since one photograph will tell the students something related to the real object outside and will have instructions to study overdue it. Considering the benefits mentioned,
photographs are chosen to be one of media or technique in writing texts such as procedure, narrative, recount , and descriptive.
B. The Identification of the Problem
Based on the observation in the English teaching class and interview with the English teacher and students of class 7F SMP N 4 Magelang on February 12
th
and 20
th
2014, there were some problems that could be identified during the process of teaching and learning writing. The problems can be described as follows:
1 Students felt confused in getting ideas and organizing them.
When the students started their writing tasks, some of them found difficulties in extending their ideas to write then to organize them into the comprehensible texts.
Thus, their English teacher sometimes determined the topics and gave more input text before, but they wrote their own text similar to the input model in their final written. It
seemed that they were not effective in using their creativity to visualize their ideas during the writing process. They sometimes preferred asking the other students then the
teacher about the words that they would write in English or they looked for some words that they got in the previous material.
2 Students were still not confident in writing.
The students were not confident enough in writing. Sometimes, they felt afraid of making mistakes. Then,
the students‟ vocabulary mastery was still low so they faced
hard process in constructing a sentence because they did not know many English words. In addition, they had difficulty to express their utterance to write in English.
3 The use of supporting media in the teaching and learning process of writing did not
encourage or motivate the students adequately. The English teacher had used the power point slides as one of her instructional
media and applied role play or simulations to extend the idea context. Also, she used some facial expressions and gestures to explain certain difficult words during the
writing process. Nevertheless, she did not design these media well to motivate the students, so they were not able to encourage a good atmosphere of learning that
stimulated students‟ writing interest. The students still felt that the writing was a difficult skill to learn and the task activities made them bored.
4 The teacher emphasized the teaching learning process in speaking and answering
certain questions in the tests correctly. The teaching learning process that the English teacher did emphasized in
speaking and answering certain questions correctly. She explained that the speaking skills were expected to make her students being active in English. Then, they should be
familiar to answer certain questions correctly in the test. That would help them to get good mark in the test. As the result, she also admitted that the exposures of some
writing materials were less given into the class.
C. Limitation of the Problem
This research aimed at enhancing students ‟ writing performance. According to
the situations that described in the identification of the problems above, there are some problems that can be identified. These problems relate to how students generate their
ideas spontaneously then organize them , the students‟ writing confident, the use of
supporting media that the English teacher used during the teaching learning writing class, and teaching learning process that emphasized in speaking and answering certain
questions in the tests correctly In this study, the problems are limited on what kinds of media that can be used
in teaching learning writing process. The st udents‟ writing performance would achieve
good writing, if they have a good motivation in writing English. To make students interest to write English, some kinds of interesting instructional media have to be used
by the teacher. Photographs are used in this action research
to enhance students‟ writing performance at seventh grade students of SMP 4 Magelang. The use of photographs has
some beneficial roles such as to attract students‟ mind and attention about the function
of the language that will be taught and to be used in free writing activity as the solutions to the problem in self-confidence. Therefore, photographs are used in this study.
D. Formulations of the Problem
How can photographs enhance the students‟ writing performance of seventh
grade students at SMP N 4 Magelang ?
E. The Objective of the Study
The objective of this research study is to improve the student s‟ writing
performance of seventh grade students at SMP N 4 Magelang through photographs.
F. Significance of the Study
This study is expected to give some advantages to some parties 1.
For the school principal of SMP N 4 Magelang, the result is expected to become the good inputs for implementing the same instructional media
used in other relevant subjects. 2.
For the English teacher in SMP N 4 Magelang, the result will be the reference how photographs can be used to enhance the student
s‟ writing performance so that she could apply to her English class in future.
3. For the researcher, the result will give the experience for the researcher on
how to use photographs in enhancing the student s‟ writing performance.
4. For the students, they could become motivate to express and write their
idea without any difficulties again. 5.
For other researchers in the same topic, they can use the result as the input to conduct other research.
