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AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN WRITING CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH OF ANALYTICAL EXPOSITION TEXT AT SMA N 3 PADANG
Oleh:
Devi Mutia Reza *)
**) Suharni dan **) Herfina Asty Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui kemampuan siswa dalam menulis kesimpulan dalam teks analitikal eksposisi. Dalam penelitian ini, peneliti menganalisa kemampuan siswa dalam menulis kesimpulan berdasarkan teori Darnell. Ada lima rubric penulisan kesimpulan yaitu: transition word, main idea restated, three main point restated, tie to the introduction, grammar dan sentence. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif. Sumber data penelitian adalah hasil tulisan siswa mengenai teks analitikal eksposisi yang ditulis oleh siswa kelas sebelas SMA N 3 Padang. Dalam pengambilan data, peneliti mengumpulkan latihan yang ditulis oleh siswa dari kelas XI MIA 1 - 5 sebanyak 150 tulisan.
Kemudian peneliti memilih 30 tulisan siswa yang memenuhi kriteria sebuah teks. Peneliti menganalisa teks siswa dengan melakukan cek dokumen dengan menggunakan rubric berdasarkan teori Darnell. Dari data yang diperoleh setelah peneliti melakukan analisa, diketahui bahwa kemampuan siswa dalam menulis kesimpulan dalam teks analitikal exsposisi cukup bagus hanya saja peneliti menemukan ada beberapa siswa yang mendapatkan score cukup rendah, 17 siswa menggunakan transition word dan 13 siswa tidak menggunakan transition word. 13 siswa restate the main idea dan 17 siswa tidak restated main idea. 1 siswa restate the three point di dalam kesimpulan dan 29 siswa tidak. 17 siswa tie the conclusion to introduction and 13 siswa tidak. 21 siswa bagus dalam grammar and sentences dan 9 siswa tidak cukup bagus dalam grammar.
Keywords: Analytical Exposition Text, Conclusion.
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing
INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of skills in English that the students learnt. By writing, the students can express their idea, feeling and emotion in written form. In writing, students do not write word by word and then make them into a sentence. They should pay more attention to the ideas, grammatical and organization of writing. They should know how to generate the ideas and how to transfer it into a good writing so their writing can be understood by the readers easily.
As stated in English curriculum for Senior High School (2013), the aim of teaching writing for Senior High School students is that the students are able to write many kind of functional and monolog texts. Functional text is a text that has purpose to persuade the readers to give response about what the writer’s statement, for example announcement, brochure, invitation card. Moreover, monolog text is a text that has purpose to entertain the reader, it is usually to tell about the stories in the past or description
2 about something, for example narrative, descriptive and recount. Actually, there are five kinds of monolog text for Senior High School students. However, for the eleventh grade, the students only learn three kinds of monolog text in writing skill; they are recount, hortatory exposition and analytical exposition text.
Analytical exposition is one of the texts the students learn. Analytical exposition text is a kind of text that presents one side of an issue in arguments form. Analytical exposition is a text that elaborates the writer’s idea about the phenomenon surrounding. Its social function is to persuade the reader that the idea is important matter. Analytical exposition text has three generic structures; thesis, argument, and conclusion or reiteration.
Concluding paragraph is a finish statement the writer writes to make the arguments strong and help the readers easily to understand the text. The concluding paragraph and introduction are closely connected. For example, if you do not know how to end a telephone conversation, you are left hanging in mid-air, and so is the person on the other end of the line. The same thing is true for ending a text:
both writer and reader are uncomfortable or misunderstand without a strong concluding paragraph.
Concluding paragraph is very important because it is put at the end of the text which tells about the important point of the text. Conclusion can make the readers are easy to understand the text. According to Brown (2002: 50), conclusion is very important because when the reader lost track during the text, the conclusion gives them a final chance to get back on track and understand the text. It means that conclusion can help the readers to understand the text easily and make them more interested about the text.
However, based on the researcher’s pre observation with the teacher at SMA N 3 Padang, it was found in writing analytical exposition text the students still confused about the structure of the text. Then, especially in writing concluding paragraph the students do not restated the main point of the text in a new way, they just repeat the introduction. The students know what the conclusion is. However, the conclusion which is made by the students is not appropriate with indicators of concluding
paragraph. Concluding paragraph is an important point in analytical exposition text, because when the readers do not have much time to read all of the text the concluding paragraph can help the readers to understand the text. So, to make the readers understand the text easily the students have given the strong statement in concluding paragraph.
REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE
Analytical Exposition Text
Analytical exposition is one monologs texts that have been taught by the teacher beside recount, descriptive, argumentative and etc.
According to Pardiyono (2007:215), analytical exposition has identically such descriptive argument. In analytical exposition the writer explains about phenomenal problem to the reader by giving the arguments that support what problem is. Analytical exposition is just an argumentative text. It only gives an argument about a phenomenal problem for the reader or listener whether responded or not.
Then, Doddy (2008:62) states that there are three generic structure of analytical exposition. They are thesis: introduces a topic and indicates the writer’s position, outlines the main arguments to be presented. Then, arguments: restates main arguments outlined in a preview, develops and supports each point or argument. The last is conclusion: restates the writer’s position. In this conclusion, the writer gives strengthen for the statement.
Characteristic of a good conclusion
Conclusion is the end of the essay. The conclusion of an essay is the last chance a writer has to leave an impression on a reader. As such, it is important to communicate clearly and speak to all of the points the students made when writing a concluding paragraph.
Research and Education Association (2002:548) state that the conclusion is a summary of the essay and an explanation of why these characteristics are important. It means that conclusion is at the end of the essay explained about important point of the essay where the characteristic of the affective or good conclusion is very important in making conclusion. With conclusion the reader should have no difficulty understanding the message the writer conveying.
3 Characteristics of a good conclusion is very important in making conclusion, because with characteristic of conclusion can make the conclusion good and make the readers are easy to understand the essay and make the readers do not waste time. According to Overstreet (2001:112), the characteristics of an effective conclusion include: support point in the body of essay should be briefly summarized, should not introduce any new material, and should not just repeat the introduction, should be in language that is clear, precise, and concrete. It should restate the essay in a new way. It means that in making an effective conclusion the students have to make a new statement about the text which shows the important point of the related text.
METHOD OF THE RESEARCH
The design of this research was descriptive qualitative design. According to Gay and Airasian (2000:275), “a descriptive study determines and describes the way things are”. It means that descriptive qualitative research only focuses on describing the phenomena without giving treatment to the students. Based on this theory, the researcher used descriptive qualitative design because she wanted to analyze and describe about the students’ ability in writing concluding paragraph of analytical exposition text at SMAN 3 Padang. In this research, the researcher got the data from participants. The students of SMAN 3 Padang at eleventh grade were participants in this research.
The researcher used percentage to get the participants. There are 10 classes the students of senior high school 3 Padang at eleventh grade and each class consists of 30 students. It means there are 300 participants that possible to be participants in this research. The researcher took 10%-20% from participants. Thus, the researcher took 30 students as representative of participants. The researcher chose 30 students from 5 classes as participant randomly in this study.
FINDINGS
After analyzing the data, the researcher had gotten the result of this research. The researcher found how the students’ ability in writing concluding paragraph of analytical
exposition written of eleventh grade students at SMAN 3 Padang. Most of the students did not use transition words to start the text, transition words are very important because transition words have function to connect the every element of conclusion. Main idea is one important in writing concluding paragraph and most of the students know how to find the main idea. Main idea is the key point in concluding paragraph.
In addition, there were students who had the low point to find the main idea from each paragraph or the point three main points restated. It could be seen that the students had difficulty to find the main idea, because some of the students just repeat the text in same way. In writing concluding paragraph the students has to tie the conclusion to introduction and most of the students do it. In writing, grammar is important one. From the all the students writing, it can be seen some of the students has good grammar and some of the students has a bad grammar. It can be concluded that, most of the students in SMAN 3 Padang had a good in writing concluding paragraph but some of the students still confused to find the main idea from each paragraph and in using transition word to start the conclusion.
DISCUSSION
Based on the finding that has been explained, there were five indicators of conclusion written by eleventh grade students of SMA N 3 Padang, that were, transition word, main idea restated, three point restated, tie to the introduction, grammar and sentences. These indicators of the conclusion are stated by Darnell (2012). The conclusion was written by eleventh grade students of SMA N 3 Padang is quite good, it can be seen from the students conclusion, some of the students used transition word to start the conclusion and some of the students did not used transition word to start the conclusion, transition word itself is important to start the conclusion. The students of SMA N 3 Padang still has no familiar to used transition word and the main idea is very important when we write text or conclusion because, the main idea the head of the text but the ability to restated the main idea in conclusion written by eleventh grade students of SMA N 3 Padang still
4 bad because the researcher found the half of the students bad in restated the main idea it can be seen from the point the students got.
Three main points restated is one of the rubrics, in this indicator, the students has to restated the three main points of the text but the researcher found most of the students has difficulties to found the point of the text. Some of the students just copied the text. So, in these indicators most of the students got low point same with the next indicators, tie to the introduction most of the students did not tie anything back to introduction. Grammar and sentences are the last indicators in conclusion recommended by Darnell, the most important in writing are grammar and sentences; include spelling and punctuation but some of the students in SMA N 3 Padang has problem in grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Consequently, the readers were confuse about the idea and the purpose of the students in writing the conclusion of the text.
CONCLUSION
For this research, the researcher classified the data into five indicators of concluding paragraph which are suggested by Darnell (2012). The concluding paragraph indicators are transition word, main idea restated, three main point restated, tie to the introduction and grammar and sentence.
Moreover, most of the students have a low score in transition word and three main point restated and main idea restated most of the students have a high score in tie to the introduction and some of the student have good in grammar and sentence and some of the students have bad in grammar. The researcher got the score from the rubrics of concluding paragraph. The rubric helps the researcher to classify the students ability in writing concluding paragraph of analytical exposition text.
SUGGESTION
As stated previously, this research describes the students’ ability in writing concluding paragraph of analytical exposition text at senior high school 3 Padang at eleventh grade. Based on the finding, there were some suggestions could be given as the following, first, it is suggested for the English teacher to
explain more about constructing part of the text especially the conclusion. Second, teachers as facilitator in teaching learning process have to do maximal effort to make all students understand about this material. Besides, they also have to increase their knowledge as well as their teaching method so the student will be motivated to write English. Third, for the students, it is suggested to practice more in writing by themselves have to pay attention when the teacher give explanation about analytical exposition text, especially in writing conclusion of analytical exposition text.
REFERENCES
Darnell, Bob. 2012. Concluding paragraph
rubric retrieved from:
http://www.achievementstrategies.org on Wednesday, February. 2015
Doddy, Ahmad. 2008. Developing English Competences 2 for senior high school students grade XI. Jakarta:
pusatpembukuan, Department Pendidikan.
Guy, L.R and Peter, Airasian. 2000.
Educational Research Competence for Analysis and Application. New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall Company
Overstreet, R. Larry. 2001. Biographical Preaching: Bringing Bible Characters to Life. New York: Kregel Publications.
Pardiyono. 2007. PastiBisa! Teaching genre- based writing. Yogyakarta.
Research and education association. 2002. The best coaching and study guide for the NYSTCE New York state teacher certification examination. New Jersey:
research and education association.
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