besides they receive the materials given by the teacher, they have to learn and develop their ability by themselves. Their desire to write by themselves has to
be increased through writing activities in the classroom because they rarely practice writing outside the school. They do not give themselves more exposure
of writing while the teacher does not have sufficient time to focus on their writing.
Lastly, the activities done by the teacher are did not encourage the students to learn and write more. The teacher usually just asks the students to write
based on the instruction, but it is very difficult for them to write directly in the empty paper. Asking the students to rearrange words into sentences or
sentences into paragraphs cannot stimulate their willingness to write. The English teacher in SMP N 2 Gamping usually asked the students to write
sentences based on pictures, but the students are still confused about how and where they have to start writing. Considering this, it is the English educators’
or teachers’ responsibility to provide learning process that is able to support the junior high school students’ writing ability. Moreover, it can also encourage
them to write more both inside and outside the classroom.
C. The Limitation of the Problem
Based on the observation and interview that had been done and had been explained above, the students writing ability of grade VIII students at SMP N
2 Gamping was low. The low writing ability was affected by some factors and that would be impossible to analyze all of them one by one in this research.
That would spend much effort and time while the researcher had to do the study in a limited time. Therefore, the researcher focused on the technique to improve
the students writing ability using story-mapping technique. By using the story map, it was expected that the students had the prewriting
activities so they can write more easily because they could have imagination on their writing. As a prewriting activity, students could sketch the beginning,
middle and concluding events as frameworks for their stories. The story map also improved the students ability to sequence story events. Students’ low
writing ability were improved by using story map because it overcame the problems of writing related to the teacher method and media, the student
motivation, confidence, interest, and the process classroom activities. The researcher also expected that the story map encouraged the students
to like writing and write both inside and outside the classroom. It was also hoped that they were able to develop their writing skills.
D. The Formulation of the Problem
Based on the identification of the problems and limitation of the problem explained above, the researcher formulated the problem of the research in the
following question: “How the story-mapping technique could be implemented to improve the writing ability of the students grade VIII in SMP N 2 Gamping?”
E. The Objective of the Research
The objective of this research was to describe the use of the story- mapping technique in improving the writing ability of the students grade VIII
at SMP N 2 Gamping.
F. The Significance of the Research
