Findings of Cycle 2 The Report of Cycle 2

94 Academic Year of 20142015. There are five aspects of writing that were evaluated; those were content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. One of the students’ main problems in writing skill was the difficulties in expressing their ideas. Besides they lacked in generating ideas, they also lacked in developing their ideas into good paragraphs. They were confused to make supporting ideas and put the ideas in the logical order. As mentioned before, using a series of pictures as media in the teaching and learning process and combined it with grammar and vocabulary exercise, using game and giving prizes, providing feedback to students’ writing and providing various activities and tasks are successful in improving the students’ writing ability in grade VIII A of SMP Pembangunan Piyungan in the academic year of 20142015. A pre-test was conducted on 1 st November 2014 to measure the students’ writing skill before the implementation of the actions. In the pre-test, the students were asked to write a recount text about their yesterday’s activities a diary individually. Post- test 1 was also conducted to measure students’ progress on writing after the implementation of the actions in Cycle 1. It was done on 2 nd February 2015. In the post-test 1, the students were asked to write a recount text based on the series of pictures given individually. Since the result of post-test 1 showed that the improvement of the students’ writing skill was not very satisfying, the research team agreed to implement some modified actions in Cycle 2. Then, post-test 2 was also conducted to measure students’ writing skill after the implementation of the actions in Cycle 2. It was done on 2 nd March 2015. In the post-test 2, the students were asked to write a recount text based on the series of 95 pictures given individually. The comparison between pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2 scores in general can be seen in the table below. Table 14: The comparison between pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2 scores Score Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2 Mean 52.36 59.99 73.02 The table above shows the improvement of students’ score in the pre-test, post-test 1 and post-test 2. In the pre- test, the students’ mean score was only 52.36. In the post- test 1, there was a little improvement in students’ mean score. The score improved into 59.99. While in the post- test 2, the students’ mean score reached 73.02. From the changes of the students’ mean scores it can be seen that there are significant improvements in students’ writing skill. Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of picture series is proven to be useful to improve students’ writing ability. The change between the result of the pre-test, post-test 1 and post- test 2 can be seen in the chart below. Chart 1: The comparison between the result of the pre-test, post-test 1 and post test 2 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2 The students writing skill improvement Improvement