TEACHING WRITING DESCRIPTIVE TEXT BY COMBINING AUTHOR’S CHAIR WITH FLOWER WRITING STRATEGY AT JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL
By:
Siska Nozalia *)
**) Sesmiyanti, S.S, M.Pd Staff Pengajar Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris STKIP PGRI Sumatera Barat
ABSTRAK
Penulisan makalah ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan kepada pembaca bagaimana cara penerapan strategi ini dalam pengajaran menulis di Sekolah Menengah Pertama. Selain itu makalah ini juga dimaksudkan sebagai pedoman bagi guru-guru bahasa Inggris dalam mengajar, sehingga menjadi daya tarik bagi siswa dalam belajar.
Dalam makalah ini penulis membahas tentang penggabungan dari dua strategi yaitu Author’s Chair dan Flower Writing strategi. Pada bagian ini siswa diberikan sketsa untuk mendeskripsikan sesuatu menjadi sebuah kalimat dan paragraf yang baik setelah itu siswa diajari bagaimana cara mengkoreksi hasil menulis dari siswa yang lain. Kedua strategi ini berfungsi untuk mempermudah siswa dalam mengembangkan ide-ide. Siswa dikondisikan aktif mendiskusikan gagasan mereka sehingga kegiatan pembelajaran menjadi menarik dan kreatif. Guru dapat menerapkan strategi ini dengan bantuan media seperti gambar atau video yang berhubungan langsung dengan apa yang akan diajarkan kepada siswa. Strategi ini akan membantu meningkatkan kemampuan siswa megembangkan ide mereka.
Key word: Author’s Chair, Flower Writing Strategies at Junior High School
*) Penulis
**) Pembimbing
INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of the most important language skill that students need to be mastered in learning English, because of writing is one of the productive skill besides speaking that enable someone to communicate their idea in written form.
By writing, students can express their ideas, their feeling and emotions about something in written form. The student express their ideas into a written form are not easy because of express the ideas do not write word by word and then make them into the sentence. Student should pay more attentions to the ideas, grammatical and organization of writing. They should know how to generate the ideas and how to transfer it into a good writing. It is hoped that what the students write in their writing can be understood by readers easier.
Furthermore, as stated on Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendididikan (KTSP 2006) or School Based Curriculum, that the students are demanded to express ideas either in functional written text or short essay in descriptive and recount form to interact with surrounding. The goal of writing is to make the students be able to produce some texts. The texts are learned by the students in Junior High School such as narrative text, procedure text, descriptive text and recount text. The students should be able to understand the generic structure of each text.
Nevertheless, based on the writer’s experience in teaching practice at the eighth grade of SMPN 2 Kinali Pasaman Barat, most of the students might think writing as a difficult skill. Their ability to write is still not good, sometime writing makes the student bored. Many students say that they do not have anything to write. It seems that they do not know what they should write. If they have ideas they can’t express their ideas in a good sentence and form it into paragraph or correct patterns. It takes long time for them to think. Other students say that writing is a complex skill, because it consists of some aspect that should be considered. For instance, how to write sentences correctly, how to choose suitable words and how to organize ideas well. By pay attention to this aspect, someone can write well and understood by others.
Moreover, the problems are caused by some factors. First, the teacher seldom guides the students to write in the class, teacher usually asks the student to answer the questions on the worksheet. Second, the teacher never asks the students to use the component of writing in writing process, they just ask the students to write best on her explanation. Then, they always ask the student to do exercise on the English book. Last, the teacher seldom though the student how to write by using some stages in writing
like generating idea, drafting, reveiwing, writing, and editing.
There are several strategies that can be used in teaching writing such as Wordless Picture Book, Sentence Stems, You Ought to be in Picture, Flower Writing and Author’s Chair Strategy. Wordless picture is a strategy in which the students do writing based on the wordless picture. Sentence Stems is a teacher’s strategy to guide the students in introducing English language learner to write individually about their experiences by using sentence stems charts. You ought to be in picture strategy is one of the writing strategy that can uses pictures, photograph artwork, or images in teaching and then students write their predictions to them. Then, Author’s Chair Strategy is a strategy to provide feedback to students on their writing: acknowledging its good qualities, making spesific suggetions for improvement and asking thought provoking questions of the student authors.
In fact Flower Writing is a writing strategy in order to help the students improve their writing skill especially in writing a paragraph.
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Writing is a process of stating ideas into printed form in order to convey some information to the readers. There are several opinions from the expert about definition of writing.
Moreover, Linse (2005:98) 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 readers. It means that writing is a skill that is not a simple process, but it is acquired to combine, arrange sentence, and reread them during the process. Then, the product of the writing will be created.
In this paper the writer used Author’s Chair combined with Flower Writing strategies in teaching writing. There are some expert who give definition of selective underlining strategy. Susan et al (2006:58) state that Author’s Chair is a strategy that the final step in the writing process. It mean that the tudents focus to write and they will know about how to develop their ideas into writing achievement in learning process.
Moreover, Jones (2011:3) explains that Flower writing strategy is a simple writing strategy makes the students construct a complete a text by the following the steps provide. It means that this strategy can help the students to develop and to organize their ideas in making a text.
According to Graves and Hansen in Brunners (2011:49) implementation some procedure as follows:
1. Provide students with reading material and questions related to the topic.
2. Tell students to use the questions as a guide for a written response to the reading.
3. Explain that each students will share his or her writing with the class while sitting in the Author’s Chair.
This can be specific chair in front of the roomn or each students’ individual chair can become the Author’s Chair.
4. After completion for the writing project, each students present individual writing to the class.
5. Intruct the audience to make notes and share comments about the writing with the author.
In addition Clark (2007: 147 ) explains how to teach Author’s Chair strategy in some step there are:
1. Students take turn reading their pieces of writing aloud.
2. Group members listen intenly and share their feedback.
3. Once all members of the group have shared their writing and receive feedback.
4. Allow time for students edit and revise their writing.
DISCUSSION 1. Topic
In this paper, the teacher will discuss about descriptive text. The teacher finds out several topics about descriptive text that will be discussed with the students.
2. Time allocation.
The teacher has to psay 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.
3. Media.
Media is essential tool to make teaching and learning process became enjoyable and interesting. In this paper the writer uses the picture to be applied.
1. Pre-teaching activity
There are some activities described as follow:
a. The teacher greets the students pray together b. The teachers asks students about their
previous material
c. The teacher brainstorm to the students by giving some questions related to the picture.
2. Whilst-teaching Activity.
a. Exploration
In exploration this session of teaching and learning process, the teacher uses the combination of Author’s Chair with Flower writing Strategies.
1) Provide students with reading material and questions related to the topic
2) Ask the students to find the appopriate and interesting topic that will be written.
3) The teacher explains about descriptive text 4) Introduce the flower writing graph to the
students that be used in writing process 5) Tell students to use the questions as a guide
for a written response to the reading 6) Find the supporting detail that is related to
the topic at the center of the grapic
7) Recognize the transition words that will put over in writing the text
b. Elaboration
8) Arrange the sentence into a good paragraph 9) Explain that each student will share his
writing with the class while sitting in the author’s chair.
10) After completion of the writing project, each students present individual writing to the class
11) Instruct the audience to make note and comments about their writing with the author.
c. Confirmation
12) The teacher and students discuss about the students exercise
13) The teacher gives appreciation to the student.
3. Post-teaching Activity
a. The teacher persuades students to make resume based on their own understanding b. The teacher asks the students to conclude the
material of that day
c. The teacher gives feedback for the student’
achievement
d. The teacher give evaluation for students e. The teacher closes the lesson
CONCLUSION
Dealing to the discussion above, it can be concluded that in teaching English the teachers must use interesting strategies. This is a goal of teaching and learning. In this paper, the writer gives some strategies that can be used for the English teacher in teaching writing. These strategies are combining both strategies that are Author’s Chair from Brunner (2011:49), with Flower Writing from Holmes (2007:3). The writer chooses these strategies because
these strategies explain how to undestand more details about a text and how the students develop their idea.
Teaching writing by combining Author’s Chair with Flower Writing strategies help the students to remind some important things that should be involved in writing descriptive text such as identification and description about something, place and someone. Then, it makes easy to students to develop their idea in comprehending text. These strategies would helpful as the teacher teach in writing.
SUGGESTION
Referring from conclusion of the paper above, it is suggested to use these strategies for the junior high school students to be interested in writing because writing is the ways to express our feelings, ideas, and thought in a good paragraph. The English teachers are suggested to use Author’s Chair with Flower Writing strategies in teaching writing.
Because it can help the teachers to improve students writing skill.
Then, the writer would like to give suggestions for the English teacher. The first, the teacher should prepare some media for the students to begin the class such as pictures, videos, etc to make the students interest. And then, the teacher should be more active and creative to give contribution for the
students whether in delivering the lesson. The second, the teacher should give the material or appropriate topic with the students condition. Third, the teacher can help the students to solve the problems that be found in writing . And the last, the teacher should be creative and always give motivation for the students to make them enjoyable and happy in writing class
REFERENCES
Brunner. Judi Tilton. 2011. I Don’t Get It !. London:
Rowman and Tittle Field Education
Clark, Sarah Kartchner. 2007. Writing Strategies for Social Studies. Huntington Beach. Shell Education.
Graves. Hansen 2011. Strategies for Teaching English Learners. New York: Pearson education, Inc
Harmer, Jeremi. 2005. How to Teach English, An introduce to the Practice of English Language Teaching. England: Pearson Education limited.
Hyland, Ken. 2000. Second Language Writing. New York: University Press
T. linse, Caroline and David, Nunan. 2005. Practical English Language Teaching: Young Learners.
New York: McGraw-Hill Company.
