Improving The Students' Achievement On Writing Descriptive Text by Using Realia Ika Afridah Siti Aisyah Ginting
Improving The Students' Achievement On Writing Descriptive Text by Using Realia Ika Afridah Siti Aisyah Ginting
Improving The Students' Achievement On Writing Descriptive Text by Using Realia Ika Afridah Siti Aisyah Ginting
*Ika Afridah
*Siti Aisyah Ginting
Abstract
Students’ achievement in writing descriptive text is very low, in this study
Realia was applied to solve the problem. Action research in conducted for the
result and the technique to collect the data, qualitative and quantitative are applied
in this research. The subject of this research is grade VII in Junior High School
(SMP N 2 ) Kisaran. In the first evaluation (66, 2926) increased to the mean of
second evaluation (76, 7560) and the mean of third evaluation (87, 0243).
Observation result showed that the students gave their good attitudes and
responses during teaching and learning process by applying the application of
Realia. Questionnaire and interview report showed that students agree that the
application of Realia had helped them in writing descriptive text. It can be
conclude that the students’ achievement is improved when thay are tought through
Realia.
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INTRODUCTION
The Background of The Study
Based on the b In learning the English language, there are four skills
should be taught to students. They are speaking, listening, reading and writing. In
practice, learning the lessons taught writing after speaking, listening and reading.
But this does not state that learning writing is not important. In fact, since writing
is a very important lesson learning why writing is taught after the third important
element is taught and writing also is the very difficult subject for the students. It is
related to Oshima and Hogue (1999:3) that writing, particularly academic writing
is not easy. It takes study and practice to develop this skill. For both native
composition for your English class or a lab report for your chemistry class is
never complete; that is, it is always possible to review and revise, and review and
revise again.
themselves, explore and explain ideas. Student can convey their ideas in their
mind by organizing them into a good text so that the others know them and they
can think critically. Therefore, learning is very important for improved writing in
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many people choose writing as a means of effective and efficient communication
junior and senior high schools curriculum require students to be able to write
some kind of genre in writing. They are narrative, recount, descriptive, report,
Based on the above, the descriptive text is one genre that must be mastered
thing in such a way that the reader can visualize the topic and enter into the
writer’s experience.
In fact, not all students are able to write descriptive paragraph properly
and in accordance with the existing elements in the descriptive text. Based on the
Teachers of English already taught the material to students well but the students
still had the problem in writing descriptive paragraph. In addition, the researcher
also had looked the teachers of English language teaching by lecture, and then
media.
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From the above, student's ability to write descriptive text was very less
because the learning methods that has been adopted by teachers of English
language has been a method that does not fit anymore in this day because it
reduced the interest and liveliness of the students in the learning process so that
students were bored and did not want to continue learning as they should.
descriptive text by using media and the media that is used in this study is Realia.
Realia can increase the students’ ability in writing descriptive text and will be
descriptive text properly and in accordance with the existing elements in the
descriptive paragraph.
text. The media that will be used to improve students’ achievement on writing
descriptive text is Realia. In other words, the study will be concentrated on the
genre of descriptive.
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The Objective of The Study
In relation to the problem, the objective of the study is to investigate and
using realia.
and,
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Achievement
Travers (1970:447) states that achievement was the result of what an
individual has learned from some education experience. Additionally, Yelon,
Weinstein, and Weener (1977:301) express achievement as the successfulness of
individual, while another source Smith and Hudgins (1964:95) says that
achievement was to do one’s best, to be successful to accomplish tasks requiring
skill and effort and to be recognized by authority.
Based on the opinions above, it can be concluded that achievement was
the result, the successfulness, the extent or ability, the progress in learning
education experiences that the individual indicates relation with his/her
educational learning. Achievement concerns with what someone has actually
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learnt whereas aptitude was the potential for learning something. In other words,
achievement was a success in reaching particular goal/status or standard,
especially by effort, skill, courage, and so on.
Writing
Writing was a process of formulating and organizing ideas in right words
to deliver the aim and present them on a piece of paper. According to Jones in R.
Cooper and Odell (1977:33) writing was synonymous with discourse, and
discourse was discussed in terms of its aims, it relate to the function of language,
and in terms of its feature, which are the separate elements, devices, and
mechanism of language.
On the other hand, Reinking, Hard and Osten (1993:188) state that writing
was a way of communication and of course communicates all the time. And then
Deporter and Heracki (2002:179) explain that writing was a whole brain activity,
which use bright brain side (emotion) and left brain side (logic). Although right
and left brain sides are used in writing, right brain side has a big position because
it was a place which appears new ideas and emotion.
From the explanation above, we can state that writing was a whole brain
activity to formulate and organize ideas in right words to deliver and
communicate the aims to the reader and present it on a piece of paper.
Descriptive Text
A descriptive text was a piece of writing that was intended to convey
meaning to the reader through sensory details and provides image to the reader
(http://www.ehow.com). Additionally, descriptive text was a paragraph may be
defined as a group of sentences that are closely related in thought and which serve
one comment purpose often used to describe what a person looks like and acts
like, what a place looks like, and what an object looks like (http://www.examples-
help.org.uk). Furthermore, Pardiyono (2007:34) state that description paragraph
was a type of written text paragraph, in which has the specific function to describe
about an object (living or non-living things) and it has the aim that was giving
description of the object to the reader clearly.
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From the definition above, it can be concluded that description paragraph
was a paragraph that describes a particular person, place or event in great deal.
Description writing vividly portrays a person, place, or things in such a way that
the reader can visualize the topic and enter into the writer’s experience. It was a
way to enrich others forms of writing or as a dominant strategy for developing a
picture of what something looks like.
Furthermore, Jolly (1984:470) assert there are five types of descriptive
writing paragraph. They are:
a. Describing Process
Describing a process not only explains how something was done, but also
explains why it was done and what was needed to complete the process.
b. Describing and event
To describe an event, a writer should be able to memorize and remember
what happened in the event. Supposed the writer will write about Tsunami
that was happened in Japan. In this case, he / she has to explain all details
related to the event, so that the readers can imagine the real situation and
condition.
c. Describing a personality
In describing a person, the first thing that we do was recognizing his/her
individual characteristics. We need to describe people occurs fairly areas of
physical attribute (hair, eyes), emotional (warm, nervous), moral attributes
(greedy, honest, worthy, trust), and intellectual (cleverness, perception)
d. Describing a place
Presenting something concrete was the way to describe place, for example: a
home, a hospital, and school.
e. Describing an object
To describe an object accurately was done by providing the physical
characteristics of the object such as the color, form, shape, and so on.
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Part of Descriptive Text
There are three part of descriptive text. They are: 1. Social function, which
was to describe a particular person, places, or things. 2. Generic Structure, which
was divided in to two. They are: a) identification: identifies the phenomenon to be
described, and b) description: describe parts, qualities, characteristics. 3.
Significant lexico-grammatical feature, that was focus on specific participant, use
simple present tense. (http://teacherside.blogspot.com). Other source, Pardiyono
(2007:34) maintain that three parts of descriptive, they are (1) communicative
purpose, that was to describe an object (human and non-human). (2) rhetorical
structure, there are two parts of rhetorical structure a) identification, that was
statement that consist of one topic to describe; b) description, that was consist of
the detail description about object that identify in identification, and (3)
grammatical patterns, it was needed to understand that in descriptive paragraph,
declarative sentence was used and using present forms.
From the two explanations above, we can conclude that the part of
descriptive paragraph was divided in to three parts, they are:
a. Social Function
Describe the characteristics and conditions of the object either person, thing,
place, or animal) by using adjective and attribute.
b. Generic structure
It was divided into two part they are a) identification was to identify the
phenomenon that was described, and b) description was to describe the
qualities, characteristics, condition, and part of an object in detail.
c. Grammatical feature
In description paragraph, it uses present tense as normally.
Realia
According to Adrianne and Jordan (2000:23) the word ‘Realia’ sounds vaguely
Latin. Realia means using real items found in everyday life as media to teaching
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creating a link between the objects and the word or phrase they represent. Realia
breathes life into new vocabulary, the chances of the students remembering the
new words have taught those increases, and automatically can write or share about
the object or to provide experience on which to build and to provide students with
opportunities to use all the senses in learning. E.g. take the word biscuit: the
touch and smell of the object. Realia does not have to be limited to food or drink.
Timetables, tickets, newspapers, clothes or in fact any object can think of can be
While using realia in the classroom is not always possible, it is usually the best
choice if the students are learning all they can do about topic. If the real thing is
not available, the teacher must move down the continuum from the concrete (real
or illustration. However, each move down the continuum causes the loss of some
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2) Collecting Data
Begin to collect items that can be stored in the classroom and organize
them so that they can be easily accessed for instruction. The students try to find
the objects which are used in writing in front of the class. They must know what
type of the object or how much it is. They know all of things about the objects.
After knowing all of things about the objects, the students have many
vocabularies. For example is fruit. They know what are the English of warna
(color), bentuk (model), batang (stem), and daun (leaf). They do not know before,
but after learning using realia they like building a library of realia by themselves.
METHODOLOGY
This research was conducted as an action research procedure since
involved a substantive act with a research procedure to find the improvement.
Stringer (2007:1) maintains that action research was systematic approach to
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investigation that enables people to find effective solutions to problems they
confront in their everyday life. Action research focused on specific situations and
localized solutions. Action research provided the means by which people in
schools, business and community organizations; teachers; and health and human
services may increase the effectiveness of the work in which they are engaged
In this research, the data was collected by quantitative and qualitative
approach. Quantitative data was collected by administrating composition text and
qualitative was one research method that was describing the situation and the
event (Sugyono, 2004:4).
Quantitative data was collected through evaluation sheet which
administrated by the researcher. For gathering the qualitative data, the researcher
used observation sheet, interview sheet and questionnaire. Observation sheet was
used to identify all the condition that happened during the teaching learning
process including teacher, students and the context of situation that were done by
the collaborator, interview sheet was used when the writer want to identify the
problems occurred in the learning process and questionnaire as the personal
records which usually taken by the writer that was written up daily.
A collaborator was asked to observe and evaluate all the situations during
the teaching learning process, the researcher, the students and the class in the
teaching learning process.
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21-25 12
16-20 11
11-15 8
6-10 2
Number of Students 41
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in asking questions and they discussed every problem that they faced with their
own team and pair so that their scores also kept improving.
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There were 8 students who got the improvement of the score 11-15. The
score improvement was not too high almost students in this range were smart
students. There was one student who got the score just 75 in the last evaluation. It
was NHL, but NHL still passed the evaluation. Because they were very smart
students, sometimes they did not pay attention to the teacher and in their own
team, they were not serious to hear the explanation. But, they kept improve their
score until the last writing evaluation because of the realia.
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From the table above, it was seen that students’ score kept improving. In
writing evaluation I, the lowest score was 60 and the highest score was 80. In
writing Evaluation II, the lowest score was 67 and the highest score was 88
whereas in the last writing evaluation, the lowest score was 81 and the highest
score was 94. It showed the significant improvement in students’ writing
descriptive text.
The improvement of students’ score in writing descriptive text through
realia also can be seen from the mean of the students’ score in every writing
evaluation. The mean of students’ score can be seen below:
2718
X̃ = 100 % = 66,2926
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3147
X̃ = 100 % = 76,7560
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3568
X̃ = 100 % = 87,0243
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The mean of the students’ score in the first meeting was the lowest of all
meetings. In the last meeting, the students’ score improved. From the data
analysis, the mean score of the students’ writing increased from 66, 2926 to 87,
0243. It meant that the ability of students in writing descriptive text was
improved.
In this research, the indicator of successful in writing descriptive text was
if 75 % of students have got score up to 75 in their writing evaluation because the
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English passing grade at the school was 75. The number of the students who were
competent in writing descriptive text was calculated below:
2
P1 = X 100 % = 4, 87 %
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30
P1 = X 100 % = 73, 17 %
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41
P1 = X 100 % = 100 %
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In writing evaluation I, there were 2 students who got point 75 up. The
percentage of students’ achievement in descriptive text kept increasing when TPS
method was applied. In the first cycle, 4, 87 % students got points 75 up whereas
in the second cycle 100 % students who got points 75 up. The range of the first
meeting (4, 87%) and the last meeting (100%) was 87,0243 %. It had been proved
that 87, 0243% students got the good score on their writing achievement. It can be
concluded that realia worked effectively and efficiently in helping students in
improving their achievement in writing descriptive text.
Qualitative Data
The qualitative data were taken from observation sheet, questionnaire
sheet and interview that gained within two cycles.
Observation Sheet
From the result of observation sheet, it can be concluded that teaching
learning process by applying realia run well. The situation of teaching learning
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process was comfort, lively, and enjoyable. Because from the data that was taken
from the first (I) meeting to the last (VI) meeting we can find out that the Note in
the data got good and very good. It means the score in this data was just gotten
from 3 to 4.
So this TPS method created a good environment in teaching learning
writing in which students became active in the process of writing, focus their
mind to the teachers’ explanation, and share in their team and pair and then finish
in individually. In individually work, the students could improve their confidence
to finish the work because they had discussed in team and pair.
Interview
From the interview data those were taken by the teacher and the students
from the first meeting and the last meeting, we could find out that the teacher was
very interesting to the students because the students were very active and enjoyed
with English but students ability in writing descriptive text was not good enough
and then the teacher did not have effort to improve it.
From the interview with the students in the first meeting, it can be found
out that the students very interesting with English and most of the students like to
write descriptive text, because from 6 students that the writer interviewed said
like. So from this data we can conclude that most of the students like to write the
descriptive text. That was why it was needed to improve their achievement in
writing descriptive text by the application of realia.
From the second interview that was taken from teacher, it can be find out
that the application of realia in teaching learning process especially in writing
descriptive text was very helpful to improve the ability of students in writing
descriptive text. And according to the teacher this method was very good because
can make the students became active and enjoy the lesson.
Furthermore, from the last interview that was taken from the students it
can be find out that most of the students like this method and the said that this
method was very good to improve their achievement in writing descriptive text
because they could be active and enjoy the material. And from the 6 students, all
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of them said realia was very good and just one student said that it was very busy
but the student also like.
So, from the entire interview, it can be concluded that realia was very
good to improve the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text at SMP N 2
Kisaran grade VII-4 and the teacher will apply realia in teaching learning process
not only writing but also another subject.
Questionnaire
From the result of questionnaire, it can be found out that realia can
improve the achievement of students because from the data no one of the students
fill in disagree and strongly disagree then no more than 4 students fill in the
neutral. So most of the students fill in agree and strongly agree. It meant that this
realia as very good for the students.
In significantly, from the data that was taken from questionnaire
2percentage of strongly agree was 145 with mean 44, 2073%, agree 157 with
mean 47, 8658 % , neutral 26 with mean 7, 69268 % and disagree and strongly
disagree 0 %. So, from this questionnaire data we can concluded that the students
was very interesting and enjoy the realia in teaching learning process especially in
writing descriptive text.
Besides that, from the data that was taken from the questionnaire sheet 2 it
can be found in the first statement that the percentage of students who chosen a
was 58, 5365 %, b was 14, 6341 %, c was 19, 51% and d was 9, 7560 %. It meant
that most of students had learned to work to gather from this realia. So they were
active in teaching learning process. And then from the statement 3 the students
who chosen a is 53, 6585%, b is 24,3902 %, c is 12, 1951 and d is 97560, %. It
meant that most of students had learned about pair accountability and pair
responsibility. In additional, from the statement 3 the students who chosen a is
78,048, b was , b is 7,3170 %, c is 9, 7560% and d is 4, 8780 %. It meant that
most of students in this research had learned to produce something alone.
From the all questionnaire data, it can be concluded that the students were
very interesting and enjoying the realia and they the students were not only
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improve their achievement in writing descriptive text but also improve their
teamwork, responsibility and self confidence.
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CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Conclusion
Having analyzed the data that have been presented in the previous chapter,
it was found that average scores of students in every evaluation kept improving. It
can be said that there was a significant improvement on the students’ achievement
in writing descriptive text by applying the application of Realia. It can be seen
from the improvement of mean of students’ score, namely: the mean of first
evaluation (66, 2926) increased to the mean of second evaluation (76, 7560) and
the mean of third evaluation (87, 0243). The score continuously improved from
the first evaluation to the third evaluation. Observation result showed that the
students gave their good attitudes and responses during teaching and learning
process by applying the application of Realia. Questionnaire and interview report
showed that students agree that the application of Realia had helped them in
writing descriptive text. it can be concluded that the application of Realia
significantly improved students’ achievement in writing descriptive text.
Suggestion
The result of this study showed that the application of Realia could
improve students’ achievement in writing descriptive text. In relation to the
conclusion above, some points are suggested, as follow:
1. The English teacher are suggested to use Realia as teaching method to
stimulate the students’ learning writing spirit in teaching writing process.
2. For the readers who are interested for further study (university students)
related to this research should explore the knowledge to enlarge the
understanding about how to improve students’ achievement in writing and
search another reference.
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REFERENCES
Oshima, A. And Hogue. 1999. Writing Academic English; Third Edition. United
Stringer, Ernest T. 2007. Action Research Third Edition. United State of America:
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