Objective of the Study Hypotheses Significance of the Study

1.4 Objective of the Study

The objective of the study is to know the using of study tour method is effective or not in teaching descriptive text. Furthermore, based on the statement of the problem above, the objective of the study is as follows: ―To describe the effectiveness of study tour method to increase students‘ skill in writing descriptive text ‖.

1.5 Hypotheses

According to Hartoyo 2009:52 ―a hypothesis is preliminary or tentative explanation or postulate by the researcher of what the researcher considers to outcome of an investigation will be‖. There are two types of hypotheses: 1 in terms of the derivation, inductive and deductive hypotheses; and 2 in terms of the formulation, research – directional and non-directional and statistical or null hypotheses. In this study, the hypotheses which are used by the writer are as follows: H1= Eight grade students of SMP Takhassus Al- Qur‘an Wonosobo in the academic year 20102011 taught by study tour method gain significantly better mastery of writing skill of descriptive text than students taught without study tour method. H0= Eight grade students of SMP Takhassus Al- Qur‘an Wonosobo in the academic year 20102011 taught by study tour method do not gain significantly better mastery of writing skill of descriptive text than students taught without study tour method.

1.6 Significance of the Study

The results of this study hopefully will be useful for English teachers and contribute some benefits to students. For English teachers, study tour can be an alternative method in learning activity because visiting an interesting place could be used as media to develop students‘ writing skill, especially in writing descriptive text. Besides that, it helps their students who might have poor descriptive writing skill so that they can find at least a right method to overcome the students‘ difficulty in descriptive writing ability. The benefit for students are they will understand better on how to construct a good descriptive text and know about social function, generic structures, and lexicogrammatical features of descriptive text clearly; and they can enjoy their learning process because it is an outdoor activity. Therefore, it can minimize the students‘ poor writing of descriptive text because by using study tour method they can get description what they are going to write from the real situation and also feel free and comfortable in their learning process. For the writer, it can be an experience to get a better knowledge in the future and hopefully the findings of research will be useful for pedagogical implication, teachers, students and other education institutions. This study tour method will give information how to teach writing in attractive, enjoyable, and interesting ways. The readers can get more information about a method in teaching, especially in teaching writing descriptive text, and also it gives inspiration that using media in English learning process is a must to make the learning activity more interesting.

1.7 Limitation of the Study