Paragraph Writing in ELT English Language Teaching

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CHAPTER 2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter reviews some theories underpinning the topic of the research. They are: 1 Paragraph writing in ELT English Language Teaching, 2 Students’ writing achievement, 3 Recount writing, 4 Aspects assessed in recount paragraph writing, 5 Visual media in ELT, 6 Photographs as visual media in ELT, 7 The procedures of teaching writing using photographs, 8 The research hypothesis. These topics are go ing to be briefly discussed in the following sections.

2.1 Paragraph Writing in ELT English Language Teaching

In English Language Teaching ELT, paragraph writing is one of the skills which is taught to Junior High School students in Indonesia. This is in line with the KTSP Curriculum for Junior high School showing that paragraph writing is the basic competence. It says, “Pembelajaran bahasa Inggris di SMPMTs ditargetkan agar peserta didik dapat mencapai tingkat functional yakni berkomunikasi secara lisan dan tulis untuk menyelesaikan masalah sehari-hari ” KTSP Curriculum for Junior High School, 2006:277. In fact, in English language teaching, writing a paragraph can be a big problem for students because of what Richards as cited in Prakasa, 2013:13 argues that “learning to write in either the first or second language is one of the most difficult tasks a learner encounters .” The difference between English writing structure and Indonesian writing style puts Indonesian students in trouble. They used to create long and complicated sentences which are less meaningful whereas English is accustomed to having straightforward and meaningful sentences. Further, the problems Indonesian students commonly faced are various from finding and expressing ideas, to organizing the ideas coherently and cohesively. Moreover, in writing, they should develop their ideas by following the writing process and considering some aspects of writing. The focus of this research is a readable composition in the form of a paragraph. Commonly, a paragraph consists of a topic sentence which states “the writer’s main idea or opinion about the topic” Zemach Rumisek, 2003:14, some supporting sentences explaining “more detailed ideas that follow the topic sentence” Zemach Rumisek, 2003:12 and a concluding sentence which is explained by Zemach and Rumisek 2003:19 as “the final sentence of a paragraph which sums up the main points or restates the main idea in a different way.” So, there are three parts in a paragraph. There is no definite number of the length of a paragraph. As stated by Kane 2000:89, “No one can say how long a paragraph should be.” Otherwise, Zemach and Rumisek 2003:11 have different view that “a paragraph is often between five and ten sentences long, but it can be longer or shorter, depending on the topic.” Therefore, in this research, each student was demanded to write a paragraph in around ten sentences. It was also considered as the appropriate length of a paragraph for the students in Junior High School.

2.2 S tudents’ Writing Achievement