Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter consists of background of the study, identification of the problems, problem limitation, problem formulation, objective of the study, and significance of the research study.

A. Background of the Study

Writing skills always have an important role in global communication and many professions require good writing skills. Writing skills are also used extensively in higher education and in the workplace. It is true that most professional communication is done in writing, such as making proposals, memos, reports, applications, and e-mails. So, in the process of education, learning writing skills is important. In learning language, there are two kinds of skills to be learnt. They are receptive skills and productive skills. The former is the way in which people extract meaning from the discourse they see or hear as stated by Harmer 2003: 199. The latter deals with how the students make a product of the target language. In Indonesia, English starts to be officially taught in Junior High School. Since Junior High School is the first stage in learning English as a Foreign Language, it is very important to make the students love English and understand the basic English, so that the students can go to the next stage easily. 2 Teaching English in Junior High School focuses on two skills, namely reading, and writing. Although there is no writing national examination, writing is one of the skills which the students should acquire. Besides, teaching reading cannot be separated with teaching writing because writing asks the students to deepen their knowledge of what they have read. Moreover, writing is more difficult than reading because in writing the students should share their ideas about how and what to write a text. So, the students not only guess the answer of as in the reading tests, but also master the target language. Writing is a part of productive skills. For the second language L2 learners of the eighth grade students in Junior High School, writing skills are very challenging. In fact, most of them get difficulties in expressing their ideas into written language. Richards and Renandya 2002: 303 argue that “there is no doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for L2 learners to master. ” Moreover, they propose that difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readable text. Another problem is that they lack the use of correct grammar and vocabulary. When making a text, especially in writing recount text, the students have a difficulty in forming the past tense of the verb since there is no tense in their first language. In this matter, confusion between first and second languages exists. As stated by Brown 2000: 67, a good deal of the research on nonsimultaneous second language acquisition, in both children and adults has focused on the interfering effects of the first and second languages. Sometimes, 3 they still use present form in making recount. So, the understanding about tense is important to understand. Furthermore, grammar and vocabulary are the main aspects in writing, it is important to understand it. There is also a problem in mechanics in their writing product. The students tend to neglect the need of using full stop and capital letters. As a junior high school student, they like to produce nice handwriting which sometimes does not meet the rules of written work. Furthermore, spelling is also needed to be considered. Harmer 2001: 256 suggests that although incorrect spelling does not often prevent the understanding of a written message, it can adversely affect the reader’s judgement. Moreover, Harmer 2001: 256 also states that all too often bad spelling is perceived as a lack of education or care. Furthermore, their motivation is one of the biggest problems occurred. Most of the students do not have any enthusiasm in learning English. They think that English is not useful in their daily life since they use Javanese every day. They also think that English is a difficult language because they find it different from their mother language, such as the difference between pronunciation and spelling of a word, and the difference in forming a phrase. Teenage students like to work with thier friends, so that Collaborative Feedback is used. Collaborative Feedback, later will be called as CF, is a technique by combining peer-feedback with teacher-feedback. This technique is also called by Teacher-Peer Feedback or Combined Feedback by Maarof et al. 2011. 4 In CF, the students have to make their product of writing first, then they are asked to change their product of recount with their friends, and they do peer- feedback. After they are given the feedback, they get their text back and then they revise it. By using this technique, the students learn a great deal because after they got the feedback, they can ask their friends directly about why their sentence is wrong. After they finish revising their work, the teacher asks the students to submit their work, and later, the teacher gives feedback to the students’ written work too. Finally, the students have to revise their work once more to be submitted as their final draft. This technique enables the teacher to be more active because this technique requires an interaction between the teacher and the students. Moreover, when having a peer discussion in the revising stage, the students increase their knowledge simultaneously together.

B. Identification of the Problems