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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Research
The globalization era in Indonesia is marked by Indonesia’s participation in ASEAN Free Trade Area AFTA and Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation APEC. It is clear that globalization creates competitive atmosphere in business. There are a lot of businesses and industries open
many kinds of jobs, such as manufactures, public services, and others that automatically need many workers in those businesses. It is the best
opportunity for the students of Vocational school to enter those labor markets, because Vocational School or Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan SMK offers
training in carrier that gives practical expertise, provides students with the skills needed to perform a particular job, and prepares the students to be ready
to enter the labor market. According to Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan 2006: 5, the general objective of the teaching and learning in vocational
schools or Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan SMK is preparing the students to be ready to enter job places. Therefore, the instructional process is aimed at
providing the students with sufficient competences and skills used by the students in their jobs.
According to Kebijakan Pemerintah, Permen 22 - 2006 tentang kerangka dasar dan struktur kurikulum SD, SMP, SMA, SMK semua mata
pelajaran, the aims of Vocational School are:
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Pendidikan kejuruan bertujuan untuk meningkatkan kecerdasan, pengetahuan, kepribadian, akhlak mulia, serta keterampilan peserta
didik untuk hidup mandiri dan mengikuti pendidikan lebih lanjut sesuai dengan program kejuruannya. Agar dapat bekerja secara
efektif dan efisien serta mengembangkan keahlian dan keterampilan, mereka harus memiliki stamina yang tinggi, menguasai bidang
keahliannya dan dasar-dasar ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi, memiliki etos kerja yang tinggi, dan mampu berkomunikasi sesuai
dengan
tuntutan pekerjaannya,
serta memiliki
kemampuan mengembangkan diri. Permen 22 – 2006: 17
In Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan KTSP there are twenty two points of the criteria for standard competence of SMK graduates Standard
Kompetensi Lulusan. Two of the points are related to language lessons, including English. Those points are 1 Communicating efficiency in the
spoken and written form; 2 Showing appropriate skills in listening, reading, speaking, and writing KTSP, 2006: 15. From the two points, it can be noted
that the graduates of SMK should have the ability in using English as one of the primary subjects which is tested in the national examination UAN. All
the skills, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing must be learnt by all the students, although there is no speaking and writing test in the national
examination. In the writing subject, the students should be able to produce
graphemes and orthographic pattern of English; produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose; produce an acceptable core of
words and use appropriate word order patterns; use acceptable grammatical systems e.g., tense, agreement, plural, patterns, and rule; express a particular
meaning in different grammatical forms; and use cohesive devices in written
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discourse. It means that the students should write with suitable word’s choosing, correct grammar, spelling and punctuation, control of content and
good organization. Writing is the most complex and difficult lesson among other English
skills. According to Brown 2004: 218, the ability to write has become an indispensable skill in our global literate community. Martlew in Saddler
2004 states academic progress in school depends on students’ ability to write fluently. Furthermore, writing is the principal medium by which
teachers evaluate performance Christenson, Thurlow, Ysseldyke, Mc Vicar, 1989; Graham Harris, 1988. Unfortunately, many students struggle
with the complexities of written expression Saddler, Moran, Graham, Harris, in press. Teachers often face the daunting task of helping students
grow as writers. Teacher may feel ensure of how to nudge students up the ladder of writing ability and even not comfortable with their ability to assist
students who have great difficulties with written expression. Saddler, Bruce. 2004. Improve Writing Ability; retrieved from
http:www.article.htm .
The difficulties of writing are also felt by the students of vocational school. They perhaps can speak, read, and listen to English words but they do
not know how to write them. It was proved by their scores of the writing test; especially free writing, which were worse than the scores of other skills.
From the pre – test, questionnaire, interviews, and observations that have been done by the researcher, she found that their difficulties are in some
aspects, such as finding an appropriate word suitable with the topics, using of
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appropriate tenses based on the situation, using of correct verbs infinitive, past, and past participle, using correct spelling and punctuation, arranging a
good paragraph suitable with the topic, making a good organization, and exploring their ideas. Students only wrote sentences based on the teacher’s
instructions. Students’ activity was to write out grammar exercise. Writing skills were given only to give the stress on using correct tense patterns rather
than understanding when the sentences were used. The students were given a short text and instructed to change all singular nouns to plural nouns or to
change present tense to past tense, etc. The students were assumed to be not ready yet to create texts by themselves; they were only ready to manipulate
forms. Thus, when the teacher asked the students to write a free composition, most of them had difficulties to write it. They could not write it because they
never write a composition based on their own ideas and they were afraid of making mistakes. Since the focus of these types of writing exercise is
primarily on grammar, students will get good grade if the texts are free from errors or have only just very few errors. Consequently, then, students write
very cautiously in English. Therefore, they often avoid writing what they cannot control.
The students’ difficulties in writing are caused by three factors: the students themselves, the teacher, and the class situation.
1 The students: the students do not get sufficient writing exercises to explore their ideas, do not have self-confidence, and are afraid of making mistakes.
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2 The teacher: the teacher does not give enough exercises and suitable teaching method to support the teaching – learning process, especially in
teaching writing. In the traditional way of teaching writing, the teacher is mostly concerned with the final product of writing and what the product
should look like. 3 The class situation: the situation in the writing class is uncomfortable for
the students so they are stressed, afraid, and strained when the teacher give them writing exercises.
For this reason, a suitable method in teaching writing should be found so that the students can explore their ideas and make good English writing.
One method that is considered to be effective to apply in language classroom is Task – Based Language Teaching TBLT. TBLT is a cutting edge
language teaching approach for second language learners. It combines the latest research on language acquisition with methods to get students ability in
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. TBLT is an approach which offers students material which they have to actively engage in the process of
teaching – learning in order to achieve a goal or complete a task. TBLT seeks to develop students’ interlanguage through providing a task and, then, using
language to solve it. Richard and Rodger 2001: 223 state that TBLT is the development of Communicative Language Teaching. TBLT refers to an
approach based on the use of tasks as the core unit of planning and instruction in language teaching Richards – Rodger, 2001: 223. Nunan 1993: 10
defines task as a piece of classroom work which involves learners in
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comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. In
short, TBLT is an approach which seeks to allow students to work somewhat at their own pace and within their own level and area of interest to process
and restructure their interlanguage. It moves away from a prescribed developmental sequence and introduces learner freedom and autonomy into
the learning process. The teacher’s role is also modified to that of helper. The TBLT will drive students to be more active in doing their writing activity.
Through this method, the students are given the assignment in grammar, vocabularies, punctuation, and other relevant language elements based upon
the result of the diagnosis of students’ language errors in writing. The teacher will become facilitator in the class where the students will be the center of the
process teaching and learning process in http:www.asian-efl journal.com
profession teaching articles.com In Task – Based Language Teaching, the teacher has a lot of
opportunities to develop various activities. The teacher can use writing tasks with fun activities and familiar topics to the students, for examples describing
students’ special person, their home town, their hobbies, their daily activities, their childhood, etc. They can explore their ideas freely and use their own
words without worrying about mistakes in using tenses, grammar, spelling, punctuation, content, organization, and appropriate words. When they
practice to write continually and complete their tasks they can build their vocabularies; get correct tenses, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and
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appropriate words; be able to make a good organization in writing; and keep logical development of ideas with the content. In the last period of teaching
using TBLT the teacher explains the use of those correct aspects of writing.
Familiarity of the topic and enjoyment in conducting the task are the solution of the students’ difficulties in writing.
Task Based Language Teaching TBLT offers the material for the students which they have to actively engage in the process of teaching –
learning in order to achieve a goal or complete a task. A task is a piece of class work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating,
producing, or interacting in the target language, focuses on meaning rather than form with the purpose of facilitating language learner in the form of
simple and brief exercise type to more complex situation, and is usually resemble to the real – life language use. The effective steps in Task – Based
Language Teaching TBLT namely pre – task, task phase, and language focus are very effective to improve the students’ writing ability. Conducted
on giving those tasks, there were some significant progressions were made by the students. The students tend to be better in their content, organization,
syntax grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. Pre – task phase introduces the topic and task for the students and
activates the students to find related words and phrases which are suitable to the topic. In the pre-task, the teacher presents what will be expected of the
students in the task phase. These will be presented the suggestions and
motivations, so the students would be encouraged to use language that they
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are comfortable with in order to complete the task. The instructors may also present a model of the task by doing it by themselves or by presenting picture,
audio, or video to demonstrate the task. The task – cycle offers the chance to learners to use whatever
language they already know in order to carry out the task, and then to improve that language under teacher’s guidance, while are planning their
reports of the task. The language focus allows a closer study of some of the specific
features naturally occurring in the language used during the task cycle. By this point, the learners will have already worked with the language and
processed it for meaning, so they are ready to focus on the specific language forms that carry that meaning.
Based on the background above, the researcher believes that Task Based Language Teaching TBLT is an effective solution to overcome the
problems of students’ writing ability.
B. Limitation of the Problem
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