Research Procedure RESEARCH METHOD

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CHAPTER IV THE RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter presents the process of the research findings and discussions which refer to the effort to improve students’ writing ability through cooperative learning. These are presented in three headings: reconnaissance, the implementation of the actions and discussions, and the results of pre-test and post-test of students’ writing results. A. Reconnaissance In this step, some activities to find the existing problems in the class were carried out. First, some observations concerning the English teaching and learning process of class XI IPS 1 at SMAN 1 Seyegan were conducted. Second, the English teacher and students were interviewed to get some input about the weaknesses and suggestions related to the English teaching and learning process. Third, to support the general finding of the students’ writing ability and planning the action, the pre-test was also carried out.

1. Identification of the problems

The identification of the problems was based on the observation, results of interviews and the pre-test of the students. The researcher did the observations during the teaching and learning process in the XI IPS 1 class on Monday, 24th February 2014. The observation to identify the problems can be seen in the vignette below. No. : FN. 03 Day, Date : Senin, 24th February 2014 Time : 08.00– 09.15 Place : Kelas XI IPS 1 Activity : Observation Respondent : R = researcher ET = English teacher Ss = students R came to SMAN 1 Seyegan on February 24th 2014 to observe the teaching activities on writing a narrative text in XI IPS 1. R arrived at 07.45 a.m., ET was briefing in the teachers’ room and then the class started at 8.00 a.m. After having a short briefing, R followed the ET to the class. He introduced the researcher to the XI IPS 1 students while opening the class with a short prayer. R sat on the very back seat and observed the teaching and learning activities for 2 x 30 minutes. Normally, the teaching and learning process lasted for 2 x 45 minutes however since it was Monday, the teachers and staff had a short briefing at 07.00 a.m. to 07.50 a.m. After having a short prayer, ET checked the students’ attendance list and called out the students’ one by one. XI IPS 1 consisted of 19 students, 10 female and 9 male students. No one missed the class on that day. After that, he told Ss what they were going to learn. It was about writing narrative text. ET then recalled what the students have known about the narrative text, what they had learnt before about narrative. ET introduced the kind of narrative texts that they were going to learn was fable. ET gave the handouts to the students. The handouts had 3 tasks which had 3 different stories. The first task had “The wolf’s sheep clothing” text and 6 questions related to the text that the students had to answer with their partners. The questions was introduced the students about the generic structure of the narrative text. ET mostly spoke in English and sometimes he translated what he said into Javanese so that Ss would understand what he said. ET guided the students and came to every student to check whether they found any difficulties or difficult words while doing the first task. After they had done discussing the answers with their partners, ET discussed it in the whole class. He picked some students and called out the students’ name to share their answer and discussed it together. After conducting the observations, the researcher interviewed some students and the English teacher concerning the teaching and learning process in the XI IPS class. On the following day, the students took the pre-test. They were asked to write a short narrative text that they had been familiar with. During the interview, the teacher revealed that there were still many errors and mistakes. Students only relied on the dictionary as they had very limited vocabulary. Furthermore, they did not have enough continued Moving on, he asked the students to do the next task in which the students were supposed to change the verbs in the text into the correct form or past tense. Ss worked with their partner sitting next to them. Ss did not bring dictionary, so they just figured it out the correct form by themselves without consulting with the dictionary. Only 1 student brought the list of regular and irregular verb. Other Ss especially male students did not do the task but played and chatted with their partners. Some of them just copied others’ work. ET checked their Ss and told the students to do it right. After that, the teacher discussed the text and the corrected answers with the whole class. ET explained the regular and irregular past form communicatively and fun. He spoke in Javanese and wrote the meaning of the difficult words on the whiteboard so that the students could grasp what he was trying to explain. He sometimes told some jokes in Javanese related to the words that were being explained. After that, the students were asked to do the last task, in which they had to continue the story based on their own idea. However, it took them a while to develop their own ideas. ET kept encouraging the students to get some ideas to write. The story was about a fable. ET only provided the orientation part and let the students developed their own story. Male students were a little bit noisy and busy with their gadgets . They were reluctant to write but when the teacher came to them, they still did not want to struggle to write . Female students were busy discussing with their friends sitting next to them. However Ss could not manage to finish their writing since the time was up. knowledge about grammar. They expressed the ideas in Indonesian by translating Bahasa Indonesia into English which have totally different rules. P : “Apa saja masalah yang bapak hadapi ketika mengajar writing dikelas XI IPS 1?” What were the problems you encountered during teaching writing in XI IPS 1 class? G : “XI IPS 1 ini banyak sekali masalahnya, kekurangan kosa- kata. Anak-anak itu lalu kecenderungan membuka kamus langsung dipake gituloh misal tadi mau bilang saya ingin jadinya I to want atau misal dalam narrative, anak-anak cenderung tidak menggunakan past tense, tidak pakai –ed banyak sekali tadi itu. Terus mau bilang anjinglain jadi “dog another”. XI IPS 1 students had numerous problems, they lack of vocabulary mastery. Students often looked up in their dictionary and used the word that they found without thinking of the correct tenses. For example, they wanted to say “sayaingin” they said “I to want”. In narrative, students did not use past tense, they did not change the verb into the past form. It often happened. Another case I found like saying “anjing lain” they said “dog another”. Interview transcript 7 __________________________________________________________ The problems found by the teacher were also stated by the students. They claimed that writing is the most difficult skill to master. The students revealed that they had low vocabulary mastery. P : “Ada kesulitan waktu menulis cerita narrative dalam bahasa inggris?” Did you face any problems in writing narrative text? S1 : “ada, menggunakan verb 2 itu lo. Bingung cari yang verb 2 kalo ga pake kamus itu sering lupa lupa gitu.”