Introduction RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

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CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the researcher would like to present research findings as the answer for the problems which have been stated in the first chapter. It involves introduction which consists of initial reflection and fact finding analysis, then it is continued with cycle 1 and cycle 2 which include planning the action, implementing the action, observing the action, evaluating and reflecting, and revising the plan at every cycle. The result gained from cycle 1 determines the next cycle. If the result seemed disappointing, it was important to conduct the next cycle.

A. Introduction

This research began when the researcher realized that the students had problems in English especially in writing. It was based on the preliminary interview to the students that most of them reacted that writing was regarded difficult. This condition is supported by the result of their writing task and their daily test. The result is not good enough, so, this condition made the researcher tried to find out the way how to teach writing more interesting. In line with the statement above, the researcher also conducted interview and gave questionnaire to the students in order to find out the students perception toward writing ability. From the result of the interview and questionnaire to the commit to user students, it could be concluded that writing is regarded difficult. Most of them found difficulties in organizing the ideas to become the paragraphs; they made a lot of grammatical mistakes. Moreover, their sentences were influenced by their mother tongue. They also found difficulties to choose the appropriate vocabulary. They did not know the meaning of words, so it made them difficult to explore their ideas. They did not know the correct capital letter and spelling of some certain words. Then, the students needed long time to write a composition. In addition, the writing class before the research was also described in several conditions. The students’ attitude and motivation toward writing was still low. It appeared that the students were not active and enthusiastic to ask questions about writing to the teacher. They were shy and afraid to present their writings in front of the class. It means that they did not want their writings being read or known by other friends at the class. And the last, the students did not pay attention to the teacher’s explanation; they looked bored or sometimes made noise. When the teacher was explaining, the students tended to do their own activities. The causes of the problems above were: 1 the teacher did not give adequate time, models, and practices for the students to write; 2 writing got less attention from the teacher. This was because the teacher tended to underestimate writing rather than reading. She argued that writing was less important to help the students in National Examination UN which was usually dominated by reading items; and 3 there were no creative or varied techniques used by the teacher in exploring the students’ ability in writing. The techniques used were monotonous. Monotonous writing activity caused the students’ motivation in writing to be low commit to user and not interested in learning English especially writing. As the result, the students did not have any strategies about how to find ideas or explore them. Consequently, the students could not revise their drafts because they thought that it was a final writing. In fact, the students’ drafts still had numerous errors. The researcher also conducted a pre-test. The pre-test was done before implementing the teaching and learning process using collaborative writing technique. It was conducted to reinforce the problems which were stated before. The aim of pre-test was to know the prior competence of the students’ English writing. The instrument of the test had been arranged and prepared before. Here, the students were asked to write a short composition of a descriptive text. There were five aspects to score namely content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. The average score of each aspect of writing can be seen in the table 4.1. Table 4.1 The Average Score of Each Aspect of Writing No Writing Aspects Average Score 1 Content 61.43 2 Organization 57.86 3 Vocabulary 54.64 4 Grammar 43.21 5 Mechanics 49.64 Average score of writing aspects 53.36 The result showed that the students had low ability in writing. The low ability in writing a descriptive text could be seen from the low achievement of commit to user writing test. The mean of writing scores in preliminary test was low, namely 53.36. The scores of the students showed that the worst aspect of writing was on grammar. Then, it was followed by mechanics, vocabulary, organization, and content. It can be concluded that their writing ability was under average or still low because it was under the minimum requirement criterion or Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal KKM for English writing which was 64. Thus, it must be improved by implementing the collaborative writing technique. The researcher used the collaborative writing technique to improve the students’ writing ability and the students’ behavior and motivation toward English writing lesson especially in writing descriptive texts. The improvement of students’ writing ability involved some aspects of writing, namely content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. To reach the target, the researcher conducted the classroom action research. Each cycle consisted of a series of steps, namely: planning the action, implementing the action, observing, evaluating and reflecting, and the last is revising the plan. The description of the research implementation is explained in the following parts. There were eight meetings divided into two cycles with four meetings in each cycle. After the treatments in three meetings were carried out on November 27 th , December 2 nd , December 4 th , 2010 and the test was done in the fourth meeting on December 8 th , 2010, it revealed that there were some strengths and weaknesses dealing with the improvement of the students’ writing ability. commit to user Referring to the results, there were the strengths and weakness in the post- test in cycle 1 and cycle 2. Every cycle had three meetings for treatments carried out on January 6 th , January 8 th , January 12 th , 2011, and one meeting for the post- test on January 15 th , 2011. The next step was then to compare the results which were gained from cycle 1 and cycle 2. This was taken to know how successful the technique applied to improve the students’ writing ability was. If the results were disappointing, it was important to conduct the next cycle.

B. Cycle 1