1.1 Background of Study
English as an international language is used in the world for any purposes as the media of communication to help people communicate and interact with others.
Not only that, many people think that English is also prestige; people who are able to communicate using English are considered modern and civilized people. That is why many people around the wants to comprehend this language. Besides, it also becomes a necessity to master the language since much information in various life sectors are delivered in English.
English is taught as a foreign language in Indonesia. Teaching English in Indonesia is difficult and fraught with difficulties due to the fact that it is not a native or original language and is not widely utilized used in everyday life.
Furthermore, many students think that learning English is difficult since it is not their mother tongue. English as a subject in Indonesia is mostly taught since elementary or junior high school. Therefore, many people rely on teachers to teach the language to their children.
According to Setyanida (2019), basically, one of the goals of teaching and learning English at school is for students to be able to communicate in English both orally and in writing. To achieve that goal, the EFL students learn four skills of English, such as speaking, listening, reading, and writing. One of the two productive skills in learning English is writing. According to Citraresmana (2018), writing is one of the language skills in which through writing, we can observe
one’s language ability. It is believed that writing is a kind of reflection of the writer’s cognition, since that written will represent the writer him or herself.
Writing skills should be acquired by the students because writing is important.
According to Aminatun et al. (2018), people employ their writing skills practically every day through e-mail, short message service in phone, and social media conversing. These examples demonstrate the importance of writing skill for people to communicate with each other. Meanwhile, Prastyo (2014) stated that linguistics competence is one of competences that are needed in writing. By writing, the students are also able to go beyond the language they have learned. In other words, writing can be used as a media to know how much the students have mastered the language learned.
However, writing is not an easy skill to comprehend. There are many factors that make writing difficult. It can be from the internal factors and external factors.
Internal factors that make it difficult for students to write are the lack of students’
interest in learning English and lack of motivation which cause the students got difficulties in writing texts. These factors can also be categorized as Interlingua transfer who makes students difficult to write their ideas because the characteristics of the Indonesian language are really different from those of English (Brown, 2000). Students translated word by word into English. Students become confused when attempting to convert their ideas into written form because to the structural differences between Indonesia and English. The way pupils utilize Indonesia has an impact on how they use English. Students encountered difficulty while attempting to use English in its natural form as a result of the many linguistic frameworks (Harris et al., 2014). Also, students are unable to
write their stories in good form due to lack of grammar. Their lack of understanding of grammar makes their writing clumsy and difficult to comprehend for readers. Those are some problems faced by students when writing; especially recount text at SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung.
The next factor influencing students’ writing is external factors. According to Dewi et al. (2016), there are 3 kinds of external factors; factors derived from the family, factors derived from the school environment and factors that are influenced by the community environment. The first is factors derived from the family. It is evident that the family is one of the factors that contribute to pupils’
learning issues. This occurs when students spend the majority of their time at home rather than at school. Parental advice and support will have an impact on students’ abilities, including their writing skills. As a result, one of the reasons contributing to students’ difficulty in writing is a lack of parental support or encouragement.
Furthermore, a factor derived from the school environment such as: teaching methods and techniques, teacher attitudes, curriculum or material being studied, inadequate learning equipment, inappropriate evaluation methods, and inadequate study spaces. Techniques and approaches for teaching writing are influenced by the use of media. Therefore, the use of media as a material container that will motivate students and students can get the interesting media; it will help them learn English easily. Lastly, factor derived from the community environment, includes cinema, TV, newspapers, magazines, comic books. The community environment includes friends, neighbors, and activities in the community.
The students’ problem in writing is also caused by the difficulty of expressing ideas in writing. It is due to their lack of understanding of language components like vocabulary and grammar. They also struggled to organize their ideas and sentences in writing. Besides the difficulties in writing itself, writing problems also exist because of students’ reluctance to write. Dealing with written language, writing is commonly used for exploring the students’ ideas and other communication activities. When the researcher did practical field experience (PPL) in class X IPA 1 at SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung, the researcher found that students had problems in writing English, the same as the theory that the researcher described above. The issue arises as a result of students’ lack of motivation, lack of understanding of language components such as vocabulary and grammar, and they are also struggled to organize their ideas.
One of the solutions that can assist teachers in explaining language meaning and construction is by employing the use of pictures. Using this media can enable the teachers to be capable of dealing with difficulties in teaching English. A picture is a two-dimensional representation of a person, place, or thing that can be used as an illustration of a picture. It means that a picture is one of the communication mediums that can depict people, places, and things that are far away from us. Anyone can receive clearer concepts or information from a picture than they can from a language term.
Considering the benefits of picture series and the problems faced by the students of SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung above, the researcher wants to conduct a research entitled Improving the Tenth Grade Students’ Writing Ability on Recount Text Using Picture Series at SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung.
1.2 Research Questions
Based on the background of study and the problem above, the research question in this thesis is:
1. To what extend does picture series improve students’ writing ability on recount text?
2. How is the implementation of picture series in teaching writing on recount text to the tenth-grade students of SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung?
1.3 Research Objectives
Based on the research questions above, the objectives of study are:
1. To find out the improvement of students’ writing skill on recount text by using picture series.
2. To know the process of implementation of picture series in teaching writing on recount text to the tenth-grade students of SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung.
1.4 Uses of the Study
The research result is expected to be able to give some benefits as follows:
1. For students
The research study can be used to help students in writing. It suggests that the picture series as a medium can help students in organizing their thoughts in writing. In addition, it can be used to motivate their learning in the class, especially writing of recount text.
2. For teachers
The researcher hopes that this study will help teachers enhance their capacity to assist their students in writing in the classroom. Besides that, the English teacher might use engaging material to support the implementation of picture series to help students develop their writing skill.
3. For the researcher
Other researchers who want to undertake research on the same issue and for the same objective can use this study as a reference. It can be used to show how a picture series can assist students improving their writing skill.
1.5 Scope of the Study
In this research, the researcher limits the study with the title, Improving Tenth Grade Students’ Writing Ability on Recount Text Using Picture Series at SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung. into some points. First, the researcher limits the study based on the learning process, that is learning English writing process using picture series.In addition, the researcher determined this research for the tenth- grade students of SMA Gajah Mada Bandar Lampung in the academic year 2020/2021. The problems that will be investigated in this study are limited to those that the researcher indicated in the research questions.
