STRATEGY OF TEACHING WRITING BY USING Y CHART AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
By:
Jenny Chintia Utama *)
**) Armilia Riza, M.Pd Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Penulisan makalah ini bertujuan untuk membantu guru dalam mengajarkan siswa SMA menulis descriptive text. Penulis akan memaparkan beberapa masalah yang di hadapi oleh guru maupun siswa dalam mengajar dan belajar menulis teks bahasa Inggris. Dalam proses mengajar, guru seringkali menggunakan strategi yang sama pada setiap pengajaran, sehingga membuat siswa kurang termotivasi dalam belajar itu sendiri. Disamping itu, masalah lain yang di hadapi oleh siswa adalah siswa kesulitan dalam mengembangkan, menyampaikan ide dan pendapat dalam menulis teks berbahasa Inggris. Untuk mengatasi masalah-masalah tersebut, penulis memberikan solusi yang tepat yaitu dengan menggunakan strategi dalam pengajaran menulis teks berbahasa Inggris. Adapun strategi yang digunakan adalah Y-Chart.
Strategi ini mampu membuat proses belajar maupun mengajar lebih efektif karena strategi tersebut menghasilkan model pembelajaran yang sangat bermanfaat, menarik dan berguna bagi guru maupun bagi siswa. Adapun langkah-langkah dari pengaplikasian dari Y-Chart strategi antara lain, guru membantu siswa dalam pembuatan descriptive text melalui penggunaan Chart yang berbentuk Y dan pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang kemudian guru dan siswa mendiskusikan jawaban dari pertanyaan tersebut untuk dijadikan sebuah teks yang lengkap. Kemudian, guru meminta siswa untuk membuat sebuah descriptive teks berdasarkan kelompok yang telah di tentukan. Terakhir, untuk melihat kemampuan siswa dalam menulis guru memberikan latihan yang berbentuk tugas pribadi serta memberikan penilaian secara langsung.
Key word: Strategy of teaching writing and Y chart Strategy
INTRODUCTION
Writing is written communication to deliver the ideas by sending a message into a written form written message and we can express and explain our own ideas. In writing process, the writer conveys their feelings, ideas, expressions, and even sharing something to another.
Referring the importances of writing above, students in school must have ability in writing. In order to get the purpose of writing, the teacher has crucial role to make writing become favorite activity to be done by the students in classroom.
Based on the school-Based Curriculum (SBC)- kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (2006), clames that one of goals in teaching English is developing skill of language, including orally and non- orally. It means that, writing is an important skill of all aspect skill in teaching English that should be mastered by the students. Therefore, students are demanded to be able to improve their writing ability and also study about the structures which are needed to produce a good writing. In addition, writing makes students learn
and deliver all ideas and thoughts that they have in correct ways.
Unfortunately, based on the writer‟s observation before at Senior High School and the discussion of English teacher, the writer found some problems. First the teacher can not teach writing well. Second, students are uninterested to write their idea or opinion. Third, students are difficult in developing writing topic, organizing ideas into paragraph because they can not build their ideas. it is caused by the teacher always uses monotonous strategy in teaching writing, he/she just asks the students to find the difficult word and open the dictionary in writing process. Based on the case, it is important for the teacher to find the appropriate strategy in teaching writing to improve students‟ writing skill.
The appropriate strategy can make the students be able to write a text well and give opportunity to the students to increase the score of their writing and to improve students‟ writing skill.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Writing is an activity to produce a writing product like essay, paper, and many others, so we need the mental work to make a product of writing.
According to Nunan (2003:88) writing is the mental work of inventing idea,
thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statement and paragraph that will be clear more to readers. It means that, in writing the writer should be able to think how to build the ideas and produce an essay to make the reader understand what the writer‟s mean in their writing.
In addition, Nation (2008:114) adds that writing is easier if learners write from a strong knowledge base. It indicates that, the students will be easy in writing when they have good basic before. The writer should be careful in choosing the words and spelling when he/she writes down the text. Beside that, it also should be helped by the teacher because writing is not simple process.
Nation (2008:113) also mentions that writing is an activity that can be useful to be prepared for working in the other skills of listening, speaking, and reading. It shows writing is an important skill should be learned by students because it will support the other skills. So, they must learn how to write essay writing well to make the students master another skill, they should master with the writing skill first.
Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that writing is an activity to explore our ideas into a piece
of paper. It needs knowledge about the procedure of writing itself to make a good writing, how to share ideas, to make sentence by sentence become interesting paragraph. If the students always practice their writing skill, they will be easy to create the product of writing.
Writing is the most complicated subject because in writing there are some processes that have to be mastered by the students. There are some experts explain the processes of writing. As Nunan (2000:91) classifies that writing is commonly seen as a three stage processes: prewriting, writing and rewriting. It means that in prewriting the writer can clarify and generate the ideas, then continue to the second stage is writing, in this stage the writer can make an outline and a draft. The last step is rewriting, in this stage, the writer can correct the mistake after what they have written.
Then Mahler and Caswell (2004:6) divides that the writing process presents students with a step by step procedure that leads to the completion of a piece of writing. These procedures are; Pre- writing, writing, editing, and publishing.
First, Pre-writing ; Pre-writing allows students to discover what they know and how to proceed. During this stage students learn to make decision about the topic by asking the questions: Do I know enough about this topic to continue? How can I gather more information? Do I like this topic?
Writing; For the writer is time to record the ideas collected and discovered. In this stage can help students to continue processing through modeling, teacher demonstrate how to focus, draft, share, and create title.
Editing; The writer makes the final touching during the editing to ensure a readers‟ comprehension. Publishing; This is a time for being satisfied with one‟s accomplishment, it is time for celebration.
According to Gardner (2005:122) that there are five steps process of writing;
assessing the writing situation, exploring, planning, drafting, revising, editing and proof reading.
Assessing the writing situation: It is about reflectingon the subject, one‟s attitude toward the subject, purpose, audience, sources of available information, and writing assignment.
Exploring and planning: It is about discovering refining, finding support, and
organizing the ideas. Drafting: It is about expressing and developing ideas and supporting detail in rough form.Revising:
It is about rethinking and rewriting draft to improve the content, focus and structure.
Editing and proof reading: It is about checking for effective word choice and sentence structure and for correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and mechanics.
In addition, Nation (2008:114) describes that one possible of the writing process contains the following seven processes. They are; considering the goal of writer, having a model of reader, gathering ideas, organization ideas, turning ideas into writing text, reviewing what has been written, and editing. It can be said that in considering the goal of the writer, the writers can determine the purpose of their writing‟s product. Then having a model of reader, after establish their writing, the writer should do this step.
Which writer can determine the readers can read their writing, for example;
children, adult, student, teacher and etc.
The next step, the writer will be gathering ideas. Then, the writer can assemble their ideas by using brainstorming and quick writing activities to explore their ideas. After that, the writer organizes their ideas,
and then entering the ideas into piece of paper, then writer reviews their writing by looking back over what has been written. And the last step, the writer should editing their writing by checking organization, grammatical, and lexical correctness.
In conclusion, based on the expert above there are many differences of process writing. In this case, the writer can conclude that the process writing are drafting, revising, and editing. Drafting is a framework before going to write. Revising is a process where the teacher and students discuss about students‟ work. Editing refers to words that are used by the students in their work. The process above cannot be separated in producing good writing.
Teaching writing is included as one of productive beside speaking. As a productive skill, it is very demanding that a students as a writer should be capable of knowing and mastering components of writing, and procedures of writing itself. According to Harmer (2003) the reason for teaching writing as foreign language include reinforcement, language development, learning style, and most important writing as a skill in it own right. It means that in teaching writing teacher should have the reinforcement because
the student can remember about what they have made earlier.
For language development, the students are able to build language by learning writing. In learning style, the students will be easy to learn if they produce the language by writing and the last writing as a skill, means the students have known if writing is a basic language skill beside, speaking, reading and listening.
According to Coffin (2003:4), the process approach includes different stages, which can be combined with other aspects of teaching writing.
Process approaches are premised on the notion that writing is an interactive process. Stages of writing process can happen in various orders different points. There teaching writing focus on process: pre-writing technique, journal writing, drafting , reflection, peer/ tutor review, revision, editing and proof reading.
In addition, Rico (2004:168) said that teaching writing is no longer an activity that can be postponed until English learners can speak english fluency. So, when the teacher wants to teach their students for good writing the teacher should wait the students speak English fluently because if the students unable to speak English they do not know what they want to write. Thus, the
teacher in teaching writing should have much knowledge about all the skills in English teaching.
In conclusion, it can be known that the teacher should teach their student writing skill, also help the teacher to know how to teach the students to write and explore the ideas, their opinion on a piece of paper to be clearly for the reader. Besides, the teacher knows about steps by steps in teaching writing. Then, this activity is done by the teacher in order to make the students understand how to create a paragraph. After understanding these, hopefully the students will be able to create a good writing. The most important are teaching writing not only focus on the product but also focus on the process.
Y Chart strategy is suitable to apply in teaching writing, because by using this strategy teacher guide the student to find the information and obtain the ideas from the topic. This strategy is designed to help students to improve their writing ability. Students will answer the question what look like, sound like and feel like? Based on the topic. It will require students to develop the ideas and information from the text.
Y Chart strategy is an alternative strategy to improve student‟s ability in learning English. This strategy will be
able to help students to develop their skill in writing. As Hill and O‟Laughlin (1995:2) state Y Chart strtegy is a graphic organiser that requires the brainstorming of ideas around three dimension: what a particular topic/situation „look like‟, „sound like‟, and „feel like‟. It can be said that this strategy can be used to increase the students understanding to develop their ideas from what they see, hear and feel.
Furthermore, Schwartz (2001:17) explains that Y Chart has three colums.
They are look like, sound like and feel like. A brainstorming activity can be used to support the application of Y Chart strategy mainly for identifying how a particular skill is felt. In other words, the students will be helped by the teacher in using Y Chart which trains how to remember the ideas before in developing a paragraph.
According to Frangenheim (2005:33) also explains some procedures of Y Chart strategy, they are:
Decide on the topic to be discussed or analyzed. It means that students must find out one topic before they start to write something. Next, Draw up a simple Y Chart. Then, students describe what they know about the topic in Y Chart form by adding three columns. Next, In the „look like‟ segment, students should write what they look about the topic. Then, In the
„sound like‟ segment, students should write what they hear about the topic. Next, In the „feel like‟ segments, students should write what they feel about the topic.Five steps above are simplierthan the procedure of O‟Laughlin which divides students into small groups. Each group discusses different topic and then do report back.
This procedures become longer. Therefore, students need more time to finish their work at home. As Kruse (2010:24) only explains the procedures of Y Chart strategy in two points, they are: First, Students either draw up or given a blank Y Chart. It means that teacher gives three blank columns like Y in a chart to students or each of them can provide the Y Chart themselves in line with guidance from the teacher.
Students make notes and fill some points of what it looks, what it sounds like and what it feels like in the bank Y Chart in relation to the topic. The procedures from Kruise above enables students to write easier because they receive a blank Y Chart from teacher. The students can fill in the Y Chart directly referring to topic that has been discussed in the classroom.
Based on the expert, it can be concluded that Y chart strategy is a strategy that is used by the teacher to help students in learning writing. The first, the teacher gives the example how to use Y
Chart which consists of three columns, they are what look like, sound like and feel like. Then, asks the students to draw the Y Chart on a piece of paper and fill it based on the questions material. Finally, they start to write into the sentences and makes paragraph.
In conclusion, teacher and student can get many advantages by applying Y Chart strategy in teaching writing. On teacher‟s side, Y Chart strategy is simple to explain by using supporting Y Chart as teaching tool. It is also easy for teacher to find the interesting themes of writing assignment by exploring ideas from students. On student‟s side, the simplicity of Y Chart is easy to understand.
DISCUSSION
Based on the previous chapter, to improve students ability in writing the teacher should apply an appropriate and understandable strategy in teaching and learning process. Y Chart strategy is kind of appropriate strategy that can be applied.
The students will be able to express their ideas, opinions, and feeling in a written
form. This strategy has several procedures.
To make this strategy be running well in teaching writing process, the writer creates a good preparation and activity in teaching and learning process.
A. Preparation
Preparation is one of the most important things to do before starting to teaching and learning process, due to a good preparation can make the process of teaching and learning running well. There are some preparations that should be prepared by the teacher such as the topic, time allocation and media, it can be explained as follows:
1. Topic.
In this paper, the teacher will discuss about descriptive text. In this paper, the writer finds out a topic about descriptive text that will be discussed with the students. In preparation about the topic or the text it is better for the teacher to prepare the familiar one, because it will
lead them to understand about the material easily.
2. Media.
Media is essential tool to make teaching and learning process become enjoyable and interesting. Media that is used here are, graphic organizer, picture and white board, and those media are related with the topic that is discussed.
3. Time allocation.
The teacher has to pay attention to the time allocation in every meeting because in managing the time that is the crucial one. The teachers are not allowed to teach the material too fast or too slowly.
In every meeting the teacher takes 2x45 minutes for one meeting, so the teacher needs to allocate the time. In teaching and learning process the teacher should divide the time into three phases. They are pre teaching activities, whilst teaching activities and post teaching activities.
B. Application
In application of teaching writing by using Y Chart strategy, the writer
divides this part into three phases. They are pre teaching activities, whilst teaching and post teaching activities.
1. Pre- Teaching (10 minutes)
Pre- teaching activities is kind of activity that done by the teachers and students as a beginning part before starting to discuss about the material.
a. The teacher greats the students.
The teacher: “good morning class”
“How are you this morning?”
b. The teacher checks the attendance list. The teacher invites the students prior knowledge to be active by reviews last materials.
c.
2. Whilst teaching activity (60 minutes) Whilst teaching activities is the activity that is done by the teacher to explain the material that will be taught.
a. Exploration
1). The teacher introduces the material that will be taught.
The teacher introduces the topic to the entire class by giving an example of descriptive text.
b. Elaboration
4.) The teacher and the students fill the main concept on the Y Chart.
The teacher: “Please take a look to this y chart, and do you know what does it look like, sound like and feel look like?”
5). The teacher and the students fill the major components in the chart or question on the paper.
6). The teacher and the student then fill in the details and answer all of questions and adding some information to support the answer before make a descriptive text.
7) The teacher begins by doing the first component as an example. After answering the questions on the columns list of questions above, the
teacher gives an example of a descriptive text based on the list of questions in the Y Chart.
8) The teacher and the students complete the rest together. During the process, the teacher checks for understanding, clarifies any confusion, and discusses with the students how the components relate to the main concept and one to another.
c. Confirmation
9.) The teacher provides students with reading material and questions related to the topic about descriptive text.
10) The teacher tells to the students to use the list of questions as a guide for a written response to the reading
11). The teacher asks each student to presents individual writing to the class.
12). The teacher instructs the audience to make notes and share comments about the writing with
their friend. Comments may be related to accuracy of content, writing style, interpretation content, suggestion for improvement and so forth.
3. Post teaching activity (25 minutes)
Post teaching activity is purposes to sum up the material and to measure the students understanding about the lesson.
a. The teacher tests the learners by giving quizzes as individuals not as a group.
b. The teacher distributes a sheet of paper for the students to make a short descriptive text based on the chart.
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