Identification of the Field Problems

53 S: Students M : Media T: Teacher TM : Time management

b. Identification of the Field Problems to Solve

As mentioned in the beginning of Chapter I, the research focused on improving the students’ writing skills by using picture series. Therefore, the researcher decided to overcome the field problems based on the urgency level and the feasibility. The field problems to solve are presented in the table below: Table 4.2: Table of Field Problems to Solve No. Problems Necessary Feasible Urgent Not costly 1. The students gave little attention to the teacher’s explanation. X √ √ √ 2. The students frequently made noises during the class. √ X X √ 3. The media used could not motivate and attract the students’ attention in the teaching and learning process. √ √ √ √ 4. The teacher used insufficient media. √ √ √ √ continued continued No. Problems Code 11. The students were reluctant to open their dictionaries. S 12. The students had difficulties in using the correct grammar in writing. S 13 Students rarely spoke in English. S 14 Students found writing as a difficult skill to master. S 15 Not all of the students finished their work on time. TM 54 continued No. Problems Necessary Feasible Urgent Not costly 5. The students had low motivation in learning. √ √ √ √ 6. Some of the students did not do their homework. X X X √ 7. The students had difficulties in generating the idea of what to write. √ √ √ √ 8. The students had limited vocabulary mastery. X X X √ 9. Some students had difficulties to arrange the sentences into good paragraphs. √ √ X √ 10. Some students showed low interest in answering the teachers questions. X √ √ √ 11. The students were reluctant to open their dictionaries. √ X X X 12. The students had difficulties in using the correct grammar in writing. √ √ X √ 13. The students rarely spoke in English. X X X √ 14. The students found writing as a difficult skill to master. X X X √ 15. Not all of the students finished the work on time. X X X √ After determining the field problems to solve, the researcher had a discussion to analyse the field problems and the possible causes of the problems. This step was important to recognize the weaknesses and the obstacles related to the problems found in the field. 55 Table 4.3: Table of Field Problems and Possible Causes No. Problems Main Causes 1. The students gave little attention to the teachers explanation. The teacher did not use attractive media andor activities to attract the students’ attention during the teaching and learning process. 2. The media used could not motivate and attract the students’ attention in the teaching and learning process. 3. The teacher used insufficient media. The school did not provide enough media for the teacher to teach English, especially to teach writing. 4. Some students showed low interest in answering the teachers questions. The classroom activities that done were not varied that made the students felt bored. The students also considered English as a difficult subject that made them less motivated to learn. 5. The students had low motivation in learning. 6. The students had difficulties in generating the ideas of what to write. The students have difficulties in generating and developing their ideas by only imagining the subject of their writing in their mind. 7. The students found it difficult to organize sentences into good paragraphs.

2. The Implementation of Cycle I

a. Planning

After getting some information about the problems that were found in the reconnaissance stage, the researcher and the collaborator planned some actions to solve the problems. The actions conducted were focused on the use of picture series to improve the st udents’ writing ability. The actions are: 56 1 Implementing Picture Series During the implementation of the action, the researcher acted as the teacher and collaborated with the English teacher as the observer. She also planned to use both English and Bahasa Indonesia in delivering the material and communicating with the students because most of them could not understand English well. She used picture series as the media in teaching writing, in this case she taught a narrative text. They were expected to be able to help to stimulate the students’ ideas and organize their writing. It was because from the information obtained, it was known that the students had difficulties in generating and organizing the ideas to write. By giving them a series of pictures which contained a story, it was expected that they could generate their ideas by looking and analysing the plot of the story in the pictures. It was also expected that they could organize their writing well by looking at them. They also could help her to show which one belonged to the orientation, the complication, and the resolution of the narrative text to the students. 2 Vocabulary Exercises and Keywords As the students had limited vocabulary mastery, the researcher planned to give some vocabulary exercises to them. In the first meeting, they had to match some words with the synonyms. In the second meeting, they had to find the meanings of some words and some keywords were also given in the next task in order to enrich their vocabulary mastery and help them in writing the texts. Some