Cycle 3 IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING ABILITY USING TASK – BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING (TBLT)

commit to user 112 - The use of pictures and video could attract the students’ attention. - The enjoyment of conducting the activity could reduce the tension in writing class. b Weaknesses The writing’s aspects: - The use of correct mechanics was still not satisfactory. - The organization of the composition was still not satisfactory. The students and the class situation: - A lot of laugh made the class felt crowded. - There was too much time for laughing. - There was not enough control in the class. - The students too often looked into their dictionary to translate the words. - The evaluation could not be done right away.

c. Cycle 3

The overall description of Cycle 3 can be seen in Table 4.8. Table 4.8 The Result of Cycle 3 Planning Topic: Describing Events. Using Meeting 1 for vocabulary building; Meeting 2 for main tasks; Meeting 3 for language focus Using picture and video; and Meeting 4 for post - test. commit to user 113 Action First Meeting: - Pre – task: Exploring vocabulary and related phrases. Second Meeting: - Task: Doing various tasks individually, pair, and group work. Third Meeting: - Language Focus: Discussing and practicing grammatical forms. Fourth Meeting: - Post – test: having a writing test of the topic. Observation The students: - The students showed improvement in writing ability. - They could explore their ideas using the correct aspects of writing, such as organization, syntax grammar, content, vocabulary, and mechanics. - The students’ self – confidence in exploring their ideas was increased. - The students were not afraid of making mistakes. - Ability in organizing paragraph was increased. The teacher: - The teacher monitored the students’ activities commit to user 114 effectively. - The teacher was more innovative, gave clear explanation and motivation to the students. The classroom situation: - More alive. - The enjoyment in doing the tasks was increased. Reflection The strengths: - TBLT could improve the students’ writing ability in organization, content, syntax grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary. - Working in group increased the students’ participation in writing class. - TBLT made the classroom situation more alive. - TBLT could encourage the students to write. - The accuracy in writing could be achieved by giving more portions to vocabulary building and language focus. Weaknesses: - The challenging of task needs to be increased. commit to user 115 The process of Cycle 3 is described in the following section. 1 Planning The result of Cycle 2 showed that the students showed better participation in the classroom through the pair and group work. There were also found the improvement of using appropriate words vocabulary, logical development of ideas content, and syntax grammar. However the students still had difficulties in organization and mechanics. The classroom situation was felt more crowed because a lot of laugh from the students. Based on the result of the reflection of Cycle 2 and the result of the discussion with her collaborator, the plan for Cycle 3 was revised. The portion of the discussion in using correct organization and mechanics were needed to be maintained. The arrangements of the meetings were as follows. The first meeting was used for Pre – task phase for vocabulary exploration suitable to the topic. The second meeting was used for Task – phase in conducting the main tasks. The third meeting was used for language focus. The teaching – learning process would use teaching media in the form of pictures in power point and video. 2 Implementation of the action a The First Meeting 1 Opening the class commit to user 116 It was a bright morning. The researcher and her collaborator entered the class, greeted her students and asked their condition. Having checked the students’ attendance, she started the lesson. The day’s program was Pre – task phase for vocabulary and phrase exploration dealing with the topic of Describing Events. 2 Pre – task She started the activity by delivering the worksheet to the students. In Activity 1, she gave the students some pictures. The students started exploring the objects in the pictures. The students mentioned some objects that they found in the pictures. She asked the students to write the objects on the white board. Most of the students raised their hands to get a chance to write in front of the class. So, the researcher pointed to one student and the activity was continued to other students. They conducted spelling practice to make sure that the students wrote the objects with the correct spelling. After finishing those activities and being confined that the students had understood the meaning of the words, she explored the picture by asking questions, such as “Where are the people?”, “What are they doing?”, “How is the weather?” and “How are their feeling?”. The students answered the questions commit to user 117 well but sometimes they used their mother tongue and she asked other students to translate the words in English. The activity was followed by reading the text about Describing Events. The purpose of the activity was giving a written model about Describing Event to the students. She read the text and the students repeated after her. They discussed the text, and some students asked question about the meaning of some words. When they had understood the text, she asked the students to answer questions about the text. The students gave the answers in full sentences. When they had finished, she asked them to read their answers, in that way, the other students tried to give corrections of their friends’ answers. The activity was followed by exploring the words and phrases in Describing Event. Referring back to the pictures, she asked the students to find out what they could describe in an event. She provided a table for the students. In the table, she wrote some points to describe an event such “location”, “activity”, “number”, “weather”, and “feeling”. The students could identify the situations that refer to the five categories above. Then she asked the students some other words to describe in each category. For describing location, the students mentioned some words such as “in the classroom”, “in the commit to user 118 yard”, “in the stage”, and many others. For the activity, they mentioned some words such as “singing”, “sitting”, “standing”, and many others. For the number, they mentioned some words such as “two”, “three”, “four” and “some”. For the weather, they listed some words such as “sunny”, “cloudy”, “windy”, “foggy”, “hot”, “cold”, and “cool”. For the feeling, they listed some words such as “happy”, “sad”, “excited”, “pleased”, “hopeful”, “seriously”, and “hopeless”. Having discussed the meaning of the words, she asked some questions to the students dealing with the event that happened in the classroom. The questions were: “Where are we?” “How is the weather?” “How many people are there in the room?” “How many students are there in the room?” “What are we doing?” “How is your feeling?” The students could answer the questions easily. They had been able to use the words and phrases that they had discussed before. For the last activity, she asked the students to look at the picture. They explored some words dealing with the event in the pictures. She listed the words on the white board, namely: “happy”, “sunny”, “people”, “standing”, “sitting”, and “eating”. Then, she gave some questions dealing with the event such as “Where are the people?”, “How many people are there in the picture?” “What are they doing?” “How many people commit to user 119 are standing?” and “How many people are sitting?” She was surprised that the students were already able to describe the event. She asked the students to write the answers in their book. 3 Closing the class After reviewing the day’s lesson, she ended the class by saying goodbye. She announced that in the following meeting she would discuss the same topic of Describing Event. b Second Meeting 1 Opening the class It was a sunny day. The researcher entered the class with her collaborator. She started the class by greeting the students “Good morning students” They answered eagerly. She asked the students’ condition. Then, she said that the day’s program was doing several tasks dealing with Describing Event. 2 Task Main Activity She reviewed the discussion in the last meeting about Describing Event. In Describing Event they described some points. First, they explained about the weather. The students mentioned some words dealing with weather such as “sunny”, “cloudy”, “windy”, “hot”, and “cold”. She asked them about the weather “How is the weather today?” and they answered “Today is sunny”. She asked several questions about the weather and they could answer well. Second, she described the commit to user 120 number of people. They could describe the number of the people. She asked them the way to explain the number of the people in an event. They could differentiate the difference between “there is” and “there are”. Third, they described the activity. She asked a question “What are we doing?” and the students answered “We are studying”. Next, they described the feeling. And they remembered some words dealing with feeling. She asked them “How is your feeling today? Are you happy?” And they said “Yes, Mum” She reminded the students some words of feeling. They could mention the meaning easily. The following activity was giving tasks about an event. She delivered the worksheets to the students. Having delivered the worksheet, she explored the picture in Activity 1. She asked several questions to the students such as “How many people are there in the picture?”, “Who are they?”, “Do you know what their activities are?”, “What is the man doing?”, “What is the woman doing?”, “What about the boy?”, “What is he doing?”, and the students said “bermain gitar”. She asked the students “What is bermain gitar in English? Anyone knows?”. The students said “Play guitar”. “So he is playing guitar” she explained. She asked the students “What is the girl doing?”, the students answered “She is singing”. commit to user 121 The researcher prepared the video. She said “Look at the activity and watch the video Just listen and watch the video She asked the students some questions about the picture and the volume to the students by saying “Is it clear?” The students answered in high spirit “Yes” They were eager to see the video. She played the video. After it finished, she asked the students “What words can you remember from the video?” She wrote the words on the whiteboard such as “waiting“, “there arethere is”, envelopes”, ”havehas”, “happy”, “sitting”, and” sunny”. She played the video again and asked the students to write some key points of the information on the worksheet. The video also explained clearly about using “some”, “many”, and “any”. She had prepared a table in Activity 2. The key points dealt with feeling, location, and each person’s activity. She asked them to write the sentences. To check the students’ answers, she asked them several questions, such as “Where is Bill?”, “What is he doing?” She asked one of the students to answer her questions that he had written. She repeated the questions to the whole class and the students answered the questions in chorus. In the following activity, she asked the students to describe the event using the clues that they had written while watching to the video. commit to user 122 In Activity 3, the students gave full attention about the event in the video. She gave the worksheet with some questions to answer. She asked the students to make a paragraph based on the video. She and her collaborator monitored to the class situation and asked some students to read their work in front of the class. 3 Closing the class Finally, she had to stop the session by saying goodbye. After giving applause to the students she said goodbye to them and motivated them to always practice to write. c Third Meeting 1 Opening the class It was a beautiful morning. When the bell rang, she and her collaborator entered the class and greeted her students by saying ”Good afternoon students”. They answered in a high spirit. “Good afternoon mom” She was surprised. Even though it was in the hot afternoon, the students were still in a high spirit. She asked their condition and checked the students’ attendance. Then she started the lesson. 2 Language focus The focus of the day’s meeting was to discuss language form that had been used by the students in conducting various commit to user 123 tasks in Describing Event. She gave the worksheets to the students. She started the activity by making general review about Describing Event. She and the students discussed the related vocabulary dealing with weather, places, number of people, people’s activity, and feeling. In Activity 1, she explored the words in Describing Weather. When the students did not find any difficult meaning of English words, she continued the discussion of how to describe the weather. She gave an example to the students, “Today is sunny”, and “it is sunny”. Next, she asked the students to do written exercises about it. When the students did not have any difficulty, she continued by asking the day’s weather, “How is the weather today?” some students gave the answers, “it is sunny”, “It is hot”. She asked to the students if they had any problems. And the students did not have any question. In Activity 2, the students practiced to tell the number of people in a certain event. The researcher started by giving some example about the use of “there is” and “there are”, as follows: “there is a man in the room” and “there are two boys in the room”. After discussing the use of “there is” and “there are”, she asked the students to do an exercise. She checked the work commit to user 124 by asking the students to read the answers. They could do it well. Activity 3 was dealing with the activity that the people do in a certain event. They discussed the use of Present Continuous Tense to describe the current event. After reviewing the use of “to be” to certain subject, she asked the students to do a written exercise. The activity was ended by discussing the meanings of the verbs that were commonly used by the students in their daily life. In Activity 4, the researcher discussed about Describing Feeling. She started with pronunciation practice, to pronounce the words that were used to express feeling. It was followed by discussing the meaning of the words and the way to describe feeling by using to be such as “I am happy”, ”she is sad”, and so on. She gave the students some questions such as “How is your feeling?”, “Are you happy?”, “Who is sad today?”, “Who is hungry?”, “Who is tired?”. Students could answer the questions well. Then she asked the students to do the exercises. In the following activity, they explored a picture of an event. She explored the picture by asking several questions, such as asking the location and the people’s activities in the picture. The students asked several questions dealing with certain verbs such as “writing” and “discussing”. She asked the students to commit to user 125 find as many as words to describe an event in the picture and make sentences of them. While the students were doing their works, she reminded the students about using “Questions Words” as the clues to make outline of a composition. Then students tried to check their own sentences with the correct vocabulary, syntax grammar and tenses. To check the students’ understanding of the picture, she asked the students several questions such as: “How many people are there in the picture?”, “Who are they?”, “What are they doing?”, “What is the man wearing?”, “What are on the table?” The students could answer the questions well. Then, she explained to the students the use of correct mechanics and how to make a good organization in making a composition. Then, she asked the students to write a composition by describing the picture based on their own words. She was convinced that the students had already mastered the way of Describing Events. By giving the last phase of TBLT namely language focus, she could discuss the linguistic points including syntaxgrammar, mechanics; the appropriate words vocabulary; and the way to make a composition with good development of ideas content and organization. commit to user 126 3 Closing the class She ended the class by saying goodbye. Before ending the class, she announced that the following meeting would be a writing test dealing with Describing Events. d Fourth meeting 1 Opening the class The day’s program was having a writing test. She entered the class with her collaborator. After greeting the students, asking their condition, and checking students’ attendance, she started the activity. 2 Conducting the test She explained the rule of the test. The students had to describe the event in the video. The students did the test seriously. 3 Closing the class Having finished the test, she ended the class. Before ending the class she gave general review about the whole activities that they had done during the research. She hoped that they could maintain their participation in the writing class. 3 Observation The observation was conducted during the cycle by her and her collaborator. The focus of attention was the students, the teacher, and commit to user 127 the classroom situation in the teaching – learning process in writing. The result is reported as follows: The students showed improvement in writing ability. They could write with very little mistakes in syntaxgrammar and mechanics, could choose appropriate words vocabulary, and could make a composition with good development of ideas content and organization. They showed their best ability in doing activity. Their self – confidence was increased. They were not afraid of making mistakes. Their ability in making a good composition was increased. The teacher had improved the preparation by giving the material using video. The video was used for giving language exposure to the students and as an input for the tasks. The students had to catch some information from the task and used the information for writing activity. The classroom situation during the teaching – learning process was very conducive. The students showed high participation in writing activity. The classroom discussion was more alive because there were more students who wanted to give their ideas. From the result of the post – test in Cycle 3, it can be seen that the mean score was 78.52, the highest score was 95, and the lowest score was 62. There were 29 students or 87 who passed the passing grade. In more detail, the students’ scores for each aspect of writing from each scorer in the post – test are as follow: commit to user 128 1. Form the first scorer. a. Organization: the mean score was 14.30, the highest score was 20, and the lowest score was 12. b. Content: the mean score was 23.64, the highest score was 30, and the lowest score was 18. c. Syntax grammar: the mean score was 20.15, the highest score was 25, and the lowest score was 15. d. Mechanics: the mean score was 3.48, the highest score was 4, and the lowest score was 2. e. Vocabulary: the mean score was 16.61, the highest score was 20, and the lowest score was 12. 2. Form the second scorer. a. Organization: the mean score was 14.42, the highest score was 20, and the lowest was 12. b. Content: the mean score was 23.64, the highest score was 30, and the lowest score was 18. c. Syntax grammar: the mean score was 20.30, the highest score was 25, and the lowest score was 15. d. Mechanics: the mean score was 3.55, the highest score was 5, and the lowest score was 3. e. Vocabulary: the mean score was 16.61, the highest score was 20, and the lowest score was 12. commit to user 129 The average of those two scores of organization was 14.42 72, content was 23.64 79, syntax grammar was 20.23 81, mechanics was 3.52 70, and vocabulary was 16.61 83. In the Cycle 3 there were improvements of the students’ writing ability in all aspects of writing, namely in choosing the appropriate words that were suitable to the topic vocabulary, using logical development of ideas content in making a composition, using correct grammarsyntax, . The writing aspects that should be increased in the next cycle were organization and mechanics. 4 Reflection Based on the observation results, she made a reflection about the strengths and the weaknesses of Cycle 3 as follows: 1 The strengths The writing’s aspects: - The students’ ability in organization, content, syntax grammar, mechanics, and vocabulary were improved. - The accuracy in writing could be achieved by giving more portions of writing discussion and language focus. The students and the class situation: - Working in pair and group increased the students’ participation in writing class. - TBLT made the classroom situation more alive. - TBLT could encourage the students to explore their ideas. commit to user 130 2 The weaknesses The writing aspects: - Only few students still made little mistakes in writing’s aspects. The students and the class situation: - The challenge of task needs to be increased. The teacher: - Need to prepare material with suitable time allocation.

3. Final reflection

Having implemented the research in three cycles, she had a discussion with her collaborator to make a final reflection of the research. Based on the result of observation and tests, there was an improvement in the students’ writing’s ability. The improvement could be recognized from the improved achievement from cycle to cycle. Besides, the improvement in writing features could also be noticed. The class situation was improved at the final stage. It was indicated by the class situation that more alive with the increased students’ participation during the writing section. The students were active in conducting the task. Another fact was that there were bigger chances for writing practice, provided by optimizing of group works. The teacher was more innovative in teaching writing and tried to find all efforts to explore the students’ potentials in writing. commit to user 131

B. The research finding and discussion.

1. Findings

Analyzing the data of this research, the researcher found several findings to answer the problems of the research, which are 1 Can Task Based Language Teaching TBLT improve writing ability of the students of Class X TKJ 1 of SMKN 2 Sragen in the 20102011 Academic year? and 2 What are the strengths and the weaknesses of the implementation of Task Based Language Teaching TBLT in improving writing ability of the students of class X TKJ 1 of SMKN 2 Sragen in the 20102011 Academic year?. Besides focusing on answering the problems of the research as stated in Chapter 1, the section also provides other findings during the implementation of action research in this study. The findings are summarized on Table 4.9. Table 4.9 Summary of the Research Findings Research Findings Before Action Research After Action Research 1. The students. - Mean of pre – test is 51.33. - The students had difficulties in finding an appropriate word suitable with the topics. - Mean of Cycle 1 is 63.84; mean of Cycle 2 is 71.39; mean of Cycle 3 is 78.51 - The students could express ideas using commit to user 132 - They had difficulties in using of appropriate tenses based on the situation. - They had difficulties in using of correct verbs infinitive, past, and past participle, using correct spelling and punctuation. - They had difficulties in arranging a good paragraph suitable with the topic, making a good organization, and exploring their ideas. appropriate vocabulary. - There were little of mistakes in syntaxgrammar and mechanics. - They could make a composition with good development of ideas content and organization. - They showed their best ability in doing activity. - Their self – confidence was increased. - They did not afraid of making mistakes. - Their ability in making a good composition was commit to user 133 increased. 2. The teacher. - More the teacher’s center than the students’ center. - The teacher applied traditional methods. - The teacher gave small chances for the students to write, was not innovative, did not recognize the students’ problem, and did not explore students’ potentials. - The teacher was more innovative, created worksheet and video in teaching writing. - The teacher gave many chances to the students to write. - The teacher was as monitor and guide. - The teacher recognized the students’ problem and potential in writing. 3. The class situation. - The class situation was not alive, uninteresting in writing activities. - Students only wrote sentences based on the teacher’s instructions. - The class situation was alive with many interesting activities. - The students’ participation was high, they gave commit to user 134 Students’ activity was to write out grammar exercise. Writing skills were given only to give the stress on using correct tense patterns rather than understanding when the sentences were used. - The students’ participation in writing class was low; they did not give attention to the lesson. - The students were passive, the teacher dominated the activities. attention to the lesson, used the chances to write. - The students were active, the students dominated the activities. - Bigger chances with pair and group work. 4. The strengths and the weaknesses - The time allocation of giving material suitable with the syllabus. - The students were assumed to be not - TBLT can improve the students’ writing ability. - Working in pair and group commit to user 135 ready yet to create texts by themselves; they were only ready to manipulate forms. - The students could not write a free composition because they never write a composition based on their own ideas and they were afraid of making mistakes. - The focus of these types of writing exercise is primarily on grammar, so the students will get good grade if the texts are free from errors or have only just very few errors. increased the students’ participation in writing class. - TBLT made the class situation more alive. - TBLT could encourage the students to write. - The accuracy in writing could be achieved by giving more portions to vocabulary building, giving various tasks and language focus. commit to user 136 The discussion of the research findings is presented in the following section.

a. Improvement of the students’ writing ability.