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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, the writer would like to express her greatest thanks to Allah SWT, the Almighty and Most Beneficial for Her Grace, Guidance, Praise, Honor and Mercy that has been given to her especially health and luck until this thesis could be completed. This thesis is aimed to fulfill one of the requirements of obtain the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan (S1) at the English Department, Faculty of language and arts, State University of Medan.
This thesis could have been completed also because of guidance, encouragement, suggestions, and comments from some people for whom the writer would like to extend her sincere and special thanks to:
Prof. Dr. Ibnu Hajar Damanik, M.Si., the Rector of State University of Medan.
Dr.Isda Pramuniati, M.Hum., the Dean of Faculty of Language and Arts, Vice Dean I, II, III, and all the administrative staff.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the Head of English and Literature Department, Rika, S.Pd., M.Hum, the Secretary of English Department, and Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., the Head of English Education Department.
Dra. Tjut Ernidawati, M.Pd., her Thesis Consultant.
Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed., her academic Consultant and also one Marlina Susi, Uci Hj. Maria, Ayah tuo Riswan Chadrin, S.E., Merijah
Nahdatus Sifa. Thank for their endless love, prayers, motivation,
understanding and support in finishing this thesis.
Regular C 2009 class, (Lia Susanti Sinulingga S.Pd., Suweni Gulo, S.Pd., Jenita Simbolon S.Pd., Dila, Sukri) for their spirit and friendship. Also for
the all A, B, C of English Education ’09 classmates, thanks for helping, friendship, kindness during spending the time in State University of Medan.
And also to all people whose names cannot be mentioned one by one, she would like to say thanks a lot.
The writer hopes this thesis will be useful for those who read, especially for the students of English Educational Department.
Medan, Juli 2014 The Writer,
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ABSTRACT
Handayani, Asrida. 209421005. Improving Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text through Brainstorming technique. A thesis. English Department, Faculty of Language and Arts, State University of Medan. 2014.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
………
1
A. The Background of the Study ………. 1
B. The Problem of the Study ……… 3
C. The Object of the Study ……… 3
D. The Scope of the Study ……….. 4
E.
The Significance of the Study………
4
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE
………
5
A. Theoretical Framework ……… 5
1. Students ’Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text ……… 5
2. Writing ……….. 6
a. Process of Writing ……… 10
b. The Assessment of Writing ……… 10
3. Genre of Writing ……… 12
4. Descriptive Writing ……….. 15
a. Parts of A Descriptive Text ……….. 16
b. Types of Descriptive Text ………. 17
c. Example of Descriptive Text ……….. 18
5. Cooperative Learning ……… 19
a. Types of Cooperative Learning ………. 19
b. Brainstorming ……….. 22
1) The Steps of Brainstorming Technique ……… 23
2) Teaching Descriptive Writing Through Brainstorming ……. 24
3) Advantages of Brainstorming Technique ……… 25
4) Disadvantages of Brainstorming Technique ………. 26
B. Conceptual Framework ………. 26
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
………
28
A. Research Design ……… 28
B. The Subject of Research ……… 28
C. The Instrument of Collecting Data ……… 29
D. The Procedure of Data Collection ……….. 30
v
a. Planning ……… 32
b. Action ………. 32
c. Observation ……….. 33
d. Reflection ……… 33
E. Scoring Of Descriptive Writing ………. 34
F. Technique Of Data Analysis ………. 34
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
………
.. 41
A. Conclusion ……… 41
B. Suggestion ……….. 41
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Page
LIST OF APPENDIX
APPENDIX A Lesson Plan ………. 45
APPENDIX B The Result of the Students’ Score ………. 74
APPENDIX C The improvement of Students’ Mean Score …... 75
APPENDIX D Observation Sheet ………..… 76
APPENDIX E Questionnaire Sheet ………..…. 80
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
Language learning is important for human’s social development. As a
language which is used by more than a half of population in the world, English holds the key as international language. English is a tool of communication among people of the world to get trade, social- cultural, science, and technology goals. More over, English competence is important in career development, therefore, it is needed to understand and use English to improve people’s confidence in facing global competition. English as a formal subject is given to junior high school until university, which the goals are translated as follow: “The goals of teaching and learning English for this level are improving the four English skills. They are the mastery of the productive skills (speaking and writing) and comprehensive skills (listening and reading).
2
So far, students were taught some vocabularies about animals, fruits, etc. Unfortunately, when they were asked to write an English text by using familiar vocabularies, they were still unconfident. This fact shows that the process of teaching and learning English does not support the improvement of life skills. Students can get high score when having final test, but in the real fact, they cannot use English in real communication.
Expressing the ideas is the goal of writing. On the other hand, the students should be able to express their ideas or opinion in writing form. Writing is a mental work of investing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing the ideas into statements, Based on the writer’s experience in teaching practice; most of the students were not able to write some kinds of texts. They did not give much attention and enthusiasm on writing task. They spent much time to get the ideas or topic to write something or they might have some ideas in their mind, but they were not interested in learning writing because they did not know how to start the writing process.
Furthermore, writing is a skill to expose fact and ideas in an effective and organized way. It means that writing considered as a means of training for students to be logical in English. The rationale behind the activities is to find out the effective way in teaching writing English.
3
writing, brainstorming technique can be applied as a valuable tool in developing students’ writing achievement.
Writing is about the ideas and how to express it. Brainstorming is one of the ways to develop the ideas (Richard 1990). Rao (2007) found that students who had been trained in brainstorming techniques and use them regularly produced measurably higher result in writing tasks. In addition to this, an attitudinal survey showed that students who participated in this research project felt positive about the effectiveness of brainstorming techniques.
Since writing need thinking process, Brown (2001:336) suggests to use brainstorming technique in order to help the thinking process. It gets students creative, focusing on specific problem or decision. Brainstorming is often to discuss a complex issue or to write a topic. It also encourages student’s creativity in
expressing their idea among their team work. Hopefully by applying this technique, the students can develop their thinking process related to what they have thought and what topic that the teacher has announced.
Based on the background above, the writer is interested in conducting a research of which title is: improving student’s achievement in writing descriptive
text through brainstorming technique. B. The Problem of the Study
The problem of the study is as follow: “Is students’ achievement in writing descriptive text improved if they are taught by using brainstorming technique?”
C. The Objective of the Study
4
student’s achievement in writing descriptive text by using brainstorming technique.
D. The scope of the study
The scope of the study is focused on the use of brainstorming technique to give some idea in order to improve students’ ability in writing. In this case, the
students will be asked to write descriptive text. E. The Significance of the study
This study is expected useful for:
1) Writer, to improve and develop her ability as a researcher
2) English teacher, to improve the quality of English teaching learning process.
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
A. Conclusion
Based on the research analysis, it is concluded that:
1) Brainstorming technique can improve students' achievement in writing descriptive text.
2) Brainstorming technique is a method that is applicable to be taught in the teaching writing because this method makes teaching and learning process become interesting and enjoyable.
B. Suggestion
The result of this study shows that the use of Brainstorming technique could improve students' in descriptive writing. The following suggestions are offered:
1) To English teachers, by using Brainstorming technique to make teaching and learning process more interesting and enjoyable, especially in teaching descriptive text.
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