her students to do the exercises. There was no interesting way to teach so that it made the students did not enjoy following the lesson.
b Material
The teachers took the material of the subject from LKS and textbooks. It made the students bored and unmotivated, because there is no variation in
material which is used. Then, students who have less motivation to learn English would get poor scores in the final examination of the subject.
c Media
The teacher did not use any interesting media, she just used whiteboard. Thus, many students had less concentration during the lesson in
the class. In teaching English, the use of media is an important thing to support teaching and learning process. By using media the teacher can convey
the material with different and more attractive ways .
Students will be interested in learning English if teachers use teaching media such as power
point, picture, games, teaching object etc.
2. Problem related to students
The problems do not only come from teacher but also from students. It means that the problems which come from the writer, or usually known as
personal factors. The factors deal with the students’ interest and self- motivation.
a Interest
Some students are less interested in English because they did not enjoy the teacher’s teaching methods that there is no variation. Interest is the
crucial part that influences the students’ ability in English because it is the key to master foreign language.
b Motivation
Motivation is personal factor which comes from the students that make them interested in doing something. Students who are interested in
English absolutely will have high motivation to learn English. On the other hand, students who are not interested in English certainly they will have low
motivation to learn English and as the result, they will feel difficult to understand the material of the subject.
3. Problem related to process
The last factor that influences students’ writing ability is the relation of the learning process and classroom activities.
a Learning process
Learning process in the class is unattractive because there is no variation in the way learning process conducted so that the students will get
bored. They just sit and listen to the teachers explaining the material in front of the class. As the result, the students didn’t enjoy the lesson.
b Classroom activities
Less variation of classroom activities also gave bad effects for the students’ interest and the students’ motivation to learn English. However, in
many schools, there are some bored activities such as working assignments in the class on the textbook, doing exercises from LKS and at the end of the time
teachers will give so many homeworks for students.
C. Delimitation of the Problem
From the identification of the problem above, it can be stated that there are many factors that influencing students’ writing ability.
In this research study researcher choose SMP N 1 Prambanan as the place to conduct her research. Based on the observation by the researcher in
SMP N 1 Prambanan the main problem in the school was students’ low writing competence. When the students did their writing they made many
mistakes in their work such as they had difficulties to express their ideas on paper, and made so many grammatical errors in their writing
, they had
difficulties to choose an appropriate words, and sometimes their writing is less comprehensible.
This study is delimited only on the problems related to teaching writing process. Due to teaching process is the important thing that has to be noticed
in teaching writing. Researcher will give inquiry activity in her teaching process. The researcher hopes by using inquiry activity the students’ writing
ability will improve. This delimitation is based on some reasons. Firstly, students can observe
object of the study. By analyzing the object of the study immediately, it will be easy for the students to describe the object, develop their ideas, and to start
writing on the paper. Secondly, basically inquiry is an activity which is easy to conduct in the class but sometimes teachers forget to use the method. By using
inquiry activities teachers expect that these can help the students to develop their ideas before they start writing.
The delimitation is also done to the number of subjects of the research. In the research study the researcher chose the sample from two classes, they
are class VIII D and VIII E, with the reason that they have similar characteristics
D. Formulation of the Problem
Based on the delimitation above, the problem is formulated as follows: Are there any significant differences in English writing ability between the
eighth grade students of junior high school who are taught with using inquiry activities and those who are taught without inquiry-based learning?
E. Research Objective
The purpose of this research is to find out whether there is a significant difference in terms of writing ability improvements between grade VIII
students of SMP N 1 Prambanan Klaten who are taught inquiry-based learning strategy as a method and those who are not in the academic year 20122013.
F. Significance of the Research
There are some expected advantages that can be obtained from the study. Generally the advantages of the study are to give information about
the effect of inquiry activity to the writing skill of the junior high school students. The advantages of the study are as follows:
1 For the students, this study hopefully gives motivation to improve their writing ability with the new methods.
2 For the teachers, expectantly the teacher can decide a suitable method of teaching for their students to make a good writing.
