TEACHING WRITING BY COMBINING SOCRATIC SEMINAR AND BRAIN WRITING STRATEGY AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
Oleh:
Yuliani*)
**) Herfyna Asty, M.Pd Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Bahasa Inggris adalah mata pelajaran yang harus dipelajari di Indonesia sejak sekolah dasar sampai perguruan tinggi. Walaupun bahasa Inggris telah dipelajari bertahun-tahun, tapi para siswa masih memiliki kesulitan khususnya dalam writing. Hal ini disebabkan karena para siswa mempunyai kesulitan dalam menemukan ide untuk menulis, kesulitan dalam menemukan kata-kata yang cocok untuk mewakili ide mereka, dan juga kesulitan dalam menggunakan grammar dan kata hubung yang tepat dalam bahasa Inggris. Oleh karena itu, guru harus bisa menemukan strategi yang menarik dalam proses belajar mengajar sehingga membuat para siswa senang dan tertarik untuk belajar bahasa Inggris dan mampu melakukan writing. Dalam makalah ini penulis membahas bagaimana mengajarkan writing dengan menggunakan dua strategi yaitu Socratic Seminar dan Brain Writing. Socratic Seminar adalah salah satu strategi yang dapat digunakan untuk mengembangkan kemampuan writing. Strategi ini merupakan strategi yang tepat untuk membantu para siswa menemukan ide dalam menulis. Brain writing adalah salah satu strategi sangat bagus untuk menunjang kemampuan writing siswa karena dengan menggunakan Brain Writing strategy, semua siswa dibimbing untuk mengidentifikasi informasi-informasi untuk dikembangkan kedalam tulisan mereka. Dalam mengunakan Brain Writing strategy, guru membimbing siswa mengembangkan ide siswa terhadap topic dan kemudian membantu siswa mengembangkan identifikasi tersebut menjadi paragraf-paragraf sehingga menjadi tulisan yang bagus.
Key words : Brain Writing, Socratic Seminar and Teaching Writing
INTRODUCTION
Writing is a skill that allows the students to express their ideas in written form. According to Hyland (2003:3), writing is done to construct the writers’ ideas which are correct in grammatical and lexical knowledge and it is also held to develop for imitating and manipulating thoughts in written form. Therefore, writing is a skill that is very necessary to be achieved by the students.
The reason is because writing is useful to enlarging the way of students’ thinking by catching ideas from their mind into written texts which the students do for drilling their writing skill.
It is also supported by 2013 curriculum or educational unit grade curriculum that the students must be guided for having good skills in English especially writing. In this case, the students had better to be able to explore their ideas in writing form. Moreover, they should be able to produce the genre of texts which they have learned in written form. For this reason, they are not only demanded to explore what they think and feel, but also they are able to communicate it in writing activity. Therefore, students must have good ability in writing.
In contrast in the field, based on the writer’s experience on practice teaching experience in a Senior High School, the writer found that there
are many cases of difficulties that the students face in writing. First, the students could not develop their writing well. They seem to have no idea to develop their writing. As a result, students could not be creative in writing and teaching learning process. Second, many students were difficult to find good ideas to support the main idea in their writing, they could not generate ideas needed to finish writing.Third, the students were difficult to compose their writing well. So the students often stopped writing in the middle of their task and they did not want to continue their writing again.
Finally, all the cases above make the students have low achievement in writing. It could be seen when the students were writing.
For solving the problems above, there are many strategies which can be applied for helping the students to have good writing. There are examples of several strategies that can be used in teaching writing such as: identifying strategy, socratic seminar strategy, and brain writing strategy. Identifying strategy leads the students to write based on the identification which they made about the object which will be written.
Then, socratic seminar strategy drills the students to have seminar and do creatively in writing. While, brain writing is a strategy which prepare the students to have writing based on the plan for a good writing. The writer will combine the Socratic Seminar and Brain Writing strategy because the combination of those strategies will give more chances for the students for developing their writing skill by leading the
students to deliver and grow their ideas in written form.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Writing is can be defined as an exploration of any thought or anything to be formed in written activity. There are some definitions of writing from the experts who have different statements about the definition in writing. According to Mather, Barbara, and Rhia (2000:1), writing is a key to successful school experiences and essential means of communication that helps the students learn how to structure and organize their thoughts.
Teaching writing is not easy, both teacher and students should give full concentration on this subject. According to Harmer (2003:79) the reason of teaching writing for students of English as foreign language include reinforcement, language development, and learning style. It is important to know how to write letter, how to put written report together, how to replay advertisement and increasingly how to write electronic media.
Harmer (2003:79) states that teaching writing needs consideration, which includes the organizing sentences into paragraph and how paragraphs join together. Then, also coherent is important to make the connection of sentences become a good paragraph. In teaching writing, the teacher should help the students to consider about the organizing the sentences become a good paragraph. The paragraphs should be coherent each other.
In this paper the writer used Socratic Seminar combined with Brain Writing strategies in teaching reading comprehension.
There are some experts who give definition of Socratic Seminar strategy.
According to Conklin (2006:48) defines that socratic seminar is a strategy which examines ideas, principles, and issues. The questions should encourage participation, and the teacher should encourage students to adress one another during the discussion if a conflict or disagreement arises.
There are some procedures of socratic seminar strategy which are proposed by some experts. Stix (2004:226) states that socratic seminar has five steps in its application at the classroom. They are:
a. Assign a material to the students thematically. Ask the students to take notes that will help them understand and think about the central issues in their materials. It is said that, the teacher should give the material for the students and ask them to make a note about the topic of the meeting.
b. Share the criteria for the seminar with the students before they begin. It is stated that the teacher must explain the activities which will be done in the seminar strategy.
c. Arrange the classroom in a circle, and begin the seminar by posing a sparking question. It is meant that the teacher has the students sit in the circle form and
start the activity by giving a question which has wrong grammar.
d. Allow students to exchange and write their ideas about the question. Thus, the teacher asks the students to repair the wrong question.
e. Use a few focusing questions throughout the seminar to keep the discussion close to the central issues. Pose a closing question to synthesize the discussion. It means that the teacher should guide the students to talk about the topic and the teacher should give a closing question as an evaluation for the students’
comprehension about the topic.
Brain writing is a very interesting strategy that can be applied by the teacher in teaching writing. According to Berninger and Todd (2002:248) defines that brain writing is a strategy that has purpose to develop the students’ ability and willingness in that order to express their ideas in writing. The strategy is necessary to build the students skill in writing. If this writing skill is sufficiently developed during the learning process by the students, it can develop critical thinking and there will be sufficient time later in schooling to develop and refine other processes in composing their writing.
According to Harris (2000:1), the steps to implement the strategy are:
a. Make sure the students have the material. The teacher has the students understand the material.
b. Guide the students to open up their creativity and gather new ideas to do the process of writing. The teacher asks the students to collect the new ideas to write.
c. Start by asking them the question based what they will write. The teacher asks the students about what will be written.
d. Get the students to write down 2 or 3 ideas. Read the other ideas and add three additional ideas. The teacher guides the students to state their ideas and the supporting ideas.
e. Ask them to sort for the best ideas of the group. The teacher leads the students to choose the best ideas to be written.
f. Take the best ideas and write more complex ideas on the new page. Thus, the final step is the teacher asks the students to take the best ideas to be written completely.
DISCUSION
In the process of teaching, the teachers must practice the ways to present the lesson to the students properly. For reaching the successful in teaching, teacher will face many cases in the teaching. Related to this reason the things needed must be fulfilled by the teachers.
They should know everything related to the process of teaching activity. It can be helped if the teachers are able to apply appropriate strategy, approach, method, or technique in their
teaching. As a result, it is suggested for the teachers to do a good way in doing their teaching for making the students are interested in learning.
In this chapter, the writer will describe about the procedure of teaching writing by combining Socratic Seminar and Brain Writing strategy at Senior High School. In combining those strategies, the writer will use the procedures of Socratic Seminar from Stix (2004:
226) and the procedures of Brain Writing from Harris (2000: 1). The procedure of teaching writing by combining those strategies consists of three main parts, they are: preparation, implementation and evaluation. Firstly, preparation is important for the teacher before starting their teaching. The teacher prepares all of things related to their teaching activity so that it eases the teacher in teaching and learning process. Secondly is implementation, it consists of three parts, they are: pre-teaching activity, whilst-teaching activity and post-teaching activity. Finally is evaluation. The teacher evalutes the achievement of students’
comprehension of a certain material.
Before the teachers begin the teaching and learning process in their classroom, they should prepare the material at home and everything which they need in teaching.The teachers should consider the factors in their teaching, such as:
1. Prepare a topic
The teacher should prepare an interesting topic that will be helped the
students to stimulate their spirit in writing.
2. Select material
The teacher should select the appropriate material to be taught in the classroom. Interesting material can give motivation to students in constructing their writing.
3. The teacher should prepare a lesson plan.
Before the teacher starts the teaching, the teacher should prepare the lesson plan, because the lesson plan includes directions and the rules of teaching and learning process.
4. The teacher prepares the goal of teaching to support the teaching itself.
The teacher should motivate the students and present their teaching based on the goals to be reached.
5. Time allocation
The teacher should be able to predict and limit the material time consuming during the teaching and learning process.
In the implementation section, the writer will discuss about the use of choosing situation and identifying strategy in teaching writing. It consists of three main parts. They are pre- teaching activities, whilts-teaching activities, and post-teaching activities.
1. Pre-Teaching Activities
Pre-teaching activities are done at beginning of the teaching process. It is used
for building the students’ background knowledge and develop their confidence.
They are building students’ knowledge, increasing students’ concentration, and stimulating their curiousity. The steps in pre-teaching activities as follow:
a. The teacher greets the students b. The teacher checks students’
attendance list
c. The teacher checks the clasroom condition and brainstorm the students’ by giving them a picture.
2. Whilst-Teaching Activities
Whilst teaching activities are the activities which are done while the teacher is presenting the strategy in teaching process.
There are three steps of this whilst- teaching activities as follow: Exploration, Elaboration, and Confirmation. It will ease the teacher in doing their teaching in the classroom. So the teacher have to teach the students as the sequence steps.
a. Exploration
In this session of the learning, the teacher uses socratic seminar strategy which has some procedures. The procedures are:
1) Assign a material to the students thematically. Ask the students to take notes that will help them understand and think about the central issues in their materials.
2) Share the criteria for the seminar with the students before they begin.
3) Arrange the classroom in a circle, and begin the seminar by posing a sparking question
4) Allow students to exchange and write their ideas about the question.
5) Use a few focusing questions throughout the seminar to keep the discussion close to the central issues. Pose a closing question to synthesize the discussion.
b. Elaboration
In this part, the teacher uses brain writing strategy which has some procedures.
The procedures of the strategy are:
1) Guide the students to open up their creativity and gather new ideas to do the process of writing
2) Start by asking them the question based on what they will write.
3) Get the students to write down 2 or 3 ideas. Read the other ideas and add three additional ideas.
4) Ask them to sort for the best ideas of the group
5) Take the best ideas and write more complex ideas on the new page.
c. Confirmation
In this session, the teacher guides the students to repair some errors of the students’ ideas and get the conclusion of the material which have been learned. The activities in this part are:
1) Teacher and students correct all writings and complete all ideas and information
and revise some errors for getting a good writing.
2) Teacher and students make the conclusion of the lesson
3) The teacher asks the students about their difficulties in understanding the material
3. Post Teaching Activities a. Evaluation
This session is done for evaluating the students’ comprehension of the activities which has been done. For evaluation, the teacher will give some responses and motivate the students’ about their skill improvement
b. Closing
This is the final session where the teacher gives homework for the students and close the meeting at that chance.
CONCLUSION
In teaching writing by combining socratic seminar and brain writing strategy, teacher has to do three procedure, they are; Pre- teaching activity, whilst-teaching activity and post-teaching activity. In pre-teaching activity, teacher do greeting and deliver the material to the student. In whilst-teaching activity, teacher and student do the combination of the strategy and lead the students to produce writing, and last in post-teaching activity teacher gives exercise or home work to the students. So, the writer can conclude that the combination of Socratic Seminar and Brain Writing strategies makes
students have good skill in writing because with the strategy there is the action step where the students should write and show their writing in front of the class.
SUGGESTION
Based on the conclusion above, the writer makes several suggestions. First, for activating the students’ knowledge in pre- teaching activity, the teacher can ask the some interesting questions to brainstorm the students’
mind. Then, for whilst-teaching activity, the writer suggests that teacher should ask all students about what they are going to write and lead them to produce their complete writing.
Finally, for the post-teaching, the writer suggests that the teacher must ask all students to perform their writing in the class and together solve the difficulties of writing. Thus, there are some suggestions that must paid attention by the teacher in teaching writing.
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