5. Picture Series
A picture is an illustration of picture that can be used as two dimensional representation of person, place or thing Rivai and Sudjana,
1991: 12. It means that picture is one of the media of communication that can show people, place and thing that are far from us. Pictures are used to
help people cope with memory, language, or speech deficiencies Graber et al: 2006. In other words, pictures can describe more than the oral
communication. As stated in the previous section, there are various types of picture
used in the English teaching and learning and one of them is picture series. A series of pictures is a sequence picture of a single subject that is aimed to
tell a story and also a sequence of events. Yunus 1981:49 states that a picture series is a number of related composite pictures linked to form a
series of sequences. Hence, its main function is to tell a story or sequence of events.
To support the previous statement of picture series in the teaching and learning process, Harmer 2002:69 states that there is various number
of writing tasks that students can be asked to undertake. One of them is giving students a series of pictures which tell story and they have to write a
story based on the pictures. He then adds that giving the students sequence picture as the writing task will incite them to be creative writers.
Besides, pictures which are arranged orderly can help the learners to generate ideas, create good chronological order and organize the text.
Picture series usually varies from three up to ten pictures. It can be used to challenge or to encourage students to tell stories Wright, 1992: 68. With
using this kind of media, the researcher believed that it could help the students to compose an explanation text.
In this research, the researcher combined the picture series with the rubrics in order to help the students write the text. Rubrics can include the
list of vocabulary or structure that students need to use while writing Kayi, 2006. In this research, the students were asked to tell the process of
something happened in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric. The using of rubric in this
research was expected in helping the students to produce explanation text. Using picture series in teaching writing has some benefits. The first
advantage of using picture as a media is that it will make the students interested in learning writing. Then, it can stimulate the students to get the
idea of what they want to write. It will also help the students in expressing the ideas they have in mind become more readable. Another benefit of using
picture series is that it can improve the students’ motivation to learn writing.
6. Explanation Text
Anderson and Anderson 1997: 80 state that the explaining text type tells how or why something occurs. It looks at the steps rather than
the things. The purpose of an explanation text is to tell each step of the process the how and to give reasons the why. Explanation is a piece of
text that deals with the processes involved in understanding and making explicit the how and or why of particular phenomena, events, and
concepts occur in scientific and technical fields. Grammatical features in explanation text include passive voice, simple present tense, conjunctions
of time and cause, noun groups and complex sentences. There are three steps for constructing a written explanation
according to Anderson and Anderson 1997: 80. The first step is a general statement about the event or thing that will be explained. Then, a
series of paragraphs that tell the hows or whys. In this paragraph, the writer tells the sequence of explanation text. The last step is a concluding
paragraph as a closing. The writer concludes what he she has explained in this paragraph.
To make a good explanation text, the students have to consider some grammatical features in composing the text. The first consideration
is the using of simple present tense to explain why something happened. The verbs in simple present tense will change by adding ‘s’ if the subjects
of the sentence are ‘she, he, it’; for example go becomes goes. The second consideration is the using of passive voice. It is often used when the object
of the action is more important than those who perform the action. Next,
the students have to consider the using of explanation text to give details about what, how and why something happened and the using of cause and
effect words to show the explanation of phenomenon such as because, caused by, as a result of, and an effect of.
B. Relevant Study
Marhaeni Siriwaji 2011 did a study through a series of pictures in teaching writing. A series of pictures is one of teaching media that can be
involved in the process of teaching and learning. The researcher had found three results of the research. The first result is that students’ ability in
constructing texts could improve by using a series of pictures. The second finding is that a series of pictures showed the effectiveness of the teaching
and learning process. It could improve their motivation and passion to learn English writing. They were found more creative to produce their texts. The
last result is that the cooperative learning among them could also improve by using a series of pictures. They got more chances to participate. They realized
that they had responsibility and confidence when exploring their writing skills.
Lesna Henny 2013 conducted a study on writing using picture series. She had a research about improving students’ skill of writing recount text by
using picture series for the eighth grade students of SMP N 1 Seyegan in the academic year of 2012 2013. In her study, she analyzed the improvement of
using picture series to teach writing. The result of the study proved that the utilization of picture series could improve students’ writing skills on recount
text. Added to this, the activities during the teaching and learning process could improve the classroom interaction, students’ involvement, and students’
attention.
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