The Analysis of the Fourth Activity

57

4.1.4 The Analysis of the Fourth Activity

The fourth activity was held on 21 December 2006. In this activity I decided to give group exercises to the students. Before starting this activity the students were asked to submit their homework. I asked them whether they got difficulties. Their answers and their results showed that they had not understood how to put quotation marks when there were direct speeches in the text. The classical total score on this assignment was 281 and the number of students was 39. Hence, the average of their achievement in punctuation and capitalization was 7.20. Most of them made mistakes in question number 5 which was about putting quotation marks. Thus, I explained direct speech to the students briefly and gave other examples of this material. After discussing the homework, the students were asked to make groups in four or five. The students were noisy because they had different ideas in choosing their partners. I asked them to be quiet and sit in their own chairs. I gave another choice and asked their agreement. All of them agreed to count one to seven then those who had same number became one group. I thought it was fair enough because the students liked to group with their own best friends and rejected other students who were not their close friends. Then they broke into groups and sit round the student’s table the group chose to enable them in working together. In this activity each group was given two pieces of short paragraphs that represented a given text structure. Those paragraphs were about Sleeping Beauty. I also gave them a piece of paper on which they stuck the given paragraphs and wrote 58 their group writing. Because my voice was not loud enough I decided to write the instruction on the black board besides giving instruction and explanation orally. In this Joint Construction of text JCOT the students were asked to label the generic structures of the two paragraphs their group had then they should write the missing text structure using their own words simply. The text structures given in this activity were orientation, complication, and resolution. I did not ask them to write the coda because it was still too difficult for them. When they were sure on their works then they stuck the given paragraphs on the work sheet and wrote the name of each its text structure. They wrote their group writing of the missing text structure in the appropriate position on the work sheet. Thus, the story became complete. It had orientation, complication, and resolution. I provided 60 minutes to the students in doing the task. After finishing their work, I asked the representatives of two groups that got different paragraphs to read their groups’ work. Other groups were asked to give comments or questions when they found difficulties. All students agreed with the structures but each group had different paragraphs in completing the story. During this activity the students’ talks were more dominant. They often asked questions and gave ideas. From their faces, acts, and talks I noticed that they enjoyed the activity. The result of this activity can be seen in the appendices. The average of the students’ achievement was 76.28. At the end of this activity I gave an assignment to the students so that they would review the material at home. The assignment was about relative pronouns. 59 Some of them intended to use relative pronouns in their writing but they were confused. I asked them to study hard because they would have individual exercises in the next activity. Therefore, the students could do the exercises given in this cycle and their understanding in narrative writing both in its linguistic features and its generic structure was improved.

4.1.5 The Analysis of the Fifth Activity