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TEACHING WRITING BY COMBINING JOURNALIST QUESTIONS AND FLOWER STRATEGIES AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
By:
Riski Darman *)
**) Hevriani Sevrika, M.Pd Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Writing merupakan salah satu keterampilan bahasa Inggris untuk membuat writing.
Didalam writing siswa dapat memperbaiki cara menulis mereka. Siswa harus memiliki keterampilan writing yang baik dan benar. Pada kenyataannya, banyak siswa tidak bisa menulis (writing) dengan baik dan mengalami kesulitan dalam membuat kalimat.
Dalam makalah ini penulis membahas bagaimana mengajarkan writing dengan menggunakan dua strategi. Pertama, Journalist Questions strategy adalah strategi pertanyaan dengan mengguanakan 5Ws dan H. Dimana strategi ini membantu siswa belajar bagaimana untuk membuat kalimat dengan menggunakan pertanyaan dan mengembangkannya untuk membuat kalimat. Kedua, Flower strategy yaitu siswa menggembangkan ide-ide mereka didalam sebuah graphic yang berbentuk bunga yang didalamnya terdapat main idea dan supporting details. Dari situ mereka dapat menggembangkan ide-ide mereka dengan mudah untuk menjadi kalimat. Dengan kombinasi Journalist Questions dan Flower pada pengajaran writing diharapkan dapat meningkatkan motivasi dan minat siswa dalam membuat teks dan belajar writing.
Kemudian, melalui kombinasi strategi ini, siswa diharapkan dapat memahami pelajaran dan membuat mereka memahami bagaimana membuat teks dengan baik.
Kata Kunci: Writing, Journalist Questions Strategy, Flower strategy
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INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of important language skill that students need to be mastered in learning English. It is one of the productive skills besides speaking, listening and reading. Writing is one of indirect communication activities where people can convey feelings, ideas, expression, and sharing
something to another. In writing activity, the writer must learn how to communicate his or her ideas, in order to make the readers understanding what is told about. Writing activity is one of difficult subjects for the students in a language class.
Teaching writing is a skill that should be taught by the teacher to the
2 students in some ways. First, the teacher must teach the students about the component of writing and she can use the components of writing in writing process. The components of writing are content, form, grammar, style and mechanism. Second, in teaching writing, the teacher must be able to prepare the material well and should be creative to make learning writing or topic will be easy understand by the students. Last, the teacher should make the students interested in writing. Thus, the students can produce a good essay.
Furthermore, based on the writer's experience in teaching practice, most students still had difficulty in the writing process that affects to the students' writing ability. The first difficulty is the students had lack of vocabularies, especially in choosing the words to make good sentences, so the students could not express their ideas and their opinions. The second, the students did not understand how to
write well and what they need to write.
Therefore they did not had the motivation to write. The third, students found difficulties to expose their ideas into the paper. The finally, the students had difficulties to select, combine, arrange and develop ideas to be good sentences and paragraphs in the paper.
Based on the phenomena above, the students had difficulties in writing.
It is necessary for the teacher to find out the appropriate strategy in order to help the students in writing. A good writing strategy is a strategy that can help the students to expose their idea well. To do that the teacher can lead the students by asking some questions. Therefore, the students will be easy to extend their idea or write a good writing product.
Thus although, there are some strategies that can be used in teaching writing; first, POWER (Plan, Organize, Write, Editing, and Review) strategy, it helps students to proceed through the writing process in an organized,
3 systematic manner. Second, Rule-Based strategy, it is focuses on the concept of requiring students to follow a set of rules or steps, it leads to produce an organized summary. Third, Journalist Questions strategy, it is a strategy to lead students in finishing writing product through some questions. It helps students to organize their knowledge and bring it to writing process. Last strategy is Flower strategy; it is to make a complete paragraph or essay. It is used to help the students in writing paragraph independently.
REVIEW OF RELATED
LITERATURE
Writing is a process to develop a topic into information to the reader.
There are some opinions from the experts on the definition of writing.
According to Sokolik in Linse (2003:98) states that writing is a combination of process and product.
The process refers to the act of
gathering ideas and working with them until they are presented in a manner that is polished and comprehensible to reader. It means that, to write the students must require understanding and concentration in making a paragraph because the students need to know the writing process, so they can make a sentence or paragraph that is good and can be understood by the reader.
Teaching Writing
Teaching writing is an important aspect beside other important aspects.
Teaching writing is a way to assist the students in making a good paragraph to express ideas that they have. In addition, teachers can guide students in making a paragraph by providing material clearly and they understand it.
According to Hyland (2003:4) argues that teaching writing predominantly involves developing learners’ skill in producing fixed patterns, and responding to writing means identifying
4 and correcting problems in the student’s control of language system. In means that, students can be develop their writing skills by creating a sentence.
Furthermore, the teacher helps students in identifying and fixing the system language of the sentences that has been created by students.
Component of Writing
In the writing process, the teacher should tell the students about the writing component, while the students as writers need to know how the components in writing before they make the writing. The writing process is some steps that will help the writer in writing. According to Allman, et all (2000:36) a process approach to writing instructions involves five stages:
Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Proofreading, Publishing. Then, Caswell and Mahler (2004:7) support that the writing process presents students with a step by step procedure that lead to the completion of a piece of
writing. Moreover Caswell and Mahler explain that some steps in writing:
Prewriting, Writing, Revising, Editing and Publishing.
It can be concluded that the components of teaching writing is very important for students to make a paragraph. Therefore, the students must know what components in writing to make a good paragraph. In addition, the teacher helps students by providing an explanation of the components in the writing such as pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.
Journalist Question Strategy
According to Preszler (2006:17) mentions that Journalist Question Strategy is the Ws and an H, these simple questions helps writer identify important information about a topic.
Students are able to identify information that is contained in this paragraph by using this strategy.
Further, students are able to develop their ideas by using the question "what,
5 who, what, where, when, why and how"
with the students can express their ideas in a paragraph.
From the above explanation, Journalist Questions is the strategy that can enhance students' skills in this strategy because students are expected to develop the topic or their ideas in making a good paragraph. This strategy can work well with the help of the teacher to explain about this strategy with the questions in the strategy that the students were able to organize their topic using the 5Ws and H question (who, what, where, when, why and how).
Procedures of Journalist Question Strategy
The procedure is an important step in the teaching process. Through a procedure that students can be more easily to understand the steps they would do in making a paragraph.
Therefore, an explanation of the procedure journalistic question can be
understood by students. According to Preszler (2006:17) there are several steps that should be followed by the teacher to apply the Journalist Question Strategy:
a. The teacher teaches students Preszler (2006:17) there are several steps that should be followed by the teacher to apply the Journalist 5Ws and an H questions. Teacher makes sure students understand that not all questions will be answered in article. Such as, some of the questions might be irrelevant to the topic.
1) Who, who are the primary or most important characters?
Who are the secondary characters? Who participated?
Who is affected?
2) What, what is the problem?
What is
3) Where, where did the event occur? Where the issue? What happen? What is it
6 significance? is the setting?
Where is the source of the problems?
4) When, when did the event occur? When did the problem begin? When is it most important?
5) Why, why did the event issue or problem occur? Why did it develop the way it did?
6) How, how is the lesson, problem, or issue important?
How can the problem be resolved? How does it affect the participant or characters indentified in the “Who”
question?
b. Second, teacher review students answers and findings. Teacher checks students work in analyzing the questions to make draft process.
The teacher will lead students through several questions to make a good draft.
Flower strategy
Besides strategy journalist 'question, the teacher can be apply interest strategy to assist students in the process of teaching writing. According to Julie (2011:93) states that paragraph flower is a great and simple writing strategy for helping students explain their thinking process and creativity in other to make support logical argument in making a complete paragraph. It means that, this strategy helps students in writing using the ideas and their creativity in making good and logical paragraphs or essay.
From the explanation above the writer concludes that this strategy can help the students in making a paragraph without getting in trouble. In other words, the students were able to develop a topic and work individually to find the main idea and supporting details to make a good paragraph.
7 Procedure of Flower Strategy
At this point, there are several procedures that can be applied to the students and teacher in the process of teaching writing. According to Julie (2011:93) there were some steps in flower strategies:
a. Select an appropriate material which in related to lesson at the day.
b. Introduce each component of the writing pieces (the pistil or centre of the flower and petal around the flower) using the graphic organizer.
c. Together the class will analyze the problem structure of the text
a. Main idea/ introduction ( the topic that will be describe) b. Details (all the supporting
sentence to the topic) c. Transition word
d. When initially introducing the strategy, the teacher will first give a sample writing piece for
students to model work from formulating a thesis statement and the general topic areas that students will use to support their position.
e. Students will complete the teacher generated flower graphic organizer to plan piece to ensure that all elements are included.
f. Students write the essay using the steps that the strategy provided.
It means that, first, the teacher gives the students about the topic of the day. Second, the students introduce about component of the flower strategy.
Third, teacher helps students to analyze about the main idea / introductions, supporting details, and transition words.
Fourth, the teacher gives an example of how a working model of the strategy.
Fifth, the students complete all parts of the flower graphic. Last, the students make an essay or a paragraph by following the steps already described strategy.
8 CONCLUSION
Based on the discussion in the previous chapter, the writer can make the conclusion that write is a process of learning by the writer with the purpose to get information, ideas and add to the knowledge of the writer as a result of what they write. In teaching write, teacher must know the principles and objectives of teaching write as a skill that must be learned by the students, especially for students at Junior High School. But in fact, some the students still have problems in learning write. It is difficult for them to find the main idea in make a sentence or paragraph.
Furthermore, they did not have a satisfactory outcome in write. Then, the way teachers in implementing strategies the students did not appreciate conditions.
To overcome the above problems, teacher should consider good teaching strategies for teaching writing.
Teachers did not only able to use one
strategy, but also can combine the two strategies in the teaching of write, such as: combining Journalist Questions and Flower strategies in recount text.
Journalist Questions are strategies that help the students in making sentences using questions to facilitate the students in making the paragraphs. In addition, Flower is a flower-shaped strategy. The flower consists of five petals of the supporting details and the core of the main idea. From there, students can develop their ideas and help students make sentences or paragraphs. Writer believes that the Journalist Questions and Flower strategies can enhance students' ability in write. By using this strategy, the students will learn how to create text that is good and true. Thus, the students are no longer considers write is difficult lessons.
SUGGESTION
Based on the above conclusion, the writer would like to give several suggestions to English teachers while
9 teaching writing as follows: first, the teachers should prepare appropriate material and strategy that will be used in teaching reading in the classroom.
Journalist Questions and Flower strategy can be used by teachers of English in teaching writing for recount text; it is a way to increase the students' skills in writing the text at Junior High School. Second, the teacher can share thought processes with the students. Last, teacher should be able to see how students write and help students to increase their abilities in write.
REFEERENCES
Alman, Barbara. 2000. Skill for succesfull Teaching. New Jersey : McGraw Hill Children’s Publishing.
.
Caswel, Roger and Mahler, Brenda. 2004.
Strategy for Teaching Writing.New York: The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Hylan, Ken. 2003. Second language Writing. New York: University of Cambridge Press Ltd.
Julie, Jacobson. 2011. Effective Instruction for English Language Learner:
Supporting Text-Based
Comprehension and
Communication Skill. New York: A
division of Ginliard Publications, Inc.
Linse, Caroline T. 2005. Practical English Language Teaching : Young Learners. New York : McGraw Hill Companies.
Preszler, June. 2006. Bringging Writing into Content Area Classroom.
Kansas: Black Hills Special Services Cooperative (BHSSC).
