Background of the Study

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents introduction which contains of background of the study, reasons for choosing topic, research questions, objectives of the study, and significance of the study.

1.1 Background of the Study

Writing is one of four English skills besides listening, speaking, and reading. Writing is about expressing our ideas into sentence or paragraph. However, it needs ability to express those ideas. In writing our ideas, we need sentence patterns, such as, simple present tense, simple past tense, passive voice, and we also must use correct punctuation, such as using capital letter in the first sentence then using full stop in the end of sentence, using commas when we mention much kind of things, etc. Broadman and Frydenberg 2002: 11 state, “Good writers think, plan, write a draft, think, rewrite, think, and rewrite until they are satisfied”. They also add that writing is a continuous process of thinking and organizing, rethinking and reorganizing. Good writers go through six basic steps. Each step can be repeated as many times as necessary. The six steps are assessing the assignment, generating ideas, organizing ideas, writing the first draft, rewriting, and writing the final draft. That is why writing might be considered as the most difficult skill for the students in every grade because there are many steps in writing process and students have to find their ideas to start their product; think about what to write, how to elaborate it, then arrange those ideas into some phrases to become a good writing project. Cimcoz 1999: 1 states, “Students have not been taught to make their ideas flow on paper. They do not know how to write, feel stupid when they cannot find the right words, fear criticism and want to avoid the emotional turmoil experienced when faced with a t opic and a blank piece of paper.” If the students always write what they want to write without the teacher asks them, their writing skill will improve well. So writing is also about a habit. We can differentiate between students who love writing and they do not. The students who love writing can make some paragraphs of a text well. Their sentences are grammatical, their ideas are meaningful, and every sentence in each paragraphs are quite creative. But, the students who do not love writing that much will get lack of ideas when they try to write in a blank of a paper. That is why, they have grammatical error, their sentences are not accurate, and they just can make at least one or two paragraphs. However, in teaching writing to students, teachers must be optimistic that students can improve their writing ability if each student has a will to study and try to write and it must be continuously. Therefore, teachers have to do an interesting teaching learning process in class to get attention from their students and give motivation to write. Brown 2001: 334 states that learning writing is just like learning to swim. Learning to swim can only be practiced if there is a body of water available and usually only if someone teaches too. People learn writing if they are member of a literate society and usually only if someone teaches too. If someone wants to be able to swim, he cannot just master the theories to swim, but he has to get into the water to practice and apply the theories on ourselves. Same in writing, if someone wants to make a good writing, he cannot just focus on the theories, but instead he must plunge into the real writing world where he would practically involved in writing. From the statement above, in the context of educational level, we can see the importance of teaching writing. Since writing is such a must in education, a form of communication and a necessary in teaching and learning process, so I try to use an interesting technique to improve students‟ writing skill. The technique is called “Running Dictation”. Running Dictation is a fun technique that can be adapted in a number of ways and it is fairly easy to prepare, explain, set up, plus it is very adaptable. This technique can be one way to teach students in writing descriptive text. Meanwhile, descriptive text is a text which tells particular persons, things, or places. To create the descriptive text, our imagination and visualization must work because we need to describe particular persons, things, or places in specific ways. Therefore, running dictation can be used to help students to create descriptive texts. Creating descriptive text as one of the genres can help students to develop their ability in writing, especially in transferring their minds, ideas, or opinions into a written form that will make the students become accustomed to developing sentences into a good paragraph. However, the most difficult problem faced by the students of SMAN 1 Bawang is getting lack of ideas when they try to write paragraphs. The English teacher of that school states that actually the students‟ ability to get ideas or opinions and to develop paragraphs is low. It also means that they get difficulty in developing their own ideas into written language. Therefore, if she gives them a writing assignment, they just do it in groups and their writing results are same one and another. Their grammar and punctuation are also incorrect. Because of the difficulty faced by the students at grade ten of SMAN 1 Bawang in writing English, I focus my research on the use of running dictation in improving the students‟ ability in writing, especially in writing descriptive text. Descriptive text writing is writing that describes a person, a place, an idea, an organization, or an activity. I think descriptive text is an interesting text because it describes particular things or persons using our own ideas. We use our imagination to create a descriptive text. To avoid students‟ boredom in teaching and learning process of writing and to help students generating their ideas, especially in writing descriptive text, running dictation technique can be the simplest one to get students‟ intention of creating their ideas into paragraph as this technique is done by dictating some words, sentences, or paragraphs to students and the teacher will then ask them to rewrite or retell what they have heard by their own words.

1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic