Background of the Study

4 sentences in the form of the past tense, the students found that it was difficult to develop their idea, it was also difficult for the students to find the appropriate words they want to use in their writing, and there were many students who wrote words and sentences with wrong spelling and punctuations. The researcher found that there were many factors that made the students have low ability in writing narrative texts. The factors mostly come from the students. The students could not write sentences in a good form. The grammar was not well developed. Many students made grammatical errors, especially when they wrote sentences in the form of the past-tense. The students found that it was difficult to develop their idea. Furthermore, it was so difficult for them to find appropriate words they wanted to use in their writing. There were many students who wrote words and sentences with wrong spelling and punctuations. The other factor came from the media which was used by the teacher. The teacher mostly used a text book which was presented in the form of powerpoint without modifying it or adding some visual media which were interesting like pictures or symbols. So it was so boring for the students. Dealing with those problems, the researcher found a way to improve the eighth grade students’ narrative writing ability by using Comic Strips since Comic Strips are interesting media which provide pictures and dialogues. The dialogues and the pictures in Comic Strips can make it easier for the students to find the idea about what they are going to write. Comic Strips are also good media. Using Comic Strips can avoid students’ boredom because of the attractive appearance. 5

C. Limitation of the Problem

Based on the background of the study and the identification of the problem, this research focused on improving writing skills especially in writing narrative texts by using comic strips for year VIII students of SMP Negeri 1 Pandak Bantul Yogyakarta in the academic year of 20132014.

D. Formulation of the Problem

The problem of this research was formulated as follow: How can Comic Strips be used to improve the eighth grade students’ narrative writing ability in SMP Negeri 1 Pandak?

E. Objective of the Study

The research aimed to improve the eighth grade students’ narrative writing ability in SMP Negeri 1 Pandak by using Comic Strips.

F. Significance of the Study

This research was conducted to describe the use of Comic Strips in improving the eighth grade students’ narrative writing ability in SMP Negeri 1 Pandak in the academic year of 20132014. It was expected that the findings of this research would give benefits to some parties. This research has following significances: 1. For the researcher: to give an experience in doing research and to improve her writing ability as well. 6 2. For the English teachers: to give them guidance in making students write sentences in English by using grammatical rules, punctuations, spelling, and context correctly. 3. For the students: to show a good way to improve their writing skills and to make them understand well in how to write narrative texts. 4. For other researchers: to give them a reference in making their researches.