in the
process? S
: Bingung kalimatnya harus ditaruh di bagian mana dulu. Inti paragrafnya ditaruh mana juga bingung. Kalo writing, kerangka kurang tepat.
Seringnya inti bagian di depan. Yang harusnya jadi perkenalan malah di akhir.
I hesitate to arrange the sentences correctly as well as where I should put the main paragraph. I often misplace the structure of the text that I write.
Sometimes I put the main paragraph in the beginning of the text and put the
introduction in the end of text. R
: Selain itu kesalahan apalagi yang sering kamu lakukan ketika menulis?Misalnya grammar, apakah kamu sudah bisa?
What other mistakes that you usually made in writing practice? Can you use grammar correctly?
S :Sering salah yang past tense. Terutama yang irregular verb.
I often made mistakes in using past tense, especially in using irregular verb.
R : Sudah bisa membedakan antara noun adjective verb?
Can you distinguish noun, adjective, and verb? S
: Membedakan bisa, tapi menyusunnya kebalik-balik. Yes I can, but sometimes I made mistakes when I am trying to arrange it.
R : Kalo nulis kalimat udah bisa belum?
Can you write sentences? S
:Nyusun kalimat udah bisa tapi masih suka kebalik-balik juga. I can arrange sentences even though sometimes it is not well arranged.
R :Pernah ngga pak guru ngajar pake gambar pas ngajar writing?
Has the teacher taught writing using pictures? S
: Belum pernah.
No, He has not. Int-3 12 May 2015
Furthermore, a pre-test was conducted on 13 May 2015. The test was done in order to get information about the students’ writing ability. At the pre-test, the
researcher asked the students to write a folktale or any kinds of narrative texts. When they did the pretest, they needed a lot of time to generate the ideas. In the
10 minutes beginning, many students have not written any single word. They said that they did not have ideas to write. The researcher has provided the generic
structure of narrative text in pre-test answer sheet to make the students easier to develop the story, but some of them still did not write the complication part and
resolution. The following is the example of student’s writing before the action.
From the figure above, it can be seen that the student’s ability in writing narrative text was very low. There were some students who made these kinds of
grammatical problems. They obeyed grammatical rules such as subject-verb agreement. They did not understand how to use simple past tense in writing a
narrative text. They also failed to use the right form of pronouns. Their vocabulary
Figure 6. An Example of a Students Writing before Action
mastery was very limited so that their sentences were meaningless. Furthermore, they obeyed to use the right punctuation and capital letter. In conclusion, the
researcher analyzed that many students had difficulties in generating ideas, looking at the appropriate verb, composing the ideas into good paragraph and also
using the correct grammar and mechanics. The following table shows the scores of students’ writing in pre-test. The
scores of their writing were rated by the researcher and the collaborator. They assessed the students’ pretest by using scoring rubric adapted from Jacob et al in
Weigle 2002.
Table 3 The Students Writing Score Percentage in Pretest
Score Categorization Frequency
Interpretation Total
Percentage 87.5-100
Excellent Good
6 18.75
75-87.4 Very good
1 62.5-
74.9 Good
5 50-62.4
Fair 9
Poor 26
81,25 37.5-
49.9 Poor
12 25-37.4
Very poor 5
Table 3 shows that the students’ writing ability was low. The scoring aspects include content, language use, vocabulary, organization, and mechanics.
The result is that around 18.75 of the students belong to good category. The rest of the class or about 81.25 got bad scores. Therefore, it could be concluded that
the students of VIII D class at SMP N 3 Mlati had some problems in writing narrative text related to content, language use, vocabulary, organization, and
mechanics.
Furthermore, the following table outlines the problems in English teaching and learning process that were identified through the class observation, interviews
with English teacher and the students, and the pre-test result.
Table 4. The Field Problems in the English Teaching and Learning Process of VIII D in SMP N 3 Mlati
No. Problems
Code
1.
Most of students had difficulty in generating ideas. S
2.
The students had limited vocabulary mastery. S
3.
The students’ writing was less organized. S
4.
Most of students translated the word from Indonesian into English language without considering the context.
S
5.
The students had difficulties in using the correct grammar in writing.
S
6.
The students did not pay much attention to the use of correct mechanics in writing.
S
7.
The students gave little attention to the teacher’s explanation and talk to their friends during the lesson.
S
8.
The students got limited time to practice writing. S
9.
The students had low motivation in writing. S
10.
The teacher did not give enough activities for students to practice writing.
A
11.
The mistake and the errors in writing that the students made were not discussed.
A
12.
The teacher did not vary the activities so that the students felt bored. A
13.
Writing technique in the teaching and learning process was not implemented to help the students to write step by step using writing
process. Tec
14.
Interesting media rarely were given to the students in the teaching and learning process of writing.
M
S: student Tec: technique
M: media A: Activity