Teaching Writing by Combining Four Squares and Unsent Letter Strategies at Senior High School
Oleh:
Vivi Yulia Sari *)
**) Herfyna Asty Staf Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Menulis merupakan keahlian satu dari empat keahlian yang harus dikuasai siswa dalam pembelajaran bahasa Inggris yang harus diajarkan oleh seorang guru kepada siswanya.
Dalam mengajarkan menulis, guru harus bisa membuat siswanya mengerti tentang apa yang akan mereka tulis, tidak hanya mengerti tapi juga harus bisa memahami informasi yang ada dalam teks yang mereka tulis tersebut. Untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut, guru harus memiliki strategi untuk membuat siswa memahami materi-materi pelajaran. Strategi itu diharapkan dapat membuat siswa mengerti, tertarik, memahami dan dapat dengan mudah menuliskan ide-ide mereka menjadi berbagai jenis teks termasuk teks fungsional seperti surat yang lengkap. Strategi tersebut adalah strategi Four Squares dan Unsent Letter. Kedua strategi ini dikombinasikan supaya siswa mampu menuliskan surat sesuai dengan aturan penulisan surat yang benar. Disamping itu, siswa juga dituntun menuliskan ide-ide dalam surat yang akan mereka tuliskan dengan menggunakan sebuah lembaran kertas yang digunakan untuk menuliskan ide-ide yang mereka pikirkan untuk menulis sebuah surat yang telah ditargetkan oleh guru. Ini bertujuan supaya siswa dapat dengan mudah mengembangkan ide selama proses menulis dan meningkatkan kemampuannya dalam menulis. Dalam makalah ini penulis menggunakan teks fungsional dalam bentuk surat sebagai materi yang akan ditulis oleh siswa.
Key Words: Writing, Four Squares Strategy and Unsent letter Strategy
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing
INTRODUCTION
Writing is necessary to be mastered by the students especially for Senior High School students, because writing is a complex process.
Because of that, based on curriculum of Senior High School, the object of teaching English at Senior High School is to develop students’ skill in writing. In the standard competence at Senior High School, especially for the second grade students, the students should be demanded to express their ideas in a functional text and essays in written form of simple materials such as recount, letters, procedure, and others in the context of everyday life.
In reality, based on the writer’s experience in practice teaching, there were some problems that were faced by the students in learning writing, especially in writing letters.
First, students still lack of vocabulary, so some students often got difficulties in developing and organizing their ideas during writing process.
Besides that, the students have difficulty in selecting the appropriate words, using correct grammar, and organizing good sentences.
Second, students do not understand the structures or the form of the letter clearly. So, the students are unable to write their idea and organize it into paragraph of the letter helping by four squares sheet. Then the last problem came from the strategy which is used by the teachers which is still paying less attention to the process of teaching writing. The teacher did not give more explanation about the steps of how organize a good paragraph.
To solve the problems, the writer suggest to combine Four Squares strategy and Unsent Letter strategy in teaching writing at Senior High
School. Four Square strategy is a strategy that guide students to write by identify content based on the topic of a text before start to write. Unsent Letter strategy is a writing strategy which allows students could write letters back and forth as two important people and discuss what is going on.
The combination of those strategy can make students become interested in writing.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Writing is often used to clarify and express personal thoughts and feelings. It is used primarily to communicate with others. There are some experts’ explanations about writing such as: first, Nunan (2003:88) states that writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to a reader. Second, Clark (2007:4) defines that writing is a powerful instrument of thinking that allows students to express their thoughts. Third, Hacker, Dunlosky and Graesser (2009:155) writing is the writer’s production of meaning, and that production must be translate into an external symbolic representation.
In making a good writing, the teacher should teaches the students well. Teaching writing promotes students' ability to pose worthwhile ideas, because through teaching writing allows the students to organize their thought in meaningful and logical sequences.
According to Harmer (2004:31) teaching writing is the activity where students write predominantly to increase their learning of grammar and vocabulary of the language.
Moreover, Caswell and Mahler (2004:3) state that teaching writing is an activity provides
opportunities for students to develop clear thinking skills. In addition, Hacker, Dunlosky and Graesser (2009:156) point out that teaching writing is also a cognitive activity that occurs within an individual, writing reflects the unique phenomenology of an individual.
In teaching writing, there some text that can be applied by the teacher. In this paper, the writer choose functional text to show how teach students in writing. There are some experts’
opinions about kinds of functional text as follow:
first, Teich (2012) defines there are some kinds of functional texts such as announcement, letter, short massage, advertisement, label, sign, notice, pamphlet, brochure and other short text. Second, there are eleven kinds of functional text in Sutrisno (2011) such as announcements, advertisements, greeting cards, short messages, notices, cautions, invitation cards, letter, postcards, shopping list and food label. Next, according to Okasaki (2011) there are some examples of functional text: warranties, product information, technical/instructional manuals, consumer safety publications, announcements, advertisements, invitations, movie posters, recipes, application and forms are all of functional texts.
There are some strategies that can be applied in teaching writing. Those strategies can be combined. The strategies which can be combined are Four Square and Unsent Letter Strategies. Four Squares is a strategy that helps students to develop their writing ability by give clear explanation about how the students create a draft with the attribute in Square sign. According to Luke and
Freebody (2005:1) point out that Four Square is a teaching strategy that make students’ vocabulary acquisition easier for generate students’ writing ability.
Furthermore, Cappeli and Dorfman (2007:1) argue that Four Square is a strategy to help students develop an understanding of both sentence structure and parts of speech.
Otherwiswe, Jhonson (2013:138) also defines that Four Square is to use a planning template made of a square cut in four parts.
Meanwhile, Unsent letter strategy aims to improve students writing ability through lead students write a letter with clear explanation about the structure and the format. Some experts have proposed several definitions about collage strategy as follow.
Based on Ann and Brodine (1994:41) unsent letters are also called because they are seldom mailed. Furthermore, Hutchings and Wert (1996:78) state unsent letters is as the name a letter that unsent. The possibilities for its use are almost limitless. Then, Resource guide for Poirrier (1997:39) defines unsent letters strategy is form role- playing that requires students to write letter to someone under study or as a person involved in the material under discussion.
In here, the writer tries to combine Four Squares and Unsent Letter Strategies.
Both strategies which the writer chosen from several procedures based on the experts. The writer combines these strategies by choosing each procedure into a good strategies as the
writer wants. In Four Square strategy the writer choose the procedure from Norfleet, Boyd and Zimmerman (2011:9). Meanwhile, for Unsent Letter strategy the writer choose the procedure of Sue (2005:1).
The procedure of teaching writing by combining Four Square and Unsent Letter Strategies are : the first, explain to the students that they will be writing a letter today (ULS). The second, give students the following prompt. The students’ letter should be approximately 1-2 pages long (ULS). The third, students fill in the four squares by following direction in the square (FSS). And then, students may work with partners (FSS).
After that, Once students have read the prompt, spend a few moments discussing their purpose in writing the letter. Ask question such as: what is your argument?
How are you going to appeal to your audience to get them on your side? What kinds of evidence will you see to support your reasoning? These questions could be listed on the board or a handout if chosen (ULS). Moreover, students share with the class their solutions (FSS). Then, students may highlight or take notes (FSS). Furthermore, students place the completed worksheets in notebook for reference (FSS). The next class period should be spent completing and editing their letters. Approximately half way through the period, students should get with a partner and review each other letters. Did they accomplish the three questions
mentioned? How might they have improved their argument? How did their argument differ from yours? Students should fill out an evaluation sheet that is turned in with the letter (ULS).
DISCUSSION
In applying these strategies, there are two aspects will be disscused that should be prepared by the teacher before coming to the class, they are preparation and application.
Before starting to teach, the teacher should have some preparation. Those are the important because it determine whethr the teaching and learning will run or not. They are some activities that should be done by the teacher to applies Four Squares and Unsent Letter Strategies in teaching writing. Those are as follows : prepare the lesson plan, choosing a topic or writing material, time allocation, and media.
In application of teaching writing process by combining Four Squares and Unsent Letter Strategies, there some activities that will be done by the teacher. They are pre-teaching activities, whilst-teaching activities, and post teaching-activities. The strategies will be done in whilst-teaching activities, as follows: the first, pre-teaching activities are done to build students’
motivation, background knowledge, and stimulating the students attendance and ask how the students’ feeling.
In whilst-teaching activities, the teacher applies the procedures of Four Squares and Unsent Letter Strategies. The procedures as follows : the first,teacher shows and explains
about the structures of the letter that will be written. The second, teacher also shows and explains about the format of the letter that can be chosen by the students in writing their letter. The third, students have to state about one problem that they have been chosen.
Then, give students the following prompt.
The students’ letter should be approximately 1-2 pages long.
After that, teacher asks think about one problem that occurs in our country, and the problem is the content that the students want to tell to our president in your letter.
Then, Teacher distributes one chart to each of students and asks students to fill the chart with name and today date. Next, fill in the four squares about key ideas that students will state in the letter. Moreover, students may work with partners.
Furthermore, teacher leads students while they work with partner in filling the four squares. Teacher also leads students in finding ideas to the letter content. Think the answer of teacher’s questions and fill the answers into the four squares. Then, teacher asks students to pay attention to the solution that show the students regret to the president.
Choose a good and polite salutation to start the opening the letter. The next, teacher asks students to mark the best salutation by highlight the part and choose the polite one.
Then, teacher lead students to arrange complete letter based on the ideas that they have stated in their four square
chart. Arrange the ideas for the body of the letter. Teacher asks students to write each idea based on their own word. The last, teacher checks students’ letter, checks the copying sentence of the letter and collect the students’ letter.
In post-teaching activities, In post- teaching activity or the end of teaching learning process, the teacher gives some questions to the students. The purposes are to know how far the students understand about the lesson.
CONCLUSION
The writer recommends interesting teaching strategy namely combining of four squares and unsent letter strategies. These strategies help teacher and students in expanding students’ generating ideas in creating sentences, organizing paragraphs and also producing a complete writing text.
This strategy is expected increasingstudents’
ability in writing. Because this strategy is designed to introduce how to produce good sentences into coherence and unity paragraphs.
SUGGESTIONS
Combining of four squares and unsent letter strategies can be an alternative and interesting strategy to create an active writing process. Thus, the writer proposes some suggestions to the teacher who will teach writing by using combining of four
squares and unsent letter strategies as follow:
The first, the teacher should expose some of the sample ideas that are appropriate in relation to the writing text. Then,the teacher should guide students in each group in using the students’
worksheet, creating the correct sentences and organizing paragraphs. The teachers have to circulate among the group to provide assistance and support students’ participation in sharing ideas in group.
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