Background of the Study

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, I would like to present background of the study, reasons for choosing the topic, statements of the problem, objectives of the study, significance of the study, limitation of the study and the last, the outline of the study.

1.1 Background of the Study

It cannot be denied that learning English requires all the four language skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing. The implication of this statement is that teacher should be able to manage those skills equally as proportion, covering several genres of text with several kind of evaluation along with the aim of study which should be done full of responsibility Mukminatien, 2009:76. Genre; that being realized into text, nowadays becomes the concern of English curriculum since the official launching of Competence Based Curriculum CBC or Curriculum 2004. Through the development, CBC was shifted into School Based Curriculum SBC or Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP. Those curricula actually have the same perspective that the focus of language learning has been shifted from sentence isolation to a text Rukmini, 2010:1. Text, either written or spoken, as the focus of language learning enables students to use language in context, to achieve the purpose of communication. 1 English curriculum, for more specific, uses Text Based Curriculum which concerns more in the use of genre as the model texts. Each model text has its own purposes to achieve the goal of communication through the use of it. There are numerous genres that being taught in high school level; they are: procedure, descriptive, recount, narrative, report, news-item, analytical exposition, and hortatory exposition. The texts can be in a form of written or spoken regarding to the skill that intended to be taught; listening, reading, speaking or writing. From those four skills, writing is considered as the last skill to be mastered. Writing skill often be put in the higher level in the process of language acquisition, and be considered as the hardest level. This problem arises since Indonesian education has not proportionally built writing culture to the students. Alwasiyah 2010:137 states that one of the reasons is the lack of basic literacy education form elementary school to high school. I personally believe that this problem not only occur in the writing of Bahasa as the first language, but also in English as the foreign language of the students. Regarding to what I had observed in the recount texts wrote by 8 th grader of Junior High School, SMP 1 Semarang and through some discussion with the teachers proved that when the students were asked to create recount texts, the results showed that they had problems in developing idea in the content of writing. It could be seen from the vocabulary used and the idea of the content. It is the teachers‟ duty to choose and evaluate the appropriate examples of model texts, considering whether the content is suitable for the students or not. Through good examples, the students will learn the good ones in terms of the elements that construct the texts, the realization of lexico-grammatical features, and the most important is the content of the texts. Moreover, they will lead students to write good texts in terms of the content as well. According to Rukmini 2010:6, educational laws of republic of Indonesia number 202003 of which some chapters, especially 1, 2, and 4, are crucially related to the content evaluation of the text. Based on the law, she interprets some points of appropriate standard content of text. Some that I am interested in are; the content does not only develop students‟ potencies responsibilities, democracy but forms their ch aracters as well as their nation‟s dignity in order to help self personalities to become good Indonesian nations; it does not discriminate and give highest appreciation of human right, religious values and national diversities; the application of all those to a text are among others in: presenting various places, cultures, happening, events, religions etc. in Indonesia; the text does not only contain imported stories from abroad but from Indonesia too. The latter is the priority with the purpose of maintain ing students‟ nationalism in this global era. It is along with the concern of Ministry of National Education to emphasis character building education and nationalism to be integrated in every subject of learning, not only in the subject which require affective consciousness such as religious, civic, history, social science and so on, but also in the other subject such as art, math, sciences, and not to mention, languages: including English. From those brilliant thought, I came to an idea to conduct a research of writing recount texts by using fieldtrip to Ronggowarsito Museum and in the same time, integrating character building education and nationalism, more specifically in the concern of cultural awareness. I chose recount text since it was the genre that suitable to be matched with fieldtrip to the museum since I planned to ask the students to make their journey in the form of recount. The consideration of taking Ronggowarsito Museum as the destination of fieldtrip was that it is located not a way far from the school I conducted the research, SMP 1 Semarang, for practical benefit. Moreover, Ronggowarsito Museum as one of the tourism destination in Semarang is an educative and a suitable place to enclose students with the diversity of Indonesian culture. I considered this is the right path to integrate learning English with character building education as to improve student ability in writing recount. Even though previously there were many research conducted about writing recount text, such as the one conducted by Sutirah 2009 entitled Diary as a Medium in Recount Writing The Case of the Eighth Year Students of SMPN 1 Kedungreja Cilacap in the Academic Year of 20082009. Another one was conducted by Pratiwi 2010 entitled Writing a Letter as a Medium to Improve Writing Recount Ability In the Case of Eight Grader of SMP N 36 Semarang in the Academic Year of 20092010. Both researches ware deal with writing recount texts using various media, the first was using diary and the last one was using letter as th e medium to improve students‟ achievement in writing recount. However, they tended to consider only the linguistic competence of the students and a little bit neglected the content of the students works, whether they reflected some values mentioned in educational law number 202003 or not. Therefore, I strongly believed this research was feasible and brought a new idea of teaching recount texts and of course, it deserved to be carried on.

1.2 Reasons of Choosing the Topic