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in generating ideas, organizing sentences, choosing words, and using grammar. With all of these backgrounds, I would like to observe The Use of Jakarta
Post Newspaper to Motivate Students in Writing News Item Text Based on Generic Structure, Language Features and Social Function a Case of the Tenth Grade
Students of SMA N 1 Mranggen in the Academic Year of 20102011. I want to know how well the students’ writing news item texts based on those three aspects.
1.2 Reasons for Choosing the Topic
In this information era, knowledge and information are very important. There are many various sources of media to get knowledge and information, such as newspaper,
television, radio and internet. Reading newspaper is a cheaper and easier way to get them. Because of that, most people tend to seek accurate information through
newspaper. For the English students, newspaper can be an important media to improve
their English skills. By analysing its language well, they will have some kind of awareness. For example, the components of the sentences are more complex. By
reading the news on newspaper, students not only get new information, but also new vocabulary items and knowledge about how to construct sentence and components of
the sentence in English. They can also apply the patterns of sentences on their own writings patterns. For the teacher, newspaper can be a tool to teach English. To
motivate students in writing news item, teachers can use some articles in Jakarta Post.
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Teacher only asks the students to read newspaper, and then students should write information they have got in their own ways. This is the method that can be applied
in teaching learning process, which is simple and easy to be implemented. News Item text is more complicated and difficult to understand for students
than other text types. The fact shows that the students got some difficulties to classify and understand the texts into their text types. Especially to analyze the news item
text, the students couldn ’t differentiate between news item text and other types of
text. is news item and which one isn ’t. In understanding news item text, students must
know the generic structure, language features and social function of the text. The reasons for choosing the topic can also be described as follows: First,
writing is the most complex skill to show the relationship of ideas which needs the willingness to write and some practices step by step to pass on knowledge. Second,
news item text is more complicated and difficult to understand for students than another text types. Third, the last students can motivate themselves on writing by
using Jakarta Post Newspaper. I could conclude that the basic problems of students in understanding news
item are their lack of understanding about generic structure, language features and also the social function of news item text. With these backgrounds, I will try to
analyze The Use of Jakarta Post Newspaper to Motivate Students in Writing News Item Text Based on Generic Structures, Language Features and Social Function: a
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Case of the Tenth Grade Students of SMA N 1 Mranggen in the Academic Year of 20102011 in order to help the students solve these problems.
1.3 Statement of the Problem
