Background to the Problems

1

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background to the Problems

In Indonesia, English is a foreign language which is a compulsory subject in junior secondary schools and higher education. Meanwhile, English is a local content in elementary schools. The focus of this study is English teaching in junior secondary schools. The teaching of English in junior secondary schools has several aims: develop students’ communicative competence at the functional level in both spoken and written, make the students aware of the nature of English in global competition, and develop students’ understanding on the relationship between language and culture. With these aims, teachers should develop students’ communicative competence in both spoken and written forms. The second year students of junior secondary schools are to have possessed the spoken and written skills at the functional level. However, to my limited observation, students have not achieved these yet, especially in the written form. Most of the students’ writing skill is relatively low. Writing is regarded as the most difficult skill to learn. Students have difficulties in organizing their idea into a good passage. The students have already had the idea in their mind but they have difficulties in organizing them. This situation is worse since, when teaching writing, most of English teachers tend to teach grammar patterns and translation only. Teachers do not teach how to write coherently and cohesively. In fact, good writing should be coherent and cohesive. Such situation really happens in writing class of grade Eight in SMP Negeri 3 Tempel. Based on the discussion with the English teacher on October 13 2 and October 18, 2012, the teacher said that teaching writing is difficult for her and she had few interesting technique to teach writing. Classroom observation on October 17, 2012 also revealed that her teaching focused on translating texts. The teacher did not tell the students how to write a coherent and cohesive paragraph and how to develop the idea in writing. Concerning to the aims of the curriculum, students are to be able to communicate through their writing at functional level. Without neglecting other skills, writing is important to learn since having a good writing skill means having a good communication skill. The more they write, the more the students broaden their vocabulary and are able to articulate their idea accurately and effectively to others. This will help them become better students. In addition, students need to know the convention in writing like punctuation, spelling, paragraph construction which enables them to communicate in the written form. A good writing skill also gives more opportunities to get a job since many jobs or professions need writing skills. Therefore, the English teacher and I agreed that it is necessary to improve students’ writing skill.

B. Identification of the Problems