DECLARATION
Except where appropriately acknowledged, this thesis is my own work, has been expressed in my own words and has not previously been submitted for assessment. I understand that this thesis may be screened electronically or otherwise for plagiarism.
Medan, February 2014
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Alhamdulillahirabbil’alamin. First of all, the writer would like to praise Allah SWT the Almighty for the blessing and mercy given to the writer during her studying and completing this final project to accomplish the completion of her thesis as a partial fulfillment of the requirements to achieve the academic in education degree (Sarjana Pendidikan) from the English Department of the Faculty of Languages and Arts of the State University of Medan. The writer also would like to express her praise and gratitude to The Holy Prophet Muhammad SAW who has brought the human race out of the darkness into the brightness.
During the writing process, the writer has received much help, support and encouragement from a great number of people without whom the writer would not manage to finish her thesis. Hereby she would like to express her sincere gratitude to the following individuals:
Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si., the Rector of the State University of Medan.
Dr.Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., The Dean of the Faculty of Languages and Arts.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., The Head of English Department of Faculty of Languages and Arts.
Rika S.Pd., the Secretary of English Department of Faculty of Languages and Arts.
Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., the Head of the English Education Study Program of the English Department as well as the writer’s thesis advisor, for her guidance, constructive inputs, excellent advises and suggestions and also kind support during the completion of this thesis. Maam Euis, the administrative assistant from the English Department
for being admirably patient, kind, friendly and ever so helpful.
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be able to repay, her aunts, uncles, cousins and sister-in-law also for their love, prayers and endless support and also her only one sibling or younger sister: Chairiani Tanjung (Ria) for being there to be her voice of reason when she wavered.
Great thanks to the chairman’s daughter of the owner of Perguruan Gajah Mada, the headmaster and English teacher and also the eleventh grade science (XI –IPA) of Senior High School (SMA) students in Perguruan Gajah Mada, Medan for allowing the writer to carry out the investigation in their school and giving the contribution while the writer was conducting the research there.
Her dear lovely friends, college friends, the Kindergarten fellow teachers at Perguruan Gajah Mada, Medan and also the fellow teachers at Batari School (Yayasan Sri Batari) who always give many supports. Thank you.
Medan, Februari 2014
ABSTRACT
Tanjung, Susani. 208321064. Improving The Students’ Achievement in
Writing Narrative Text Through Timeline Strategy. A Thesis. Medan:
English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan. 2014.
This study dealt with the improvement of students’ writing narrative achievement through Timeline Strategy. The objective of study was to find out whether students’ achievement in writing narrative can be improved if the students’ are taught by using Timeline Graphic as the strategy. This study was conducted by using classroom action research. The subject of this study was class XI-IPA of SMA Perguruan Gajah Mada, Medan, consisted of 33 students. The research was conducted two cycles; each cycle consisted of three meetings. The instruments of Data collections were writing tests for the primary data and observation sheets and also diary notes for the secondary data. The mean of the students’ test scores in Cycle I was 65.46 and the mean increased to 78.18 in Cycle II. By the end of the cycle, there was an improvement as much as 36.37 points higher than the preliminary test. The observation sheets and diary notes showed that the research was conducted according to plan and the teaching and learning process ran well. The research findings proved that Timeline Strategy can significantly improve students’ achievement in writing narrative.
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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE ... 5
A. Theoretical Framework ... 5
1. Students’ Achievement in Writing ... 5
1. Writing ... 6
4. Approach, Strategy, Method and Technique ... 15
5. Strategy ... 16
a. Metacognitive Strategies ... 16
b. Cognitive Strategies ... 16
c. Socioaffective Strategies ... 16
6. Kinds of Teaching Writing Strategy ... 17
a. Definition of Graphic Organizer ... 17
b. Kinds of Graphic Organizer ... 18
7. Timeline ... 21
a. Kinds of Timeline ... 22
b. Steps of Timeline ... 24
8. The Advantages and Disadventages of Timeline ... 25
B. Conceptual Framework ... 27
CHAPTER III RESEARCH DESIGN ... 29
A. Research Design ... 29
B. Subject of Research ... 32
C. The Procedural of Collecting Data ... 33
CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DATA ANALYSIS ... 43
A. Research Findings ... 43
B. Data Analysis ... 50
2. The Improvement Students’ Narrative Writing Achievement .. 52
C. Discussion ... 55
CHAPTER V CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS ... 57
A. Conclusions ... 57
B. Suggestions ... 58
REFERENCES ... 59
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of The Study
Nowadays, English is one of the subject matters learned by students. It is taught in any educational levels and started from the lowest level up to academic level. It covers four language skills that must be mastered for those who want to be successful in English: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Writing plays in the last sequence after the other language skills, but it should not be underestimated. As one of the language skills, writing has always occupied a place in most English language course. In many language courses, the emphasis is in a whole on the written language. People need a communications besides using spoken language in the form of conversation but also using as a written language. It shows that the writing skill has an important role in the daily life as a communication tool. Besides one of the reasons is that more need to learn to write English for occupational or academic purposes that can support their carrier in the future. For the reasons, students should master writing skill.
Based on the writer’s observation at SMA Swasta Perguruan Gajah Mada,
Medan through interviewed the teacher and some students of the eleventh grade still get difficult to write. The writer found some reasons during writing a paragraph or text, such as the lack of students’ interested in writing, the lack of students’ knowledge about kinds of the genre (text) and their generic structures to construct their writing skill well and also almost of them still got
insufficient in writing skill. The lack of students’ writing skill could be
caused by following reasons.
The first reason was the length of process which induced anxiety and frustration and also caused less motivation to write English.
The second reason was most of the students regard that writing was difficult task. They were not ready to write their ideas when they were writing
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a story. They needed a long time to express their ideas in the written text. They also produced the complicated series of mental process when they were represented in written text. The last reason was the students made fundamental errors in English usage when they were writing, such as grammatical mistakes, wrong word choices, missed spelling and leaking of vocabulary or ideas.
Based on the explanation above, it seemed clear that there were many problems in English teaching writing learning process. It is English teachers’ task to solve the problems. There were many ways to solve the problems. The teacher could apply some strategies to improve students’ achievement in writing English. One of them was applying timeline as one of the most prevalent strategies in teaching writing based on one kind of genres, such as narrative. Narrative is one of interesting genres and easy to study because narrative tells students about an amusing story that involve students in it. It can attract students to be more creative in writing narrative either fiction or non-fiction.
In this paper, the writer would use timeline as the strategy to improve
students’ achievement in writing narrative because there were a lot of
advantages by using this strategy.
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Finally, using through this strategy, students could get the goal of achievement in developing their ideas better in writing narrative as the competence in communication using English.
B. The Problem of the study
Based on the background of study, the problem of the study was formulated as follow:
“Does timeline strategy significantly improve the students’ achievement in writing narrative text?”
C. The objective of the study
The objective of the study was investigated whether or not applying of timeline strategy could improve students’ achievement in writing narrative text.
D. The Scope of the Study
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E. The Significance of the Study
The findings of the study were expected to be useful and relevant both theoretically and practically.
Theoretically the findings were expected to: 1. The horizons on theories of language learning.
2. Applied the theories on the foreign language learning, and
3. Be the reference for those who want to conduct a further research in English teaching learning process.
Practically the findings were relevant and useful for:
1. The English teacher could improve their ability to conduct a better and interesting technique in teaching writing.
2. The students were helped in improving their ability in writing narrative text through timeline strategy based on chronological happened.
3. For writer, valuable input in the conduction of a more in depth research
in improving students’ achievement in writing narrative text through
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
A. CONCLUSIONS
Based on the explanation in the previous chapter it can be concluded that the Time line Strategy is effective in significantly improving students’ narrative writing achievement.
In details, the research findings can be broken into several points as following:
1. At the beginning (the Preliminary Test) 69.69% (30) of the students scored lower than 75; 6.07% (2 students) scored between 75-89; and 3.03% % (1 student) scored above 89, so the total percentages between excellent and good are 9% .
2. In the end of Cycle I (Test I) 75.76% (25 students) scored lower than 75; 18.19% (6 students) scored between 75-89; and 6.06% (2 students) scored above 89, so the total percentages between excellent and good are 24,24%. The mean of the students’ scores increased as much as 24.33 points from the Preliminary Test.
3. In the end of Cycle II (Test II) only 18.19% (6 students) scored lower than 75; 66.67% (22 students) scored between 75-89; and 15.16% (5 students) scored above 89, so the total percentages between excellent and good are 81,81%. The mean of the students’ scores increased as much as 12.72 points from the Test. From the beginning of the cycle (after the Preliminary Test) to the end of Cycle II (Test II), the students’ narrative writing score increase as much as 36.37 points.
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B. SUGGESTIONS
In regards to the findings of this research, the researcher would like to suggest several things, as following:
1. English teachers and fellow English teachers in training to apply the Timeline Strategy to develop the students’ narrative writing skills, because this strategy is effective to help the students, especially for those who are at the beginners’ level, learn to write good narratives by helping them transform their personal narrative story into a learning event using Timeline grafic as the strategy in learning process.
2. English learners, especially for those who are interested in writing narratives but still having troubles in communicating and expressing themselves in writing, to practice using this strategy because the Timeline Strategy guides learners to transform their ideas into a leaning event based on the chronological order so learners can feel more involved in the learning process.
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