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TEACHING WRITING BY COMBINING JOURNALIST QUESTIONS AND EXIT SLIPS STRATEGIES FOR EIGH GRADE OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
By:
Humairah *)
**) Armilia Riza, 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 menulis. Untuk membuat sebuah paragraf yang menggunakan bahasa Inggris siswa banyak mengalami masalah. Siswa mengalami masalah serius di dalam struktur bahasa Inggris, kurangnya penguasaan vocabulary dan susah menimbulkan ide kreatif dalam menulis serta sulitnya menggunakan grammar dan kata hubung yang tepat dalam bahasa Inggris. Dalam makalah ini penulis membahas bagaimana mengajarkan writing dengan menggunakan dua strategi yaitu Journalist Questions dan Exit Slips. Journalist Questions adalah salah satu strategi yang dapat digunakan untuk mengembangkan kemampuan writing. Strategi ini merupakan strategi yang tepat untuk membantu para siswa meningkatkan kemampuan menulisnya. Sehingga siswa tidak kesulitan untuk memulai menulis karena guru akan membantu mengembangkan ide-ide siswa berdasarkan pertanyaan- pertanyaan yg terdapat dalam Journalist Questions strategy. Exit Slips adalah salah satu strategi yang sangat bagus untuk menunjang kemampuan writing siswa. Guru dapat melihat kemampuan menulis, pemahaman siswa akan materi pembelajaran serta siswa dapat menulis teks dan paragraph dengan benar. Dalam makalah ini penulis berharap kepada guru, siswa dan semua pihak yang terkait dapat mengaplikasikan dan menggunakan penggabungan dari dua strategi ini dalam proses belajar mengajar.
Key word: journalist questions, exit slips strategies, and writing
INTRODUCTION
Writing is an activity to deliver ideas and meaning in written form. By writing the students will be able to express their feeling, experiences and deliver information to the reader in written form.The information that is delivered is commonly arranged in form of paragraph or text.
Writers usually write their ideas in good paragraph or text to make the reader understand about what the writer’s means.
At junior high school, writing is one of English skills which have more difficulties than the other skills for the students. Therefore, the teachers must take the active parts in teaching learning process to improve students’ ability in writing.
Meanwhile, teachers are demanded to be creative in discovering and applying various strategies in teaching writing. The application of an appropriate strategy in teaching writing will make the students more motivated in writing. In writing it self, the students have to know how to organize the ideas well. Then, the students have to consider to choice of words, spelling, grammar, and punctuation for making a good writing.
Teaching writing is one strategy to teach students how to write something, to guide, and lead
them to understand how to be a good writer. On the other hand, teaching writing helps students to comprehend and understand how to write text.
Teaching writing is a process to make the students know how to write their ideas and deliver their ideas to the reader.
In reality, there are some problems occurs in teaching writing process at junior high school.
Based on the writer’s practice teaching experience, there are some difficulties that the students got in writing. First, the students commonly think that writing is the most difficult skill. They dislike writing activity; they got bored when the teacher asks them to write in the class. They do not know how to write although the teacher has explained some strategies to make a good writing product.
Second, the students get difficulty to find the corrrect words and difficulty to improve their ideas which will be written. Third, the students have less interest to learn writing because the teacher often teaches with the same strategy. Finally, they also had some mistakes and error in grammar and punctuation.
Based on the problems above, the teacher should be more active and creative in finding the various strategies that are more effective in teaching writing. One of possible strategies to get
2 interesting strategy to reach the goal of teaching and learning process can be done by combining some strategies in teaching writing. Some strategies that the teacher can use to teach writing are: wordless picture books, quick write, journalist questions and exit slip strategies.
A wordless picture book is a strategy in which the students write the words for accompanying the wordless picture. It activates students’ ability in writing. Quick write strategy helps the students to facilitate students’
understanding of informational text through the use of a set of integrated language activities. While, Journalist Question can help student to improve their ideas by using some questions like who, what, when, why and how. Journalists’ Questions can be used to brainstorm student to find and develop topic for their writing. At last, an Exit Slip is used to check students’ comprehension after the teacher gives the students questions. Combining some writing strategies seems to be a good solution to make the students have good motivation in writing and it is hoped to improve students’ ability in writing. The combination of some strategies are expected to be used to resolve the students’
difficulties in writing. It solves student’s difficulties in writing and improves their writing ability.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Writing is one of important skills among the four skills in learning English. By writing, the writer can express what s/he thinks in written form.
To express the student’s ideas and thoughts in writing, the writer should create a kind of a communication between the writer and the readers in the texts that will be produced based on the topic. Writing process can help the students to show something in their mind and they can improve their ideas to make good writing. To deliver the ideas in written form and produce writing well, students in junior high school must have good ability in writing. Furthermore, they will be able to write a paragraph or text with certain purpose to give the information to the readers.
Hyland (2004:9) asserts that writing is a way of sharing personal meanings and writing courses emphasize the power of the individual to construct his or her own views on a topic. It means that, by writing student can share their feeling or knowledge that can be useful for the other people outside. They can write about politics, health, education, love, poetry, their experience etc in order to share it to the world. So, the students can write many things as long as they have an important news or information to deliver.
Moreover In writing, it is clear stated that writing is a process, not a product. A writer needs to follow the process systematically in order to get
the best result in writing. In the Process of writing there are some steps which are systematically arranged to help the writers finish their writing.
Similarly, Oshima and Houge (1991:3) also state that there are four main stages in writing process:
prewriting, planning, writing and revising drafts.
a. Prewriting
There are two steps in prewriting:
1. Choosing and narrowing the topic
In this step, the writer should decide the topic which is going to tell. Usually, it is kind of interesting topic of what they want to discuss. After that, the writer should arrange or make specific details or narrow the topic in order to limit it into particular sides of the topic. It is important to help the writers in developing the topic.
2. Brainstorming
In this step, the writers should generate or narrow the ideas to significant issues that will be written because the topic should be developed into specific problem too. By doing brainstorming, the writer can think about the topic quickly, and then write if freely to looking for a specific focus or idea and finally they write important ideas in their paper.
a. Planning (outlining)
In this stage, the writers’ job is making an outline. This is important in orders to help them in developing the idea from the words list. For instant, the topic is students’ learning problem. The supporting words are, limited supporting books, laziness, environment etc.
Then, the writers should be grouping in to the appropriate supporting words which are to be discussed. Finally write down the topic sentence of the topic that has been chosen.
b. Writing
In writing, the writers develop the topic to be the sentences, paragraph or passage
c. Revising draft
In this stage, the writer should change what they have written in order to improve it and bring it to a perfect one. It means that they have to check the content, organization, unity, coherence etc. it is necessary to do because the goal of communication should be reached well in delivering massage or writing. In revising, they not only change or replace the words, but also add new words or miss some useless words in their writing.
There are some statements of teaching writing which are given by the experts. According to Harmer (2003:79) the reason of teaching writing for students of English as foreign language include reinforcement, language development, learning style and most importantly, writing as a skill in its own right. It is meant that in teaching writing, the teacher should give knowledge for the students
3 about reinforcement in doing writing, developing the language to express their writing, and also doing the variety ways in writing. Then, it is important for the students to know how to write letter, how to put written report together, how to replay advertisement and any other forms of writing. The students also need to know some of writing special convention in punctuation and paragraph construction in writing.
Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that in teaching writing, the students need to select their ideas that relevant to the writing purpose, do the writing process by thinking clearly in order to make good writing. And also, in doing the writing process, the students should consider about the ideas construction in sentences to build paragraphs and have attention about the coherence among paragraphs. Produce a good writing is the goal which should be achieved by the students after teaching writing.
In this paper the writer journalist questions and exit slips strategies in writing.
There are some experts who give definition Gardner (2005) claims that journalist question or the 5 Ws and an H, these simple questions that help writers identify important about a topic. It is journalist question that help student to identify what they will write (topic), they used questions to improve their idea. It is like writing draft, they can use question “what” to know about what will happen in the story. Question “why” to know the reason why the story happened. Question
“when” to identify the time when the stories happen. Question “how” to look how the chronologies of the story are. And use question
“where” to know the place where the story happens.
According to Preszler (2006:2) there are some steps of journalist question, they are:
a. Teacher teaches students the 5 Ws and an H questions.
questions. These questions will help them to expand their topic into a good paragraph.
This is one of important parts because if the students do not understand how to explain their topic, their paragraph or text will be unorganized.
b. Practice applying the questions to group reading. When first using the journalist question, allow students to work in pairs or groups. Students will be easier to work together. Moreover, it is their first time to write narrative texts, so they need much help.
c. Make sure students understand that not all questions will be answered in an article. For example, some of the questions might be irrelevant to the topic. For example, if the study topic focuses on weather trends of the past 10 years, the Who element will probably
not be particularly important. The teacher should explain that the question that is used should be related to the story. If the questions do not make any parts of the story, the students do not need to use it.
d. Review student answer and findings
In this step teacher checks the students work and correct it if there is any mistake or error e. Ask the students to write down their answer in
the paper became paragraph
According Buehl (2009:143) Exit Slips is an additional Quick Write strategy that encourages summarizing and personal reflection. Here also the students can write their conclusion about what they have read. It can be their difficulties during teaching learning process. Exit Slips give students an opportunity to review keys ideas, consider essential detail and summarize their thinking.
Students respond to a teacher questions that focuses on the learning target of the lesson.
Friedman (2013:3) also explains that there are some steps to used Exit Slips, they are:
a. At the end of your lesson of five minutes before the end of class, ask students to respond to a prompt you pose to the class.
b. You may state the prompt orally to your students or project it visually on an overhead or blackboard.
c. You may want to distribute 3X5 cards for students to write their responses on or allow students to write on loose –leaf paper.
d. As students leave your room they should turn in their exit slips.
e. Review the exit slips to determine how you may need to alter you instruction to better meet the needs all of your students.
f. Collect the exit slips as a part of an assessment portfolio for each student.
DISCUSSION
In the process of teaching, the teachers must practice the strategies to present the lesson to the students properly. For 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. So, they have good strategies 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 of Journalists Questions and Exit Slips Strategies at eight grade of junior high school. In combining those strategies, the teacher will teaches
4 students 5 W and H question. The proceduree will consist 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 teachers evalutes achievement of students’ writing ability.
A. Preparation
For beginning the teaching activities in classroom, the teachers should prepare everything which they need to make teaching itself runs properly. The factors which should be prepared by the teachers as follow:
1. Prepare a Lesson Plan
Before the teacher starts the teaching, the lesson plan should be prepared by the teachers. Lesson plan is very important thing in teaching because it includes planning, directions and the rules for setting teaching and learning process.
2. Prepare a Material
The teacher should prepare an interesting topic theme and select the appropriate material to be taught based on the topic chooses by the teacher. It is done for making the students are interested in learning, especially in teaching reading. Actually, all type of text can be used in this application of combining strategy. They are: Descriptive, Narrative, Report. But, in this paper the writer used narrative text.
3. Time Allocation
The limitation of time in teaching process is very crucial aspect which should be considered by the teachers. Thus, for this reason, the teacher should be able to use and limit the appropriate time consuming during the teaching and learning process. The time consuming for a meeting is about 2x45 minutes, it will be spent about fifteen minutes for pre teaching activities, sixty minutes for whilst teaching activities, and fifteen minutes for post-teaching and closing activities.
4. Media
The teacher should prepare media that has relationship with the combination of Journalist Questions and Exit Slips. There are media can be used in this combination such as: video, real object, picture and card. But in this case, the teacher use picture and card.
B. Teaching Procedures
In the implementation section, the writer will write about the steps of teaching writing by combining Journalist Questions and Exit Slips
Strategies at eight grade students of junior high school. The procedure can be classified into three steps; pre-teaching reading activity, whilst-teaching reading activity, and post-teaching activity, there follow:
1. Pre-teaching Reading Activity (15 minutes)
Pre-teaching activity is very important to begin the lesson. It aims to make the students get full concentration and more ready to begin the lesson as well as to introduce a new topic. There are some activities described as follow:
a. The teacher greets the students pray together.
In this case, the teacher should greet the students before starting the class. It is purposed to make the students get more motivation in doing activity.
b. The teacher checks the student’s attendance list.
c. The teacher asks students about their previous material.
d. The teacher brainstorms her students by giving some questions related to the picture.
b. Whilst-teaching Activity
Whilst teaching activities are the activities which are done by the teacher in presenting the combination of Journalist Questions and Exit Slips Strategies in teaching process. There are three steps in this whilst- teaching activity as follow: Exploration, Elaboration and Confirmation. Thus, the teacher has to teach the students as the following steps.
1. Exploration
In exploration session of teaching and learning process, the teacher uses Journalist Questions Strategy which has some procedures. The procedures are:
a. The teacher teaches the students about 5 Ws and H questions
b. The teacher practice applying the questions to group reading. When first using the Journalist Questions, allow students to work in pairs or groups
2. Elaboration
a. The teachers asks students to select the topic
b. The teacher leads the students to developing their topic based on 5 Ws and H questions
c. Makes sure students understand that not all questions will be answered in an article. For example,
d. Review students’ answers and findings e. The teacher asks the students to write
down their answer in the paper became paragraph
5 Teacher: Ok students, have you finished?
3. Confirmation
In this part, the teacher uses Exit Slips strategy which has some procedures. The strategy’s procedures are:
a. The teacher asks students to respond to a prompt you pose to the class.
b. You may state the prompt orally to your students or project it visually on an overhead or blackboard.
c. You may want to distribute 3X5 cards for students to write their responses on or allow students to write on loose –leaf paper.
d. As students leave your room they should turn in their exit slips.
e. Review the exit slips to determine how you may need to alter you instruction to better meet the needs all of your students.
f. Collect the exit slips as a part of an assessment portfolio for each student.
c. Post-Teaching Activities
The last section of teaching writing process is in post teaching. The teacher asks the students about their difficulties in understanding the material..
a. Evaluation b. Closing CONCLUSION
Writing is an activity to deliver ideas, thoughts, and meaning in written form. By writing, the writer can express what s/he thinks in written form. For expressing the ideas and thoughts in writing, the writer should create a form of a communication between the writer and the texts which will be produced based on its ideas. For expressing ideas in written form and produce writing well, students in school must have ability in writing. Writing is done for making the students be able to express their ideas in written form.
Therefore, all students must have ability and competency in writing. One way to improve the student’s writing ability isby combining journalist Questions and Exit slips strategies.
There are some activities which can be done by teacher in teaching writing by combining Journalist Question and Exit Slips strategies. They are: pre-teachictivities, whilst-teaching activities, and post-teaching activities. Pre-teaching activities are the activities while teacher brainstorms the students mind as the beginning of the process teaching activity. In whilst-teaching activities, the teacher presents the material by applying the steps through combining Journalist Questions and Exit Slips strategy. In this process, the teacher guides the students to do writing and provide them to improve their writing ability. Finally, in post- teaching activities, the teacher takes the students
writing product, checks the errors of their writing, and evaluates their writing continuously to get a good writing.
So, the writer concludes that the Journalist Questions and Exit slips strategies can be used in teaching writing, especially for improving the students’ writing ability. Teaching writing by combining Journalist Questions and Exit slips strategies provides the students an opportunity to do writing easily. The activity of using the strategies combination is begun with leading the students to give 5W and H questions. Then, the teacher divides the students until some groups.
Next, the teacher asks the student to choose a topic.
After that, the teacher helps students develop their ideas based on 5Ws and an H questions. Next, the teacher review student answer and asks students to write down their answer in paper become to paragraph. Last the teacher asks the students’
difficulties and check students comprehensions.
SUGGESTIONS
Dealing with the conclusion above, the writer suggests to the English teacher. The teacher should use the appropriate combination strategies in teaching writing. One important thing, combining Journalist Questions and Exit Slips strategies in teaching writing is a good way for the students at junior high School. It makes students more interesting in learning and they are can improve the writing ability and can get ideas and information in the text.
The English teacher had better tried out to combine several strategies in teaching writing skill. In other words, they do not just apply a strategy in teaching but also the teacher can combine two or more strategies in teaching writing. The teacher should know that the procedures of strategies are combined to make the teaching writing run successfully. The last is the teacher should have knowledge about students’ needs in writing, in order to catch the goal of writing
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Friedman,Thomas L & B, Ann 2013. Adolescent Literary. New York: Family Foundation.
Gardner,Peter S . 2009. New Direction Reading and Critical Thinking. New York:
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Harmer, Jeremy. 2003. How to Teach English.
England: Associated Companies Though Out the World.
6 Hyland, Ken. 2003. Second Language Writing.
Hongkong: City University (Cambridge University Press).
Oshima, Alice and Ann, Houge. 1991. Writing Academic English. New York Wesley’
Publishing Company, Inc.
Plezler,June. 2006. Bringing Writing Into Content Area classroom. Canada: Black Hills Special Services cooperative (BHSSC).
