THE EFFECT OF USING REALIA ON THE STUDENTS ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH.

THE EFFECT OF USING REALIA ON THE

STUDENTS’

ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE

PARAGRAPH

A THESIS

Submitted to English and Literature Department, Faculty of Languages and

Arts, State University of Medan in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan

By:

ARINDAWATI SIPAHUTAR Registration Number: 2101121005

ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, the writer would like to thank the Almighty God, Jesus Christ,

who has granted countless blessing, knowledge and opportunity so that the writer

can finish the academic year and completing this thesis entitled “The Effect of

Using Realiaon Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Paragraph” as one

of requirement for the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan (S1) at English Department,

Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.

During the process of writing and conducting the research, the writer was

assisted and supported by many people. This thesis could have not been

accomplised without the guidance, suggestion, and comment from people, for

which the writer would like to express her sincere appreciation which directed to:

1. Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si, the Rector of State University of

Medan.

2. Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum, the Dean of Languages and Arts Faculty.

3. Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd, the Head of English Departmentand as

her Reviewers. Rika, S.Pd, M.Hum as the Secretary of English

Department and Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed, as the Head of

English Education Study Program.

4. Dr. Zainuddin, DIP.TEFL, M.Hum, her Thesis Consultant.

5. Dra. TjutErnidawaty, M.Pd, her Academic Consultant.

6. Dra. Yunita Agnes Sianipar, M.Humas her Reviewers.

7. Yatmi, S.Pd, the Headmaster of SMP SWASTA YAPENDAK

Tinjowan. For giving her the permission to do research.

8. (Alm) R.E.D Sipahutarand R.Simamora as her beloved parents, for the

endless love, prayer, moral and financial support, in completing her

education full support, care, prayers and love. Ervalina Sipahutar as her

sister, her brother in law Maruli Ritonga and also her beloved brothers

Rizaldi Chandra Sipahutar and Putra Winardo Sipahutar. She thanks for

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9. All members of HMJ BSI FBS UNIMED,for the support and

motivation.

10. All members of Reguler C’10,Batsyeba, Magdalena, Soly, Christin

Hakim, Dessy, and Herbiana, as her friends and family.The writer give

thanks for the support and laugh.

11. Harnoi Asrin L.Gaol,Aminah Ari Fadhila and Christine Helena who

have supported and helped her to complete her thesis and sharing ideas

and also specially Elnoviamy,Ayu Widya,Pradiba Utari and Deby Arif

as her beloved team, thanks for the motivation, support, smile, laugh,

and stress relieving jokes.

12. My family in Pembangunan Lydia Siska, Devi Yanti, Sartika and Liza

for the support and motivation to the writer.

13. Rocky Reyapruma Sihotang, S.Pd as her closest one, for the support,

motivation, pray, and time to the writer finishing this thesis.

14. All of my friends that can’t be mentioned one by one for the support

and motivation.

Finally, the writer hopes this thesis would be useful for those who read it,

especially for the students of English Department.

Medan, September 2014 The writer

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ABSTRACT

Sipahutar, Arindawati. 2101121005. 2014. The Effect of Using Realia on the Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Paragraph. A Thesis.English and Literature Department. Faculty of Language and Art, State University of Medan.

The aim of this study is to discover the effect of using Realia in writing descriptive paragraph. Experimental research design is used as the research method. This research took place at SMP Swasta YAPENDAK Tinjowan. There were 2 classes chosen as the sample with 32 students in each class. The classes were divided two groups namely experimental and control group. The experimental group was taught by using Realia and the control group was taught by using conventional method (without Realia). The instrument used to collect the data was the writing test, which divided as pre-test and post-test. The result of the research was analyzed by using T-test formula. The result show that the T-test was higher than T-table (3.993>2.000) at the level of significant 0.05 with degree of freedom (df) 62. It means that hypothesis alternative (Ha) is accepted which shows that Realia significantly improves the students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph.

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7. The Figure of Applying Realia in Teaching Descriptive Writing ... 20

8. The Advantages of Using Realia ... 21

B. Conceptual Framework ... 21

C. Hypotheses ... 23

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B. Population and Sample ... 25

C. The Instrument for Collecting Data ... 25

D. Assessment and Scoring of Writing ... 25

E. The Procedure of the Research ... 27

F. The Validity and Reliability of the Test... 30

G. Technique of Analyzing the Data ... 31

CHAPTER IV THE DATA ANALYSIS A. The Data ... 32

B. Data Analysis ... 33

C. Reliability of the Writing Test ... 34

D. Testing Hypothesis ... 36

E. Research Finding ... 37

CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS A. Conclusions ... 39

B. Suggestions ... 40

REFERENCES ... 41

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Research Design ... 21

Table 3.2 Criteria of Scoring Test ... 23

Table 3.3 Teaching Procedure for Experimental Group ... 26

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LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: Pretest for Experimental and Control Group ... 43

APPENDIX B: Posttest for Experimental Group ... 44

APPENDIX C: Posttest for Control Group ... 45

APPENDIX D: The Scores of Pretest and Posttest ... 46

APPENDIX E: The Calculation of t-test ... 50

APPENDIX F: The Reliability of the Test ... 57

APPENDIX G: Percentage Points of the Distribution ... 60

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

Language is a medium of communication. According to Clark and Clark

(1997:7), language is fundamental and instrument of communication. In

communicating, human being use language to communicate or to interact to each

other. English is one of languages in the world and it is internationally used. This

is the reason why every country takes English as one of courses for students.

English has been included in school curriculum and university level to be taught

to the student.

In learning English, there are four basic language skills that must be well

mastered by the students, namely speaking, reading, listening, and writing.

Writing is the skill in transferring information by using written language to

express the ideas, opinions, experiences, etc. Reading is a process of interpreting

information to what they read. Listening means to give attention with the ears;

attend closely by hearing to the speaker. Speaking is the act, utterance, or

discourse of a person who speaks to the listener.

In general, writing is complex and difficult among the language skills. It is a

must for the language learners to master writing skill. Without having good

knowledge in writing, it is so difficult to be able to convey the ideas to the

readers. That is why writing is one of important things that must be taught to

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In addition, writing has many kinds of text genre such as narrative,

descriptive, recount, report, and procedure. According to Educational Unit

Curriculum in Junior High School, the students are expected to be able to

understand and write procedure, descriptive, narrative, and report text.

In this study, the researcher only deals with writing descriptive that

purposed to describe thing, person, or place, so the reader can imagine what the

researcher wrote. Descriptive text is a type of writing which has the meaningful

linguistic unit to describe something by using vivid details. Descriptive text is

concerned with creating a verbal realia of what we experience but it does not

always have to rely on sense impressions.

Based on data during interviewing the English teacher at SMP SWASTA

YAPENDAK TINJOWAN, there are some problems in teaching English. The

most problem is writing. Many students cannot write good text especially in

descriptive text. Almost 76 % students got the score under the Minimum Criteria

Mastery (KKM). The KKM that applied for the subject in that school is 75. Most

of them got lower score in writing. The students were not able to write and did not

pay attention on the writing task. They do not know how to recognize their ideas

in writing. They frequently being confused of what to write and how to start. For

the students, writing is difficult because it is complex subject that involves

organization of thought, the usage of English language and imagination. This

condition affect the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text. In order to

solve this problem, it is needed some creative and engaged strategy to make the

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The failure of the students in writing is likely to happen because of the

media used by the teacher during teaching and learning process take place. During

teaching and learning process, teacher just explain the materials without giving an

interesting media so the students cannot enjoy the lessons and make the students

difficult to understand the materials. The teacher should not just explain the

subject or materials and force the students to memorize or do their activities

because it can make the students are not interesting in their lessons.

So, based on the explanation in advance, the researcher tries to give media

that may help the students elaborate their ideas in writing. The media is needed in

teaching writing especially in writing descriptive text. The media as the tool helps

both teacher and students in conducting learning process. It can support teaching

learning process because it is an instrument that can affect condition of teaching

learning process. The teacher will get easier to describe the materials and the

students will be interested in learning.

Media can play several roles in education process, ( Kariman, 1991:10) In

classroom, media serve as a source of pupil motivation, and expressions when the

learners produce materials for being used in classroom. There are many kinds of

media, one of them is Realia that is interesting in helping student in teaching.

Realia has meaningful because realia brings an authentic piece of the target

culture into the language classroom. According to Heaton (1979), by presenting

material through diverse media, realia helps to make English language input

comprehensible as possible and to build an associative bridge between the

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thyecostumes and traditions of a culture, but they are also a set of teaching aids

that facilitate the stimulation of experience in target culture. In other words, realia

can be used to meet the students’ interest and their level of capability.

Harefa (2011) used this media to find out the improving of students’

achievement in writing descriptive text. He proved that realia can significantly

affect the student’s achievement in writing descriptive and improve they skill in

writing and also knowledge of vocabulary.

Realia provides language learners with multi – sensory impression of the

language. The students can learn by seeing, hearing, touching and manipulating

items. By using realia, students can solve their problem in expressing ideas,

opinion through writing.

B. The Problem of Study

Based on the background of the study, the problem is formulated as follows:

“ Is the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text is significantly affected

by using realia?”

C. The Objective of the Study

In line with the research problem, this study is aimed at finding out the

effect of using Realia to improve the students’ achievement in writing descriptive

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D. The scope of the Study

In conducting this research, the researcher focuses the study on the

effectiveness and the efficiency of using realia to improve the students’ writing

achievement mainly writing descriptive text.

E. The significance of the Study

The findings of this research are expected to be useful for:

1.English teachers to use realia in their writing class to improve the students’

writing achievement.

2.English learners to develop their knowledge in teaching writing skill by

using the media of realia.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

A. Conclusions

After analyzing the data, it was found out that the students’ score in

experimental group was higher than the students’ score in control group. The total

score and the mean score in experimental group showed that there was a

significant improvement of the students’ score between the pre-test score and the

post-test score.

Based on the data, the researcher draws the following conclusions :

1. Realia significantly affect the students’ achievement in writing descriptive.(t

-observed > t-table, p = 0.05)

2. The result of calculation of t-test (3.993) with degree of freedom (df) = 62 is

greater than t-table (2.000) (p = 0.05) which implies that the alternative

hypothesis is accepted. Thismeans that the Realia significantly affect the

students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph.

It was also found out that the students no longer have difficulties to write

descriptive text because Realia can help them to transfer ideas from their mind

into written form. So, Realia is very helpful for the students when they are going

to write descriptive text well. By using Realia, the students finally feel that

writing descriptive text is an enjoyable activity and makes the students easier to

write a good descriptive text. Therefore, it could be concluded that the using of

Realiais significantly affect the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text

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B. Suggestions

Based on the finding of this research, it is indicated that students’

achievement in writing descriptive text improved by using Realia. In relation to

the conclusion above, some points are suggested as follow:

1. It is advisable that the teachers of English to apply Realia in teaching writing of

descriptive paragraph as the alternative media in teaching learning process.

2. It suggested that the students are able to write by using Realia, to be better in

writing and also to enrich the idea of writing.

3. Other researchers improve the research about Realia dealing with writing skill,

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Gillet, G.1973. Pictures as One Media in Language Teaching. Cambridge University

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Heaton, J.1988. Writing English Language Test. London: Longman Group

Hughes, A. 2003. Testing for Language Teachers. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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http://www.ehow.com/about_4740909_descriptive-paragraph.html Descriptive

Paragraph. (accessed on March 19, 2014)

http://itslj.org/Techniques/Mumford-Relia.htmlSelection of Activities involving

Realia. (accessed on March 19, 2014)

http://www.usingenglish.com/weblog/archives/000228.htmlMore about realia.

(accessed on March 19, 2014)