THE EFFECT OF WRITING PERSONAL DIARY ON STUDENTS’
ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING RECOUNT TEXT
A THESIS
Submitted to Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
By :
NANCY PRATIWI VALENTINA PANJAITAN
Registration Number 2113121048
ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGE AND ART
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all the writer woul like to express her praises to the Almighty God, Jesus Christ, for the love and blessing so the writer has finally completed this thesis. This thesis is aimed to fulfill one of the requirements for the degre of Sarjana Pendidikan of English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
During the process of riting, the writer realizes that she can not accomplish without God blessing and supporting from many people, therefore the writer would like to express her sincere gratitue to:
1. Prof. Dr. Syawal Gultom, M.Pd., the Rector of State University of Medan.
2. Dr. Isda Pramuniati, M. Hum., the Dean of Languages and Arts, State University of Medan.
3. Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the Head of English and Literature Department.
4. Dra. Meisuri., M.A., the Secretary of English and Literature Department.
5. Nora Ronita Dewi, S.S., M.Hum., the head of English Education Program.
6. All Lecturers in English Department. Thanks for their support and advice during her academic years.
7. Dr. Rahmad Husein, M.Ed., and Dr. Anni Holila Pulungan, M.Hum., the thesis supervisors for great care, guidance, and advices during the process of accomplishing this thesis.
8. Dra. Masitowarni, M.Ed., Dr. Siti Aisah Ginting, M.Pd., and Tiarnita M S Siregar S.Pd., M.Hum., her Reviewers, thanks for their advices and constructive suggestions that improve this thesis.
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10.Her beloved brother, Alex Bernando H Panjaitan, S.Pd., and her beloved youngest sister, Erneny Chrysta Ayudia Panjaitan and her unbiological sister Esterika Nainggolan, S.Pd., for their love, help, motivation, pray, and support.
11.Her best of the best friends, Partner in Crime, Ade Cristalina Hutagalung, S.Pd., Christanti Septrinna Panjaitan, S.Pd., Connie Aritonang, S.Pd., Dicky Bastian Siburian, S.Pd., Putra Tua Tambunan, Renol Aprico Siregar, S.Pd., and Tika Desiana Aruan., for their love, motivation, support, and completing her life.
12.All class members of Rexyans (Regular C 2011) especially, Nina Tiya Hara and Helena Siregar, for their support.
13.The members of OMK St. Stefanus Belawan, especially for the members of MERSI, for their pray and support.
14.Her friends PPLT 2014 SMP Negeri 2 Kabanjahe specially for QL:Meris Sitanggang, Riskana Sitepu, S.Pd., and Bursik (Sri Datita, S.Pd.) .
The writer hopes this thesis will be useful for those who read it, especially for the students of English Department.
Medan, August 2015
i ABSTRACT
Panjaitan, Nancy Pratiwi Valentina. 2113121048. The Effect of Writing Personal Diary on Students’ Achievement in Writing Recount Text. A Thesis. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Medan. 2015
The objective of the study is to find out the effect of writing personal diary on students’ achievement in writing recount text at SMP Swasta Nasrani Belawan. The study was conducted by using experimental research design. The population of this study was 3 classes of the eighth grade students of SMP Swasta Nasrani Belawan. The samples were taken by using clustering technique and two of three classes were taken into samples, one class as experimental group and another class as control group. In the treatment, the experimental group was taught by using personal diary as media, the control group was taugh without using personal diary. The instrument of collecting the data conducted by pretest and posttest. Therefore, after analyzing the data, it was found that the value of was 3.505 with the degree of freedom (df) = 48 at that level of significance (α=0.05) = 1.677. It means that was considerably higher than (3.505 > 1.677). The result of this study showed Writing personal diary had a significant effect on students’ achievement in writing recount text.
Key words : Personal diary, Writing achievement
LIST OF TABLES
Table3.1 Research Design...28
Table 3.2 Population...29
Table 3.3 Rubric Scoring...32
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix A The Score of Pretest and Posttest by the Students of Experimental
Appendix B The Score of Pretest and Posttest by the Students of Control Group
Appendix C The Calculation of T-test
Appendix D The Percentage Points of T-Distribution
Appendix E Answer Sheet
Appendix F Diary Entries
Appendix G Lesson Plan in Experimental Group
1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
Writing is the final product that can be preserved eternally. It is one of the four
language skills that has a very important role in learning. As stated by Finocchiaro
and Brumfit (2003) “writing should reinforce and help extends the listening,
speaking, and reading skills”. Writing skill is more complex and difficult,
requiring the mastery not only the grammatical and theoretically devices but also
the conceptual and judgment. According to Meyers (2005) writing is similar to
producing speech. Through writing, everybody is not only able to express feeling
and idea, but also to communicate with others. People need to learn English
writing because it is a process of transforming thoughts and ideas into written
form.
Based on Indonesian syllabus of curriculum in junior high school, students are
required to be able to write various types of genres. They are narrative, recount,
procedure, hortatory, descriptive, report, and exposition. This research will
concern with the writing ability of the eighth year students by personal diary,
especially in writing recount text.
Recount text is a text that tells the readers about something that happened or
retells past events or activities and has purpose to give detail information about
what and when of that events (Anderson, 2003). It is in line with Gerot and
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retell past events for the purpose of informing or entertaining. In addition,
Pardiyono (2007) proposes the social function of recount text is to share a story of
what happened in the past.
Even though most of students have learnt English from primary school, most
of them cannot write well. Based on the writer’s observation in SMP Swasta
Nasrani HKBP Belawan grade VIII, the students’ achievement of writing recount
text is still low. There are 2 students (7.14%) got score 80-89; 4 students (14.29%)
got score 70-79; 9 students (32.15%) got 60-69; 10 students (35.71%) got score
50-59; and 3 students (10.71%) got score 0-49. The students’ average score was
61.25 (sixty one point twenty five), it doesn’t reach the minimum standard value
(KKM) of English in SMP Swasta Nasrani HKBP Belawan for grade VIII which
is 75.
There are several problems done by the students in writing activities. The first
problem is the students’ writing is not comprehensible, because the content of the
composition is not relevant to the topic, the ideas are not clearly stated, the ideas
and sentences are not well organized. The second problem is that there are many
errors in vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. Another problem is students have
low motivation and are not interested in doing the task since the writing activities
are not interesting. The problems also done by the teacher, the teacher is not able
to create interesting media in teaching and learning process so the students do not
enjoy their lesson. The teacher just explains the material and asks the students to
write recount text without using media so the students difficult to write what they
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must spend many times to write their ideas into writing product. This condition
affects the students’ achievement in writing recount text. In order to solve this
problem, it is needed a teaching strategy to make teaching writing more effective
and interesting.
According to Sudjana and Rivai (2009) media can be defined as a tool that can
help the teacher in teaching. Media is useful in teaching and learning process, it
can help teacher to convey the material clearly and help the students in receiving
the material. By using media during the teaching learning process, the students
may obtain their experiences and support them to understand the material.
There are many media to make teaching writing more effective and
interesting, but in this research, the writer proposes one of the media to make
teaching more effective and interesting. That is using diary.
Based on previous research, there are many researchers had used diary as a
media in different field of their researcher. They proved the application of writing
on diary has good effect in learning process especially in teaching writing. A
journal of language teaching and research made by Hanan (2015) shows that from
the analysis done, teaching and learning English by diary writing is more effective
and efficient to improve students’ communicative ability than the conventional
one. Rahma (2012) the Effect of Diary Writing on EFL Students’ Writing and
Language Abilities shows that the students had a progress in learning guided
writing. And also Hidayat (2011) wanted to find out the effectiveness of diary
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mastering the use of the past tense. He found that there were significant
differences between the results of experimental and control group.
According to Bailey in Richards (2011) diary is a first personal account of a
language learning or teacher experience, documented through regular, candid
entries in a personal journal and then analyzed for recurring patterns or salient
events. By writing on personal diary, the students are free to express their ideas,
experiences, activities that have happened in their life. The students can start their
writing by using something done as a habit. Habitual activity means something
done as a way of life of someone. If someone can make writing as a habit, writing
activity can be involved in his or her real life.The point is, if teacher can develop
writing as students’ habitual activity, the students can find many interesting things
inside their writing. The writer believes if the students do writing activity as their
habit, they will feel easy to write something. The more students write the more
their writing skills develop.
Mac (2010) states that personal diary is related to students’ real life. They do
not need to think about others beyond their life. They make it based on their own
life, their own experiences, and their own habit. The teacher’s role in this process
is supervision and encouragement only, standing far from judgment and
correcting.
Therefore, using personal diary is a media to make teaching writing, especially
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B. The Problem of the Study
Based on the background of the study, the problem of this study is formulated
as follows:
“Does the writing personal diary significantly affect the students’ achievement in
writing recount text?“
C. The Objective of the Study
The objective of this study is to find out the effect of writing personal diary on
students’ achievement in writing recount text.
D. The Scope of the Study
Media is device that can assist an instructor to transmit to a learner the facts,
skills, attitudes, knowledge, appreciation or additional materials used when using
a particular teaching method to make learning easy. There are several media that
can be used to improve students’ achievement in writing recount text.
There are many genres of writing. They are, narrative, descriptive, recount,
persuasive, procedure, anecdote, expository, and many types other. This study is
basically limited to writing recount text. This study focuses on identifying the
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E. The Significance of the Study Theoretically the findings are for:
1. The teachers to improve their theoretical knowledge on teaching writing.
2. Other researchers to conduct for the research in using personal diary.
Practically the findings are for:
1. English teachers to use personal diary in their teaching and learning
process to improve the students’ writing achievement.
2. Other researchers to know the importance of personal diary to improve
40 CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
A. Conclusion
Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that teaching writing skill
by writing personal diary significantly affects on the students’ achievement in
writing recount text. It can be seen from the data which had obtained in the
post-test of experimental group were: the total score was 1803 and the mean score was
was 81.95, while the data in control group were: the total score was 1971 and the
mean score was 73.03. Thus, the students’ score in experimental group was higher
than the students’ score in control group. The calculation of the data in the testing
hypothesis showed that t-observed 3.505 was higher than t-table 1.677, it means
that the alternative hypothesis is acceptable.
B. Suggestions
This study showed that writing personal diary could improve students’
achievement in writing recount text. In relation above, some points are suggested
for the first is Teachers of English at Junior High Schools should be creative in
selecting interesting media in teaching learning process. In addition, diary writing
can be used as an alternative media of teaching English writing. It is also
important for the teacher to improve the students’ achievement in writing by
giving any assignment or home work, such as writing a diary, which is guided
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Secondly, for the students, they should use diary writing to practice their
writing to make the communicative text and the process of writing become easier
and enjoyable.
And the third for the schools, it is expected that they provide the media
needed for teaching English.
The fourth, it is necessary to another researcher to conduct a further
research, in order to validate the result of this study.
Finally, the writer considers that this study still need validation from the next
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