THE EFFECT OF APPLYING OUTLINING TECHNIQUE ON
STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN WRITING DESCRIPTIVE
PARAGRAPH
A THESIS
Submitted to the English Department Faculty of Language and Arts, State University of Medan in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
By:
APRILZA ASWANI
Registration Number: 2101321002
ENGLISH AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ARTS
DECLARATION
I have familiarized myself with the University’s Policy on Academic integrity. Except where appropriately acknowledged, this thesis is my own work, has been expressed in my own words, and has not been previously been submitted for assessment.
I understand that this paper may be screened electronically or otherwise for plagiarism.
Medan, August 2014
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ABSTRACT
Aswani, Aprilza. 2101321002. The Effect of Applying Outlining Technique on Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Paragraph. A Thesis. English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Medan. 2014.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly, praise and great gratitude to the Almighty God Allah SWT for his blessing, mercy, opportunity and helping the researcher to complete this Thesis entitled “ The Effect of Applying Outlining Technique on Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Paragraph”.
This Thesis is arranged to fulfill the requirement for the degree of Sarjana Pendidikan (S1) at English Department, Faculty of Language and Arts, State University of Medan.
This Thesis could have been accomplished because of guidance, encouragement, suggestion and comment from people for whom the researcher 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 Language and Arts Faculty, Vice Dean I, II, III, and all the administrative staff.
Prof. Dr. Hj. Sumarsih, M.Pd., the Head of English and Literature Department and as her Thesis Consultant. Rika, S.Pd, M.Hum as the Secretary of English and Literature Department and Dra. Masitowarni Siregar, M.Ed as the Head of English Education Study Program and her Thesis Examiner.
Dra. Meisuri, M.A and Dra. Rahmah, M.Hum., as her Thesis Examiners. Thanks are given to them, for their valuable inputs, comments and suggestions enrich the quality of this Thesis.
Sunar, S.Pd., the Headmaster of SMP Negeri 2 Tanjungbalai, for giving her permission to do the research and Yoanna Novita, S.Pd., thanks for her help that allowed the researcher to conduct her research in the class. Special thanks to her beloved parents, her father, Aswan, and her mother,
Asnidar Lubis, for their great love, prayers, motivation, guidance, support, spirit. And also her beloved young sister and brother, Ade Novira Aswani and Anugrah Putra Aswanda. Big thanks for them, without them, the researcher could not be accomplished to do this Thesis.
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All of her classmates in Regular A 2010 who can not be mentioned one by one, thank you for sharing knowledge, helping, friendship, kindness during spending time in campus.
Muhammad Yusuf, for giving support, great love, special care, kindness, help, attention, motivation in accompanying the researcher every time.
Overall, the researcher hopes this Thesis can give a bit contribution to the English Education students and further pedagogical research. And also it can be useful for us.
Medan, August 2014 The researcher,
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E. The Validity and Reliability of the Test ··· 29
F. The Technique for Analyzing the Data ··· 30
CHAPTER VI: THE DATA AND RESEARCH FINDINGS ··· 32
A. The Data ··· 32
B. Data Analysis ··· 35
1. Analyzing the Data Using T-test ··· 35
2. Testing Hypotheses ··· 36
C. Discussion ………. 37
D. Research Findings ··· 39
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION ··· 41
A. Conclusion ………. 41
B. Suggestion ………. 41
REFERENCES ………. 42
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LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1.1 The mean of the Class VII-1 Students’ Score In writing ··· 3
Table 1.2 The mean of the Class VII-2 Students’ Score In writing ··· 3
Table 3.1 Research Design ··· 22
Table 3.2 Jacob et al.’s Scoring Profile on Writing Test ··· 25
Table 3.3 Experimental Group Activity ··· 27
Table 3.4 Control Group Activity ··· 28
Table 4.1 The Result Score of Experimental Group ··· 32
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LIST OF FIGURES
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LIST OF APPENDICES
Page APPENDIX 1 The Calculation of Pre-test and Post-test of
Experimental Group ……… 44
APPENDIX 2 The Calculation of Pre-test and Post-test of
Control Group ……… 45
APPENDIX 3 The Calculation of t-test………..………. 46 APPENDIX 4 Values of the Correlation Coefficient for Different Levels of
Significance ……….. 48
APPENDIX 5 Writing Test ……….. 49
APPENDIX 6 The Media of Teaching Descriptive Paragraph in
Experimental and Control Group ………. 50 APPENDIX 7 The English Lesson Plan ……….. 51 APPENDIX 8 Example of Students’ Writing Result of Experimental and
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. The Background of the Study
Language is the important part of human existence and social process that has so many functions to perform the life activities of human beings. One of the functions of a language is as a tool of communication. There are several forms of communication namely spoken and written. The purpose of communication is to send a message or information from a writer or speaker to reader or listener. The fact that human beings are social mankind; they certainly realize that they cannot survive without interacting with other people. Because of that, people start to make their own way to interact, and then a language is being used.
In Indonesia, English has become the first foreign language which is taught from elementary level up to university. English is also intensively used in international communication, in written as well as in spoken communication. In addition, many books of science and technology, art, and other published issues are written in English.
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be mastered, because it needs hard thinking in producing words, sentences, and paragraph. Especially in this study, the writer focuses on the writing skill.
Writing is one of the language skills that should be taught besides the other three skills. It is regarded as a productive skill which assists students in expressing their ideas in written form. Schoen. et al (1982) as quoted by Harmenita and Tiarina (2013) defines that the concept of writing as a “ processes“ that remain our primary concern. It is not easy to translate concept in our brain to be a written language, and we must be clever to choose and to combine the vocabulary to create meaningful sentences. We also must pay our attention to the grammar, so it is normal if the students think that writing is a difficult subject because of their paying to many attentions such as idea, concept, vocabulary and grammar. In addition, writing in English is considered as the most important part to be learnt by every students, especially in high school. It is stated that in Educational Unit Curriculum (KTSP or Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pembelajaran) of Junior High School at grade seventh in writing, students must have ability to develop and their idea in writing, there are descriptive and procedure.
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Based on the preliminary observation of Grade VII of SMP Negeri 2 Tanjungbalai on Juny 27th 2013 that was by asking the English teacher about the students’ achievement in writing especially descriptive paragraph, she said that
most of the students thought that writing is difficult. She found that the students still did not understand clearly what a descriptive paragraph is. They do not know how to transfer their ideas, even how to arrange a sentence. So, the teacher should teach by other methods or techniques which can intimate the students to write.
When the researcher asked the teacher about the students’ score list for writing test in two semesters, it was found out that, the minimum criteria mastery (KKM or Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimum ) was applied 70 meanwhile the scores of the students are lower. Many students couldn’t exceed the minimum criteria mastery (KKM) which was applied by school for English lesson. And the data of two semester are follows :
Table 1.1
The mean of the Class VII-1 Students’ Score in Writing
Session Score Students Percentage Mean
1st Session 2012/2013 < 70 27 Students 77.2% 52.7 ≥ 70 8 Students 22.8 %
2nd Session 2012/2013 < 70 ≥ 70 26 Students 74.3 % 56.8 9 Students 25.7%
Source : Students’ accumulated score of SMP Negeri 2 Tanjungbalai academic year 2012-2013
Table 1.2
The mean of the Class VII-2 Students’ Score in Writing
Session Score Students Percentage Mean
1st Session 2012/2013 < 70 24 Students 68.6% 54.3 ≥ 70 11 Students 31.4%
2nd Session 2012/2013 < 70 28 Students 80% 51.8 ≥ 70 7 Students 20%
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From the previous data, it can be concluded that the students’ ability in writing in that class is still low. It can be seen from the mean of students’ score
where the mean is still under the KKM.
The researcher also found some problems in the teaching and learning processes. First, students felt bored when they learnt because of unchangable method from the teacher. In this case, teacher used lecturing method. Next, students were only asked to write without any clear instruction and guidance. Those were the problems facing by students in writing.
The teacher said that most of students had difficulties in writing descriptive paragraph because they didn’t understand what their teacher had
explained. So, the students thought that English is not fun and do not want to be serious in learning English.
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develop instructional plans that assist the student’s cognitive information
processing skills. The researcher offers the teacher to apply Outlining Technique to solve the problem. Tardy (2010) found that the teacher can use the outlining as the teaching writing technique and the students can be easier and more focus on the topic. Coffin. et al (2003:37) explains that outlines may be drawn up to match the expectations set by certain text types, such as an argument essay in social
science, for example. For inexperienced researchers such plans can help identify
gaps in the development of ideas, arguments, and sources of evidence. After
seeing the explanation in advance, the researcher offers outlining technique to repair the student’s writing especially in descriptive paragraph.As an expectation,
it can help students in writing descriptive paragraph and students are able to focus more in writing easily and well by applying this technique.
From the previous explanation, the research was conducted to see how the application of outlining technique affects students’ achievement in writing, particularly writing descriptive paragraph.
B. The Problem of the Study
The problem of the study is formulated as follows :
“Is there any significant effect of using outlining technique on the students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph”?
C. The Objectives of the Study
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D. The Scope of the Study
This study is just focused on students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph specifically on describing object (animal) by applying one technique that is, outlining technique.
E. The Significance of the Study
Results of this study are expected to be giving out the theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically, the expected of this research is to enrich the learning of science writing especially in writing descriptive paragraph by using outlining technique.
Practically, the result of the study is important and useful for those :
1. Teacher, to increase their own professionalism in teaching writing by using Outlining Technique and the result of the study would be very useful for teachers of English and others who are concerning wtih assessment of teaching English.
2. Students, giving information to increase their writing ability and to motivate the students to be better in writing descriptive paragraph. 3. The readers, to have interest research to enlarge their understanding
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CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
A. Conclusion
After analyzing the data, it can be concluded that using outlining technique significantly affect on students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph. Because it was found that the value of tobserve was 2.870 with the degree of freedom (df) = 58 at the level of significance p (0,05) = 1.673. It means that tobserve is higher than ttable (2.870 > 1.673), null hypothesis is rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted. So, outlining technique is better to increase students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph.
B. Suggestions
The researcher point out some suggestions as following:
1. To the English teacher, applying outlining technique because this technique helps the students in understanding the descriptive paragraph. 2. To the students, with this technique they can make an outline before
writing a paragraph, so that the students can be more creative and easier to share their ideas into writing by applying outlining technique.
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