Background of the Problems

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Problems

Being able to communicate effectively is the most important of all life skills. Communication is the activity of transferring information from one place to another, whether this will be vocally using voice, written using printed or digital media such as books, magazines, websites or emails, visually using logos, maps, charts or graphs, or non-verbally using body language, gestures and the tone and pitch of voice. How well this information can be transmitted and received is a measure of how good our communication skills are. Unlike speaking skill that comes naturally, writing skill has to be learned in the academic life. The ability to write effectively is becoming increasingly important in our global community and instruction in writing is thus assuming an increasing role in both second and foreign language education. In an education context, not all materials or knowledge that the teacher wants the learners to learn is provided in their native language. There are so many resource books that are valuable written in other languages. Because of that reason many educators recommend their students not only learn from the books or other printed media in their native language; they are suggested to learn from many resources for example internet. In this global era, almost all information can be found in internet. There are so many search engines that help the users get the information easily. The information in the internet is mainly in the form of written text rather than spoken one. English as an International language plays the main role in the internet as a media of interaction. From the data taken from Internet World Stats that is an international website that features are up to date world internet usage, population statistics, travel stats and internet market research data, the researcher found that English has been a dominant language that is used by the internet users. It is about 536.6 million people in the world use English as a mean of communication in the internet. In another word, there is about 16.8 of all of the internet users in the world uses English Thompson, 2013. From the data, it can be seen that there is much information in the internet using English so that if the internet users want to respond to, express their ideas in the internet, they have to be able to write in English well. Regarding that, writing in English is one of the language skills that should be mastered by Indonesian junior high school students on the School Based Curriculum SBC or KTSP. It is mentioned in the Standard of Competencies and Basic Competencies that the students are expected to have good ability in all skills such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. As one of the important abilities which has to be mastered by the students of grade VII, it includes some materials to be mastered such as how to write instructions, lists of things, greeting cards, announcements, descriptive texts and procedural texts. Writing is not a simple thing to do. There are many things to be considered such as punctuation, spelling, grammar, coherence and cohesion in order to make the readers understand what the writer is going to say. A mistake that is made by the writer can make a misunderstanding. After the writer has finished hisher writing, the process of writing does not end. The writer has to check hisher writing in order to make sure there is no mistake in punctuation, spelling, grammar, coherent and cohesion. As stated by Harmer 2007, it is like a cycle that is always being replied in order to make a better and better result. The process of writing starts with drafting, reviewing, re- drafting and writing. Thus at the editing stage, the writer may feel the need to go back to a pre-writing phase. A revision or editing is always needed after the writer has finished his her work. Peer assessment is also necessary to check whether they still make some mistakes or not. The students of Grade VII at SMPN 2 Playen also got same difficulties during the process of learning writing. It can be seen from their writing works. There are many problems faced by the students, for example they did not know how to start writing. They said that everything was in their mind but it was difficult to write it down. In another case, when they had an idea, they would, first, write it in Indonesian language and they translate it word by word by using a dictionary. However, the students still ignored the context. Choosing the most appropriate word is another problem faced by them; they would feel confused when they found out that a word may have some different meanings. Another problem was that the students still make some mistakes in spelling. Based on those problems, the researcher considered that it is important to find an effective solution to be applied in the writing learning process to improve students’ writing skill.

B. Identification of the Problems