Reflection Report on Cycle I

74 It can be seen that the English teacher gave positive feedback toward the activities in cycle I. the teacher agreed that the activities were proper and useful to improve the students’ writing ability. Furthermore, the English teacher added some statements toward the peer-feedback activity. R : Kalau menurut ibu, peer-feedback tadi bisa membantu anak-anak dalam menulis tidak bu? What do you think about peer-feedback activity? Does it help the students in writing? ET : Bisa mas. Metodenya bisa digunakan. Pas revisi kan mereka bisa mengambil saran dari teman-temannya mas. Membuat mereka lebih terbuka lagi. It is good that the method works. So the students can revise their draft helped by feedback and suggestion from their friends R : kalau tentang interaksi anak-anak saat KBM gimana? What abou t the students’ interaction during the teaching and learning process? ET : Tadi anak-anak juga aktif tanya-tanya kan mas. Mereka excited sepertinya mas. Apalagi tadi pakai LCD kan mas. Mereka memang suka kalau pelajarannya pakai LCD. They were so active in asking several questions. They were excited. Moreover, you used LCD. They like learning using LCD as the media R : Jadi kalau masalah media dan interaksinya tidak masalah ya Bu. So there is no problem with the media and the st udents’ interaction, isn’t it? 75 ET : Tidak mas. Sudah bagus tadi mas. No. it was really good Interview transcript 9 From the transcript above, it can be seen that the peer-feedback activity could help the students in writing. It can help the students in revising their draft. It is because the peer-feedback activity allows the students to get suggestion from their friends regarding the draft. Hence, the students can use the suggestion, feedback, and correction to revise their draft and make it into final draft. Furthermore, the collaborator also gave several statements toward the activities done in Cycle I. The interview with the collaborator regarding the Cycle I can be seen from the transcript below. R : Gimana tadi wat aku ngajarnya? What do you think of the teaching learning process? C : Udah bagus kok. Emang harus extra yo guiding anak- anaknya. Tapi pas dijadiin group pas ngasih feedback tadi bagus kok. Mereka bisa saling tanya ke teman se-group kan pas ngasih feedbacknya. It was good. Well, they really need extra guidance. But the group work was good. They can share and ask their friends in giving feedback. R : Kalau kemaren pas listing gimana wat? What about listing activity in the previous meeting? 76 C : Udah bagus kok. Itu kan bisa membantu anak-anak mengumpulkan ide mereka mau mendeskripsikan apanya. It was good. It can help the students to generate and collect their ideas to write. Interview transcript 10 From the transcript, it can be seen that the activities were significant in helping the students to write. She also added that the guidance needs to be given to the students while they are writing. Moreover, the listing activities were proper in helping the students to generate and collect their ideas. The researcher also interviewed the students in order to know what the students felt toward the activities that they had done. It is also aimed to find out whether the students benefit from the activities, especially from the peer- feedback activity. The interview transcript can be seen below. R : Enak gak lok ada yang kasih tanggapan ke tulisanmu Er.? Do you like getting suggestion and feedback to your writing S : Enak mas, jadi pas benerin tu bias tau mana yang harus dibenerin. Yes I like it. so, when I have to revise my draft, I know what I should revise. R : Tadi kamu juga ngasih tanggepan buat temenmu kan? You gave feedback to your friend too, didn’t you? 77 S : Iya mas, bingung je tadi ngasih tanggepannya. Tapi pas ngasih beberapa koreksi enak kok mas.malah jadi tau yang bener tu aku apa temenku mas. Yes. I was confused in giving feedback. But I enjoyed giving correction. I can understand whether I was right or wrong Interview transcript 8 From the interview transcript, it can be seen that though they firstly were confused with the peer-feedback activity, the students enjoyed the activity. They also benefited from the feedback given to them. They said that their friend’s feedback helped them to find their mistakes. Besides that, they also said that they could learn from the feedback. Here are the results of the Cycle I reflection 1. Text identification The texts identification activity was successful in improving the students’ background of knowledge toward descriptive texts. It can be seen from the students’ understanding of the descriptive texts’ features. They could make simple sentences describing their school, identifying the generic structure of the texts and so on. Hence, it can be said that this activity which mostly done in the first meeting can improve the stud ents’ comprehension on descriptive texts significantly. 2. The draft making activity The draft making activity had successfully helped the students in writing. Draft making activity allowed the students to write down their 78 ideas and make it into paragraph. This also helped the students to gain their confidence to write since draft making activity and the previous activity allowed the students to gather their ideas. Hence, the students didn’t have to be worried and confused about what they should write. 3. Peer-feedback activities These activities had successfully helped the students to improve their writing ability. The students could benefit from the activities for instance, they could find their mistakes, they could know what to do to make their draft better, and they could also learn from their friends through the feedback. Hence, it can be said that the peer-feedback activity can significantly help the students to improve their writing ability. From the observation and the reflection of Cycle I, it can be concluded that the implementation of the activities by the researcher had resulted the improvement of students’ writing ability in several aspects. For example, they can generate their ideas and write them down in sentences and paragraph. They also improved their vocabulary mastery because in describing things, they needed to give detail description which meant that the students had to find several new words related to the topic. Besides that, the students also improved their grammar mastery is aspects such as sentence agreement, correct spelling, etc. Hence, Cycle I was successful in improving the students’ writing ability. 79 Furthermore, the data acquired in Cycle I have fulfilled all the validity criteria which are suggested by Burns 1999. The dialogic validity has been fulfilled by interviewing and discussing with the collaborator and the English teacher in the reconnaissance step and planning step. The discussion was aimed to find the problems and the solutions. Besides that, the democratic validity also has been fulfilled since the implementation was collaboratively done with the collaborators during the action. The process validity has also been fulfilled in this cycle by using the strategic plan in conducting the research. Furthermore, the outcome validity was fulfilled by the reflection result. The time triangulation was acquired because the data were collected at different point in time. Investigator triangulation was obtained by involving more than one observer. Furthermore, inter-rater reliability of the research was obtained since the collaborator was involved in analyzing the students’ writing.

C. Report of Cycle II

1. Planning

In Cycle II, the researcher and the collaborator planned to achieve the indicator. The Cycle I had succeeded in improving the students’ writing ability. However, after having further discussion with the collaborator, the researcher decided to have different topic and level as it was suggested by the English teacher and the collaborator. 80 R : Berarti sudah bisa lanjut ke Cycle dua kan Bu. So can we continue to the next cycle Mam? ET : Bisa mas, udah kelihatan kemajuannya kok mas. Jadi bisa dilanjutkan ke cycle selanjutnya. Yes. We can see there are some improvement on students’ writing ability R : Ada saran buat cycle kedua Bu? Do you have any suggestion for the next cycle Mam ET : Dinaikkan levelnya saja mas. Mungkin dengan tema dan topic yang berbeda. Tapi lebih menarik buat anak-anak. We need to progress to the next level. Maybe with different topic. But it should be more interesting for the students to learn. Interview transcript 9 The collaborator also had the same suggestion R : Ada saran buat cycle kedua ga Wat? is there any suggestion for the next cycle Wat? C : Kalau methodnya kan udah bagus, mungkin lebih ke level kesulitannya aja yang dinaikkan. Dan waktunya dimanage lagi. The method was good. Maybe you can choose another topic with different level of difficulty. And don’t forget to manage the time. R : Ok. Makasih wat Okay. Thank you Wat Interview transcript 10 Hence, the researcher decided to use different topic for the material. However, the method and the activities were still similar to the first cycle. 81 The Cycle II would also be conducted in three meetings. The first meeting would focus more on the developing students’ background of knowledge of descriptive text. Since the topic was different, there would be different explanation to the students too. The researcher would allow the students to make the first draft in the second meeting. And the third meeting was used to do peer-feedback activities.

2. Action And Observation

1 First meeting The first meeting was conducted on May 20 th 2013. The first meeting was focused to let the students identify the texts. Besides that, the students would also learn about using adjective words in simple present tense to describe character and physical appearance of a person.

a. Text Identification

The researcher gave several texts describing famous people. Then, the researcher together with the students identified the texts. In identifying the texts, the researcher led the students to understand the features and generic structures of the texts. Besides that, the researcher also asked the students to compare the texts in Cycle II with the texts they had got on Cycle II. It was aimed to make the students understand that descriptive texts about people are a little bit different from descriptive texts about things or places.