THE EFFECT OF COMIC STRIPS ON THE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS (An Experimental Research on VIII Grade Students of SMP PGRI Sumbang in Academic Year 2011/2012) - repository perpustakaan

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW A. Writing 1. The Nature of Writing Writing is the activity of creating pieces of written work such as

  stories, poems, or articles. However writing is not a natural activity since speaking is most natural for people to communicate each other. Writing is a complex matter that allows writers to explore thought and ideas, and makes them visible and concrete. White and Nunan (1979:36) stated:

  Writing is not a natural activity. All physically and mentally people learn to speak language. Yet all people have to taught how to write. This is a crucial difference between the spoken and the written forms of language. There are other important differences as well. Writing, unlike speech, is displaced in time. Indeed, this must be one reason writing originally evolved since it makes possible the transmission of the message from one place to another. A written message can be received, stored and referred back to at anytime. It is permanent in comparison with ephemeral ‘here one minute and gone the next’ character of spoken language – even of spoken language that is recorded on tape or disk .

  However, writing is not an easy skill to be mastered. Writing is not merely the production of symbols and some kind of surface. To learn writing is to learn how organize experience, information, and ideas in certain patterns. To produce a good text, hard practice and process are required. For most people writing is a difficult and complex process. Byrne (1979) highlighted three major problems that cause difficulties in writing, namely psychological, linguistic, and cognitive.

  7 Psychologically, the problem in writing is that writing activity is essentially solitary. Unlike speech, writing does not have the benefit of interaction and feedback from someone physically present. Linguistically, the problem in writing is related to coherency, choice of sentence, structure, and the way sentences linked together and sequenced. Cognitively, the problem in writing is that the process of instruction in learning writing needs a great deal of effort, such as learning the written form of language, learning the certain structures which are used less in speech, and learning how organize ideas in a good arrangement.

2. The Types of Writing

  Ratih and Greenberg (1985:20) said that when we are talking about the types of writing, there are several types of writing that we have to know.

  a.

  Descriptive Writing Descriptive writing is a writing of essay that ask the students to describe an object, person, place experience, emotion, situation, etc.

  This genre encourages the students’ ability to create a written account of particular experience. What is more, this genre allows for a great deal of artistic freedom (the goal of which is to paint that is vivid and moving in the mind of the reader). The examples of descriptive writing are paragraph, essay, character portrait, or sketch. b.

  Narrative Writing Narrative Writing tells a story. Creative narrative writing has a plot, setting (where and when story happens), and characters who have motives (reason) for what they do. Good narrative writing is more than a list of random events. It has a tension-a problem to be solved or a challenge to be. The examples of narrative writing are paragraph, essay, anecdote, short story, diary, journal, biography, autobiography, fable, parable, myth, legend, personal letter.

  c.

  Expository Story Expository is a type of oral and written discourse that is used to explain, describe, give information or inform. The creator of an expository text can not assume that the reader or the listener has prior knowledge or prior understanding of the topic that are being discussed.

  One important point to keep in mind for the author is to try to use the words that clearly show that are they talking about rather than blatantly

  Since clarity requires strong telling the reader what is being discussed.

organization, one of the most important mechanisms that can be used to

improve our skills in exposition is to provide directions to improve the

organization of the text . The examples of expository writing are

  paragraph, essay, report, article, character study, research paper, news story, newspaper column, business letter, review, and memo.

  d.

  Argumentative

  Argumentative writing is often called persuasive writing because the aim of this writing is to persuade and convincing the reader of writer point of view of particular issue. Therefore, persuasive writing is or argumentation focused on the subject being discussed. Persuasive writing can be found in editorials, letters to editor, reviews, and sermons business or research proposals, opinion, essay, in magazine, and books, that argue, a point of view. The example of argumentative writing are paragraph essay, brief, and editorial, letter to editor, review, and column.

3. The Importance of Writing

  Writing is clearly complex. It means that in writing students have to consider many things to build a good writing. Harmer (2004: 31-33) states that there are many importance of learning writing, by writing students can: a.

  Avoid the limitation of time It means that students have longer time to think than in speaking activities. They can consult the diction will be used to express their thought. They can check their grammar patterns.

  b.

  Practice the use of language By practicing it completely, their ability in English can develop well.

  c.

  Summarize the materials that are explained by teacher.

  They use writing skill to make a note about what they have learnt while learning process happens.

  d.

  Help in making a note as the preparation before the activity e. Write a dialogue in speaking activities

  As the example, teacher asks students to write short dialogue which they will then act out.

  f.

  Answer question test-types of activities Writing is important to face question test. In the examination, students are asked their answer in the form of written.

  From description above, the writer can conclude that writing skill is very important to be learnt. Writing can help us in solving and improving other skills in learning language. By having good writing skill, we can write novel, article, comic and book, etc

4. The Procedure in Writing

  Harmer (2004: 4) declares that the process of writing has four main elements. Those are planning, drafting, editing, and revision.

  a.

  Planning Experienced writers plan what they are going to write. Before starting to write or type, they try and decide what is they are going to say. When planning, the writer has to think about three main issues. Those are:

  1) The purpose of their writing, since this will influence (among other things) not only the type of the text they wish to produce, but also the language they use and the information they choose to include.

  2) The audience they are writing for, since this will influence not only the shape of writing (how it is laid out, how the paragraphs are structured, etc) but also the choice of language.

  3) The content structure of the writing. That is how the best the sequences the facts, ideas, or arguments which they have decided to include.

  b.

  Drafting We can refer to the first version of a piece of writing as a draft.

  In the writing process, drafting is necessary for helping the writer to write ideas and decide what should come first, second, third and so on until the last.

  c.

  Editing Once writer have produced a draft, then they usually read through what they have written to see where it works and it doesn’t.

  Reflecting and revising are often helped by other readers (or editor) who comment and make suggestions. Another reader’s reaction to a piece of writing will help the author to make appropriate revision.

  d.

  Final Revision Once the writer has edited their draft, making the changes they are consider being necessary, they produce their final version. This may look considerably different from both the original plan and the first draft, because things have changed in the editing processes. But the writer is now ready to send the written text to its intended audience.

5. Teaching Writing

  Writing in our country is taught since in junior high school. In curriculum of junior high school, it is show that the basic competence is the students able to construct meaning and to understand functional written text and very simple short essay in order to communicate well in nearest society. Since writing is a complicated skill to be developed and learned, especially in beginner level, therefore, to help students face their difficulties, teacher should find the appropriate way to make it easier to understand by the students.

  Byrne (1979) stated “When we write we use graphic symbol that is letters or combinations of letters which relate to the sounds we make when we speak”. However, it is not just using graphic symbols for the sake of using them. The symbols which are used need to be arranged properly to form words and then to form the sentences with a view to communicating our ideas in an organized way. In fact, when we communicate through writing, we have so many ideas to express for which we consider different ways of combining and arranging them which lead us to our drafting, revising or redrafting (Bachani, 2006)

  In other words, it can be said that writing is encoding of a massage of some kind that is, we translate our thoughts and ideas into language. So, in a way, writing represents our thoughts and ideas. What one thinks leads to one’s writing in the form of sentences and by organizing the sentences into a cohesive text where we are able to communicate with our readers successfully.

  So far as the teaching of writing is concerned, the teacher should keep this nature of writing in mind. Writing always has become difficult to teach or to learn because it involves a different kind of mental process which includes the sub-skills like – drafting, editing, revising, organizing etc.

6. Approaches in Teaching Writing

  Since Writing is a complicated skill to be leant, the teacher has to face writing as a serious matter. Teacher has to manage the method to make his teaching way become effective. However, writing needs more attention because it is about arranging the words into good sentence and arrange the sentences into good text. The steps to realize writing must be clear to make it easy to understand by the students.

  Brown (2001: 348) mentions three stages in writing process, namely pre-writing, drafting, and revising. In pre-writing stage, writers are encouraged to generate ideas, which can occur in different ways, for example reading the passage, brainstorming, clustering, listing, discussing the topic, and free writing. In drafting stage, writers convert ideas into paragraph form. In this stage, writers explore ways to express their ideas in the clearest manner, so that the readers can understand the message, and feel the impact, which the writer intends to communicate. Moreover, peer editing is one of the ways to encourage writers in the drafting stage. In the revising stage, corrections of the writing are made. Activities in this stage are, for example, eliminating unnecessary information, squeezing the ideas, or making some additions. These stages are standard stages that can help students deal with their difficulties in writing

  In the search of ways to help students in writing, the genre approach emerges. Genre approach became popular in the late 1980s for its benefits in learning different types of written text. Gerot and Wignell (1994: 204) associate genre with particular characteristics, such as particular purposes, particular stages, and particular linguistic features. Moreover, given that text is part of language that may be considered complete in themselves as acts of social exchange, it has a particular social purpose.

  Social purpose in genre approach is closely related to knowledge of language and centered upon the readers’ point of view. It means that the writers are supposed to consider who the readers are. In relation to the purpose, the classification of genre is categorized in the forms of texts such as spoof, recounts, reports, news item, anecdote, narrative, procedure, description, explanation, hortatory exposition, discussions, and review.

  In the context of teaching writing, genre approach is effective to improve students’ writing skill since it also helps students face their fears over writing. In English classes in some countries, genre based approach has been used for teaching English for professional purposes such as academic writing, and have been proved effective in teaching professional writing (Xu, 2005).

  For that reason, genre approach is brought into English curriculum in several countries. In the English curriculum in Indonesia, this approach is used and some genres are taught in the classroom. Related to the curriculum, this study used genre approach applied in teaching writing of one of the text that is based on the specific social purpose, specifically narrative. Narrative is the most exposed genre in language teaching.

7. The Student’s Problems in Writing

  As the writer mentioned in the nature of writing, Byrne (1979) highlighted three major problems that cause difficulties in writing, namely psychological, linguistic, and cognitive.

  Psychologically, the problem in writing is that writing activity is essentially solitary. Unlike speech, writing does not have the benefit of interaction and feedback from someone physically present. Linguistically, the problem in writing is related to coherency, choice of sentence, structure, and the way sentences linked together and sequenced. Cognitively, the problem in writing is that the process of instruction in learning writing needs a great deal of effort, such as learning the written form of language, learning the certain structures which are used less in speech, and learning how organize ideas in a good arrangement.

  Writing can also be said as a task which is often imposed by circumstances. In the process of writing, this has a psychological effect and causes problem in the content. Writers are familiar to the experience of losing ideas when they are required to write (Byrne, 1979).

  Setiono (2001) pointed out that students in Indonesia have difficulties in learning writing. One of the major problems is that students have trouble in developing ideas into a paragraph. They often write paragraphs in which the ideas are repeated or even contradictory with the given topic. This problem occurs because students still follow the prescriptive model that strictly controls the use of language elements, while the learning of how to develop a logical and coherent paragraph appears to be less concerned. The lack of training in exploring, reformulating, clarifying and coherently developing the ideas may also be the cause of the problem

  According to Burhan Nurgiantoro (2001: 298-299), there are some problems faced by students in learning writing. Those are: a.

  Organizing Idea The problem usually faced by students in writing composition is about how to organize the idea into sentence. In writing composition, students usually write the content which is not suitable with the theme. It happens because students get difficulties in developing their idea and sometimes they don’t know what they will write.

  We can write composition well if we know the rule in writing paragraphs. Before we write composition, we start by choosing the theme, then, make an outline which can help us in arrange the sentence or paragraphs. By those ways, we can avoid some mistakes in writing composition. Of course, content of the composition will suitable with the theme.

  b.

  Lack of Vocabulary Vocabulary also becomes an important part in writing composition. We release if we are not mastering the vocabularies well, of course we will get difficult in writing. Most of students face this problem, because they are not mastering the vocabularies. So, they often write sentence which is not communicative. They usually choose incorrect words they want to write something in their composition.

  c.

  Grammar accuracy When students try to make composition, they always confuse whether their sentences are grammatically correct or not. Generally most of beginner students don’t master English grammar well. They just start to learn English so their competence is still week especially in grammar. It becomes problem when they have to make composition which consist of sentences. The conditional becomes more complex by the teaching used to teach with GTM (Grammar translation Method) in the class. As we know that GTM focuses on grammar accuracy in teaching learning process.

8. Writing of Recount Text

  Derewianka (1990:14) defines that recount as “the unfolding of a sequence of events over time. We are using English to keep the past alive and help us to interpret experience, in a recount we reconstruct past experience”. In line with this definition, Gerot and Wignel (1994:120) highlight recount as “the text which retell an event”. Based on two previous definitions, the term of story genre is appropriate for recount.

  Furthermore, Gerot and Wignel state that the particular genre deploys the resources for meaning-making through the grammar in different ways.

  Recount, by this view, tends to use past tense, material process and particular participants. Macken Horarik (2002:22) exemplifies that recount text can be found in personal letters, oral and written histories, police records insurance claims, report of science experiment, and excursion ‘write-ups’. These examples of recount texts show that the particular experiences had happened, and a series of event is carried out within the current occasion, this becomes the focus of recount text

  Our national curriculum has determined the story genre for Junior high school students into two kinds; they are recount and narrative. These two genres are taught for the second year of junior high school students, as it can be seen in Competence Standard of writing skill for the second year students at the second semester (Depdiknas, 2006:58): Mengungkapkan makna dan langkah retorika dalam essei pendek sederhana dengan menggunakan ragam bahasa tulis secara akurat, lancer dan berterima untuk berinteraksi dengan lingkungan sekitar dalam teks berbentuk narratif dan recount. (to express the meaning and rethoric features of short simple essays by using written language accurately in the form of narrative and recount to be able to interact in the daily life).

B. Comic Strip 1. The Definition of Comic Strip

  There are many definitions of comics. However, there are several definitions that are quite popular, among them are terms suggested by Will Eisner and Scott McLoud. Eisner (1985) used the term “sequential art” in referring to cartoons, comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels. As a form of art which arranged in sequence is the term for comic defined by Eisner.

  More specifically, Scot McCloud (1993:9) stated that comic is juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer. However comic usually contains visual images and the text inside it. It makes comics show its advantages in making the readers become fun and enjoy reading comic.

  The term comic strip and comic is actually same. The different is just that comic strip consists two until five panels when comic (book) generally consists more than twenty pages. We usually found comic strip on magazine or newspaper.

2. The History of Comics

  Comics have a very long story. Although it is not clear where and when comics actually originated, ancient Egyptian paintings are found to have sequence of pictures that tell a story just like comics. Other example of ancient sequence of pictures that tell story are the Bayeux Tapestry in France and the pre-Colombian picture manuscript in Central America (McLoud, 1994). As centuries went by, picture-stories then developed after the invention of printing, and became more popular. In the nineteenth century, Rodolphe Topffer, who is said to be the father of modern comics, made use of cartoons and panel borders in his work, and combined words and pictures. In the end of the nineteenth century, picture-stories developed into comics as it is known today (McLoud, 1994). This implies that narratives in the form of sequential pictures, or comics, have attracted people since a very long time ago.

  Today, many people are familiar with comics. Pustz (1999) explained that comics have been very popular since the 1940s. At that time comics attract a distinctive audience, as much as 95 percent of all American children were reading comics. Comics were also popular among the soldiers during the World War. These audiences were attracted by the comic’s superhero characters fight for themselves and against enemies of their nation. One example of the comics is Superman, published by Detective Comics. At that time, comic books were regarded not only as a form of entertainment, but also as a tool to spread war propagandas. After the war, comics have shifted the subject matter from superheroes and war to more realistic genres, such as romance and crime. Today, various genres have developed, such as adventure, horror, science-fiction, etc.

3. The Characteristic of Comics

  Comics have several important characteristics. Saraceni (2003) wrote that the first characteristic of comics is the combined use of words and pictures. Though this characteristic is not uniquely belonging to comics, the interaction between linguistic and pictorial elements is certainly unique. The second characteristic is that the texts are arranged into sequenced units, and are graphically separated from each other.

  Another important characteristic of comics is the arrangement of panels into sequences. These characteristics distinguish comics from other kinds of literature or art.

  There are four main components in a comic, namely panels, gutters, balloons, and captions (Saraceni, 2003). Panels usually display single instants of action. The panel is considered as a fraction of the narrative, where a story takes place and time.

  A gutter is a blank space that separate panels from each other. It is a very important component, because the gutter is the space that contains events that occur between the panels. It implies that in order to reconstruct the full story, the reader must guess the missing parts. The gutter is analogous to the gap that parts one sentence from the next.

  The balloon, which is probably the component that people relate with comics, is the area that contains most of the verbal text. It is used to show speech or thought, hence the term “speech balloons” and “thought balloons” are used. Every balloon has a tail that indicates the character who is speaking or thinking. The function of the tail is similar to the function of “he said” or “she thought.” Another component of comics, the caption, also contains linguistic elements. However, it is generally not positioned inside the panel, often placed on the top of the panel or at the bottom or the left side. The caption usually contains the text that represents the narrator’s speech. It adds information to the dialogues in the rest of the panels, such as the indication of time and/or space, or to fill the gap represented by the gutter.

4. Comics as Teaching Media Although they are popular, comics have been misunderstood.

  People did not believe that comics have values that are meaningful for the reader. For example Wertham (cited in Fay, 2009) wrote that comics are one of the factors which reinforce reading disorders in children. Nevertheless, comics have increasingly been used in the classroom.

  The reason for using comics in the classroom is that most children and young adults are familiar with comics. Davis (2006) shows that by using comics, the students will have interest in learning. Comics have a multi-dimensional nature which can be used as a source of teaching materials. Teachers and students are also allowed to explore language in a creative way. They build a desire to learn; they are easy to access in daily newspapers and bookstands; they depict real life language; and they have a variety of visual and linguistic elements and codes that are attractive to students with different learning style

  The comic book format is a powerful combination of discourse skills, artistic creativity and expression (Bitz, 2004). Comics seem to employ a form of visual language that is almost universally understood (Sones, 1944). Because of their interplay of visuals and words, comics are easily accessible to non-native speakers of English. Moreover, comics have been recognized for their broad appeal to almost any age group or learner level because they depict real dialogue and culture (Davis, 1997).

  Csabay (2006) states that comics can bring cheerfulness into the classroom and can motivate students to continue reading. They have a storyline, which means that they have a conclusion or at times a punch line. This way, the students are motivated to continue reading and to become more involved.

  Fay (2009) stated that the reason of using comics in the classroom is because of their visual appeal, efficiency, and power of message.

  Students are fascinated by the combination of graphics and text and by the story. Comics’ lower readability and the aid of graphics also ensure students can access the authentic language easier compared to other authentic sources.

5. The Teaching Writing trough Comic Strip

  As teaching media, comics can be used in writing class. In the writing process, comics give advantages in the prewriting stage.

  Prewriting is considered as an important stage in writing process because most students face the difficulties in starting the writing process, which is in the generation of ideas.

  Comics enable students to identify the elements of a story through the presented visual and dialogues. They provide contextual clues to the meaning of written narrative (Edmunds, 2006). In line with that, Vukoja (2005) states that through the use of comic strips in prewriting activity, students can explore the structural devices of the story (plotlines, character development, setting, and theme). Therefore, it will be easier for the students to learn about writing.

  Indeed, for students to become proficient in writing, it has been recommended that teachers include extensive reading of authentic material in their writing classes (Kroll, 2001). Research into reading instruction has found that extensive reading is beneficial to developing both reading fluency and other skills including writing (Grabe, 2004).

  There are a lot of ways for implementing comic strip in teaching writing. For the example is in teaching descriptive writing. The teacher can ask the students to describe the character in the comic after they read the specific comic strip. Giving the students a comic strip with empty words balloon and caption then ask them to write the words there is the other activity to use comic strip in teaching writing. Beside that, the teacher can ask the students to write a recount or retell the story in their words about the story in the comic strip they have been read.

6. Teaching Writing of Recount Text Using Comic Strip

  Derewianka (1990:14) defines that recount as the unfolding of a sequence of events over time. It has similarity with Eisner (1985) which used the term “sequential art” in referring to cartoons, comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels. It is a benefit of comic strip for teaching recount text. The picture on each panel in comic strip shows about the sequence events happened of the story. We can relate this with the recount text that unfolding a sequence of events over time.

  In this research, the writer will use comic strip in order to make the students able to write their experience in past which we can call it as a recount text. Shortly, the steps will do by the writer for implementing comic strip in recount text is like these: a.

  The teacher gives each student a sheet of comic strip, and asks them to analyze the comic strip.

  b.

  The teacher asks the students to write about the event happened in each panel strip comic strip with their words.

  c.

  The teacher asks them to arrange the story based on the each panel’s event into good story. By this way the students will be easily understand how to write a recount text.

  C. Basic Assumptions

  The basic assumption is that teaching and learning English is very difficult and complex, especially in teaching and learning writing. Teacher needs a good media which makes teaching writing more successful and fun. One of the good media in teaching writing is comic strip. Comic strip has combination text and picture in fun way which very powerful to teach writing.

  Beside that, kids and adult are very familiar with comic strip. We can get it in the newspaper, magazine or comic book. By using comic strip, the teaching learning process can be very interesting for the students especially young learners.

  D. Hypothesis

  Based on the basic assumption above the writer has hypothesis that comic strip is effective to teach writing of recount text.