Besides, the students’ intention cannot be delivered well. Moreover, those problems become more serious when the other problems dealing with techniques,
media, and materials appear. Techniques are directly related to teaching and learning activities, therefore it influences students’ acquisition. If the teaching and
learning activities are monotonous, the students will be unmotivated to get involved with the teaching and learning activities. Besides, the lack of media as
the teaching and learning aid can make students feel bored. Considering the facts, it is necessary to convince the students that writing
is not difficult skill to do. There are a lot of interesting techniques for teaching writing in which students can explore their ideas to achieve their good writing
ability. One of the techniques that can make the students enjoy writing is by using the Brainstorming technique. As stated by Brown 2001:184 brainstorming is a
technique which helps someone initiate some sort of the thinking process. By using brainstorming activities, the students can create as many ideas as possible
and it means that they also produce sentences into paragraphs related to the topic. Considering the importance of writing and due to the problems in the
teaching and learning process of reading in English, the researcher feels necessary to conduct research entitled Using Brainstorming Technique to improve the eighth
grade students’ writing ability at SMP N 1 Nanggulan Kulonprogo.
B. Identification of the Problem
Based on the observatuin, there were some problems that the researcher found in the teaching and learning process in the classroom. The problems found
in writing skill are related to the students, techniques, materials, and media. Each of those factors has an important role in the teaching and learning process. The
problems will be mentioned as follows. First, the main factor comes from the students themselves. Many students
in this school tend to assume that English was a difficult subject to learn, especially writing. It makes them less interested in learning writing. Without
interest and motivation, students may spend long hours in the classroom with poor achievement. In addition, the students spent the time for writing ineffectively with
poor result. Most of the students experience the writers’ anxiety. They have pessimistic feeling about writing. It makes them hesitate to start writing. They
also have difficulty in generating ideas and organizing them into good paragraphs. They tend to be stuck in generating ideas before they really develop sentences into
paragraphs. According to Richards and Renandya 2002:303, there is no doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for L2 learners to master. The difficulty lies
not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into a readable text. Some of the students spend much time at the planning stage yet
they are still confused how to start their writing. Moreover, they often make some grammatical errors in their writings.
Second, techniques are also an important aspect in students’ writing
mastery. Techniques are directly related to the teaching and learning activities. It influences students’ learning mastery. When the techniques used are appropriate
with the situation and condition, the students will have good acquisition.
However, the techniques applied are less attractive and interactive. Hence, it causes difficulties in students’ acquisition.
Third, materials being used also have a big contribution dealing with the efforts to improve students’ writing skills. Materials are the core of the knowledge
which is transferred to the students. In fact, most of materials being taught are boring and monotonous. Therefore, the students are not attracted to get involved
with the material. The impact is that they will not have good writing mastery. Fourth, media is the other important factor. Through media, the materials
taught can be delivered well. Besides, students will be interested to get involved in the teaching and learning process. Moreover, they will master the materials
more easily. Unfortunately, the teacher rarely used media in the teaching and learning process so that the teaching and learning process will be less attractive
and interesting. Thus, media is important to be used as the teaching and learning aid which helps students to learn in better and easier ways.
C. Limitation of the Problem
In accordance to the background of the study and problem identification, it is impossible for the researcher to investigate all factors determining the writing
skill achievement. The researcher and the English teacher decided to focus the study focuses on a problem related to the teaching technique used by the teacher
in the writing class. This delimitation is based on the finding that the writing skill of the eighth grade students at SMP N 1 Nanggulan Kulonprogo is relatively low.
The technique selected is the use of brainstorming, a technique for teaching
students’ writing skill in exploring their ideas and thinking to produce good English writing. Brainstorming techniques are expected to be able to overcome
writing problems including ideas, grammatical features, and organization of the paragraphs. Moreover, brainstorming techniques are also expected to be able to
increase students’ writing skills.
D. Formulation of the Problem
Based on the limitation of the study, the researcher formulates the problem of the study as follows: How could the Brainstorming technique be applied to
improve the Eighth Grade students’ writing ability at SMP N 1 Nanggulan
Kulonprogo?
E. Objective of the Study
Related to the formulation of the problem, this research aims at improving students’ writing ability by using the Brainstorming technique at SMP N 1
Nanggulan Kulonprogo.
F. Significance of the Study
In this study, the researchers expects that this research has the benefits both theory and practices. Theoretically, this study will be a useful reference
about the use of Brainstorming technique for others who want to write about this issue. Therefore, it is expected that the findings of this study may give
