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The Use of Riddle for Teaching Writing to Efl

2019

The objective of this research is about using riddle to improve the learners’, especially the English Foreign Learners (EFL) writing skill. The development of teaching learning activity has brought some new ways in teaching learning English activity.  It also relates to the use of technology to support the process of teaching learning activity. The development of technology has also made some applications to support it. Riddle is one of the applications that can be used as a teaching tool to support the process of teaching learning activity. Riddle can also be used as a tool to teach writing. Writing is one of the English skills that should be mastered by the learners, especially EFL. Writing is the most difficult skill in learning English as it relates to many others elements in English such as grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, etc. The participants of this research are the learners in of the English Course at Gading Serpong, Tangerang. Descriptive qualitative was used as the metho...

THE USE OF RIDDLE FOR TEACHING WRITING TO EFL Paramita Kusumawardhani University of Bina Sarana Informatika Jakarta [email protected] Abstract The objective of this research is about using riddle to improve the learners’, especially the English Foreign Learners (EFL) writing skill. The development of teaching learning activity has brought some new ways in teaching learning English activity. It also relates to the use of technology to support the process of teaching learning activity. The development of technology has also made some applications to support it. Riddle is one of the applications that can be used as a teaching tool to support the process of teaching learning activity. Riddle can also be used as a tool to teach writing. Writing is one of the English skills that should be mastered by the learners, especially EFL. Writing is the most difficult skill in learning English as it relates to many others elements in English such as grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, etc. The participants of this research are the learners in of the English Course at Gading Serpong, Tangerang. Descriptive qualitative was used as the method of the research and the EFLs’ paper are used as the instruments of the research. The results of the research are: (1) Most learners were excited when they are asked to make a riddle; (2) The learners could explore the words and sentences related to the riddle; (3) Learners who have good writing skill could make a good riddle, and (4) Learners who are not really good at writing, got some difficulties in exploring and guessing the riddle given by another friends. Keywords: EFL; Riddle; Technology; Writing Introduction The Nature of Technology Technology has entranced into almost in every home and schools. It makes the educators consider the way of its usage in education. It also makes the changing of the way of teaching learning. Technology has become common in usage and it cannot be excluded from teaching or learning. The activity of teaching learning has also got the impact of them. It means that not only the learners but also the teachers or educators should adapt with this changing. Teachers or educators who cannot implement the technology in their life, will “lose contact” with their students. 208 Before teaching the learners or students about using technology in teaching learning process, the teacher or educators themselves have to invest technology as much as they can. By using technology, the information, references related to teaching learning activity are easily accessed both for teachers and learners. Technology can be used effectively as a cognitive tool as well as an instructional media. (Bruce and Levin, 2001) suggested that technology can be helpful in classroom settings by encouraging inquiry, helping communication, constructing teaching products, and assisting students’ self expression. Muir-Herzig (2004:113) states that teaching and learning via technology engage learners in active situations of critical thinking to solve problems, share ideas with others and reflect what they have known. Classes which use technology shift from teacher-centered to studentcentered classes. Pitler et. al. (2007: 3) refers to the advantages of using technology in classes; they state that it enhances learning and understanding, and it encourages students to take active part in the learning process. It also has a positive impact to shift education from being teacher-centered to student-centered. The Nature of Riddle The development of teaching learning activity has brought some varieties of teaching media. There are now many teaching media that can be used to improve the learners’ skills. Riddle is one of the teaching media that can be used to improve the learners’ skills. Defining riddles precisely is hard and has attracted a fair amount of scholarly debate. The first major modern attempt to define the riddle was by Robert Petsch in 1899, (Petsch, 1899). Many linguists have also been attracted by riddles. They are attracted as riddles can be studied from many points of view of linguistics. A riddle is a statement or question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddle (2019) mentioned that riddles has two 209 types: enigmas, which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and conundra, which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer. Taylor (1951:3) explain that riddle is a universal art and can be cited from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch and Filipino sources amongst many others. Georges and Dundes (1963:111-118) suggested that "a riddle is a traditional verbal expression which contains one or more descriptive elements, a pair of which may be in opposition; the referent of the elements is to be guessed". Charades, droodles, jokes, and even proverbs can be used in riddle. Moreover, Maranda (1976:127-137) stated that riddles made a point of playing with conceptual boundaries and crossing them for the intellectual pleasure of showing that things are not quite as stable as they seem. The Nature of Writing There are four languages skills and components that should be known by the learners or students in learning English, they are listening, speaking, reading and writing. They are very important for the learners or students, especially EFL, to be able to write in English for their future life. Informal writing can be used as a start to learn to write, and ICT can be used to accommodate this. Writing is the most difficult part in English subject as what it is said different from what it is written. (Ron White and Valerie Ardnt, 2011) stated that writing is far from being a simple matter of transcribing language into written symbols; it is a thinking process in its right. So, before the learners starting to write an English composition, they should master the English pattern correctly. Writing is one of the skills in learning English. Writing skill is related to the learners’ competence. It emphasizes on writing ability such as the 210 production of a variety of genres and rhetorical features, but also including language-specific abilities like the use of a range of vocabulary and syntactic structures. Some learners, especially EFL have difficulties to express their ideas through writing. The difficulties are sometimes about choosing the topic of their writing. Therefore, they need some helps to find out the inspiration about what to write so they can express their ideas through writing easily. A good technique in writing should be chosen to ease the teaching learning process. Writing can be said well if it can give information or messages clearly and creates effective verbal dialogue to readers. It aims to give point of view of the ideas in text where it organizes in different way of writing such as narration, description, exposition, and argumentation. When students write a paragraph, they try to explore what they are thinking in mind, and they also concern with the language, meaning, and the structural of context related to English language acquisition as second or foreign language. Writing must be related to the content; the language and grammatical rule are related to writing. They should be done well in order to avoid misunderstood so the learners have to use correct sentences by creating a well written text and giving attention to the arrangement of words their composition to express their idea and to give the value of the writing to readers. Writing is seen as a product constructed from the writer’s command of grammatical and lexical knowledge, and writing development is considered to be the result of imitating and manipulating models provided by the teacher. For many who adopt this view, writing is regarded as an extension of grammar-a means of reinforcing language patterns through habit formation and testing learners’ ability to produce well-formed sentences. Developing writing is related to the writer’s knowledge of language and writing exposure and writing process is the way the writers give their 211 ideas and messages to readers in the form of text. Various ways of writing such as narration, description, classification, comparison and contrast, argumentation and etc. can be used to express or share the writers’ ideas. Here are some ways to express and share the writers’ ideas, (1) Narration. It is a basic writing strategy for presenting past event or activities. It can be used for a variety of purposes such as to illustrate and support ideas with anecdotes, to entertain readers with revealing stories, to analyze causes and possible effects with scenarios, and to explain procedures with process narrative; (2) Description. It is a strategy used to create a dominant impression. For example, describing a place in order to set a scene and make readers aware of its atmosphere and to describe people to show a kind of person’s performance; (3) Classification. It aims to classify number of items or ideas into a small number of classes. In a classification of paragraph, it is important to set up adequate categories and define what goes into categories; (4) Comparison and contrast are to compare similar aspects or to contrast different aspects of two subjects, people or things, and (5) Argumentation. It is to argue ideas or opinion by giving some argues to proof the concept or research. A good paragraph must give readers complete information and unified by a controlling idea. It is organized form and can be understood what the paragraph is going to be about. Based on the theories above, it can be concluded that there are some kinds in writing, such as narration, description, classification, comparison and argumentation. Writing is the most difficult part in learning English as it needs to master all English aspects, such as grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, etc to make a good writing. They are needed in order to avoid misunderstanding between the writer and the readers or between the teachers and the learners. Research Methodology 212 The data for this research was taken from the learners’ story paper and there were about 10 pieces of the learners’ paper used as the research instruments. Descriptive method was used to do the research. There are three types of descriptive method, they are an observational method, case study method, and survey method. The observational method as a part of a descriptive method was used to take the data. Descriptive method was used as (Best, 1974) explained that descriptive method is the method which tries to give the explanation about the symptoms relating to the recent situation. It consists on the effort of giving the note, the analysis and the interpretation of the recent symptoms which have the characteristics as follows: try to give the fact, straight to the problem and the recent variables aren’t manipulated by the researcher. Identifying, classifying, analyzing and correcting were done as the procedures of the research. They were done in order to know about the advantageous and disadvantageous of using a movie for teaching writing for EFL. The EFL’s riddle paper was used as the instruments of the research. They were taken from 10 learners. It was taken by giving them some words as clues then asked other learners to write the answers of the riddle on the paper given. Findings and Interpretation The learners were asked to write some words, which still connected, on the paper given then the paper were given to another student. That another student should guess the core words based on the words given then wrote the answer on the paper given. The results are: 213 Figure 1 Figure 2 214 Figure 3 Figure 4 215 Figure 5 Figure 6 216 Figure 7 Figure 8 217 Figure 9 Figure 10 218 Based on the results above, they showed that riddle can be used to improve the EFL writing skill. They could guess their friends’ riddle even their friends only gave some words, and then another student should write the correct answer in the bubble in the centre of the boxes. Conclusion and Suggestion Riddle can be used to improve the EFL writing skill. The words used are the simplest words or sentences. It was done in order to ease the EFL in connecting the words or sentences then guessing the answer. The educator or teacher can vary the riddles depend on the EFL. The educator or teacher should be creative in giving riddles to the learners or EFL. It is done in order to improve the EFL skill especially in writing. REFERENCES Best, John, W. (1974). Research in Education. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Bruce, B., & Levin, J. (2001). Roles for new technologies in language arts: inquiry, communication, construction, and expression. In J.Jenson, J. Flood, D. Dundes, Alan. (1975). On the Structure of the Proverb, in Analytic Essays in Folklore, ed. by Richard Dorson. Mouton: The Hauge. Maranda, Elli Köngäs. (1976). Riddles and Riddling: An Introduction. The Journal of American Folklore, 89, 127–137. doi:10.2307/539686; JSTOR 539686. Muir-Herzig, Rozalind G. (2004). Technology and Its Impact in the Classroom. Computers and Education. 42, 111-131. Petsch, Robert. (1899). Neue Beitrëge zur Kenntnis des Volksrätsels. Palaestra, 4. Pitler, Howard; Hubbell, Elizabeth R.; Kuhn, Matt. (2007). Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. http://thelearningweb.wikispaces.com/file/view/Using_Technology_ with_Classroom_Instruction_That_Works.pdf. Ron, White, and Valerie Ardnt. (2011). Process Writing. London: Longman Group. Taylor, Archer. (1951). English Riddles from Oral Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riddle. Riddle. Retrieved at July 8th, 2019. 219