THE USE OF PICTURE SERIES TO INCREASE STUDENTS’ RECOUNT TEXT

WRITING ACHIEVEMENT

Shafa Khairunnisa1, Patuan Raja2, Khairun Nisa3

FKIP Universitas Lampung, Jl. Prof. Dr. Soemantri Bojo Negoro No. 1, Rajabasa, Bandar
Lampung1,2,3

1
Correspondence e-mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

This research was to find out the increase of the students’ writing achievement of recount text
after the students were taught by using picture series as the media in teaching writing. This
research used quantitative research conducted through one group the pre-test and the post-test
design, because the students’ writing performance was measured in one group of participants
before and after the treatment. The population was the eighth-grade students of SMPN 1
Pringsewu in the academic year of 2022/2023. The sample of this research was VIII.3 class,
which consisted of 31 students. This research used a writing test as the instrument. The pre-test
and the post-test were used to collect the data, and then the pre-test and the post-test scores were
analyzed using Paired Sample T-test. The result showed there was a statistically significant
difference between the mean score the pre-test and the post-test (63.21 to 79.27) with the gain
16.064 and the significant value 0.000 < 0.05 (based on the hyphothesis criteria) and t value
11.132 is higher than the t table 2.0423. Regarding the findings, all aspects of writing improved.
Organization showed the most improvement, while the language use aspect showed the least
improvement. The problems faced by students were a lack of vocabulary, confusion with the use
of simple past tense, and difficulties in developing their ideas. Based on these results, it can be
concluded that the use of picture series significantly enhances students’ writing achievement in
recount text.
Keywords: Picture Series, recount text, writing.
I. INTRODUCTION

Writing skill is important and must be learned. In fact, the basic skill is not easy to master well,
especially for English students in learning English as a foreign language. Writing is a
complicated skill for learners at all of levels. According to Brown (2001), written products are
the result of thinking, drafting, and revising, which require specialized skills on how to generate
ideas, organize them coherently, discourse markers and rhetorical conventions coherently into a
written text, revise a text for clearer meaning, edit a text for appropriate grammar and produce a
final product.

According to Richards and Renandya (2002), writing is the most difficult skill for L2 learners to
master. The difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas but also in translating
these ideas into readable text. Although writing is difficult to learn, but in fact, writing is needed
to learn a second language. Writing is not easy, especially for students, because writing is not
just about putting ideas on paper.

According to Raimes (1987), writing is a skill in expressing ideas, feelings, and thoughts
arranged in words, sentences, and paragraphs using eyes, brains, and hands. From this statement,
it can be said that in writing, we involve our brain to think about the ideas and then write them
down into sentences. But in reality, many students complain that they do not know how to write
and can not connect the sentences into coherent ideas.

Teaching writing is not easy for a second language, foreign language, or even first language. It
needs a process in which a learner will learn to think about the topic, bridge their experiences,
make outlines, set main ideas, and develop sentences into good paragraphs until they come to a
final version of their writing. That is why when students learn to write, at the same time, they
also learn to think.

According to this, Tchudi and Yates (1983) state that learning to write involves learning to
think, and writing is unique in allowing students to think and display the products of their
thinking in a form that invites further contemplation. Based on the explanation above, teaching
writing not only focuses on how to write but also concerns maximizing the brain's capacity to
think. It will help students to get used to use their thoughts.
In this research, the researcher focuses on writing because writing is the more difficult to teach.
Based on the curriculum, for the eighth-grade of junior high school, one basic competence it to
have a good ability in writing recount text. The students must be able to write text based on the
material in recount text. The eighth-grade students at SMPN 1 Pringsewu, the teacher explained
that teaching writing is very difficult. The students’ writing ability in recount text was not
satisfying, because there are some factors like not using grammar correctly, not having enough
vocabulary, and they considered writing boring and difficult. For example on grammatical error
such as, “I go to the beach last week ago”. It’s wrong because based on the grammar it should
“I went to the becah last week”. In addition the data above, the teacher also explains that they
have low motivation and are not interested in doing their assignment since the writing activities.
Besides the reason above, usually the students feel fed up with the media used in teaching
writing process. Based on the explanation above, the researcher concludes that the students
need effective media to help them learn writing.

In this study, the researcher used picture series as the media to make learning writing easier
because it has many chronological illustrations that it is helpful way for students to write. By
using a picture series, the attention of students will be more focused, so pictures can create their
inspirations. Their hope to know the content of the massage of that picture and they can write it
in a composition. To improve students’ writing skill in recount text writing, this study applied
picture series as a media to help students in their writing ability. Yunus (1981) describes picture
series as numbers of linked pictures which form series of sequences in order to tell a sequence
of events or a story.

These pictures can represent the image of people, animals, things, or events. Harmer (2004)
proposes several activities of story tasks that the students can have. They are dramatic pictures, a
series of pictures of random objects, a series of pictures in sequence, and a headline or caption. .
It helps the students to develop ideas to write a text.the students are able to see the picture
clearly. The students also can understand the whole content of the pictures because the first
picture related to the second picture, and so on. It also can build the students’ motivation in
learning English especially in writing. In this research, the researcher modified the picture series
to teach writing a recount text for eighth grade students of junior high school.
The researcher believed that by implementing picture series as a media in teaching writing
recount text can help the students develop the ideas that they will put in their recount text
writing. In other words, by looking at the series of picture, it will help the students to make the
content of their writing relate with the topic and the students will have imagination about
pictures they see.

II. METHODS
This research used a quantitative method which used pre-experimental design. The researcher
investigated whether there was a significant improvment of students’ writing achievement. The
instruments of this research was a writing test. The population of this research was the eighth-
grade students of SMPN 1 Pringsewu and the sample was VIII.3 which consisted of 31
students. The researcher gave a pre-test to the students to know their initial writing ability.
After giving a pre-test, the researcher conducted the treatment using picture series as media in
writing. Then, the researcher gave a post-test to find out the students’ writing achievement after
being taught by using picture series. And the last, the researcher calculated the data to find out
the result by using Repeated Measures T-Test.

III. RESULT AND DISCUDDION

Result
In order to see whether the objectives of the research can be achieved or not, the researcher
analyzed the test result of the pre-test and the post-test which is displayed in table 1.
Table 1. Gain of Students’ Writing Score in the Pre-Test and Post-test

Mean Score of Pret-test Mean Score of Pos-test Gain

63.210 79.274 16.064

In the table 1, it can be seen that the mean score of the pre-test is 63.21 and the mean score of the
post-test is 79.24. The gain between the score of the pre-test and the post-test is 16.06. It means
that there is a significant improvement of students’ in recount text writing by using Picture
Series.

Table 2. The improvement of students writing achievement in each aspect of writing

Aspect of Mean score of Mean Score of Gain Score Percentage
writing Pre-test Post-test
Content 19.94 24.78 4.84 16.13%
Organization 13.54 17.09 3.55 17.75%
Vocabulary 13.04 16.43 3.39 16.95%
Language use 13.56 17.22 3.66 14.64%
Mechanics 2.88 3.70 0.82 16.40%
From the table, it can be seen the aspect of writing that improves the most and the least after the
use of picture series in teaching writing recount text are organization and language use.

Table 3. Repeated Measures Test

Paired Samples Test

Paired Differences t df Sig. (2-

tailed)
Mean Std. Std. 95% Confidence
Deviatio Error Interval of the
n Mean Difference

Lower Upper

Pair 1 Pre-Test - 8.0351 1.4431 -19.0118 -13.1172 -11.132 30 .000

Pos-test 16.06
45

From the table 2, showed the calculation results for the two-tailed values. We can see that the
significance of the test is 0.000. It can also supported by evidence that veriefies those statement
was the t-value which showed higher number than t-table by having the result 11.132 > 2.0423.
It means that H1 is accepted. It indicates that the treatments that given by the researcher had
better beneficial impact on the students' improvement in writing recount text. It can be said that
using the Picture series has significantly improved the students' achievement in writing recount
text at the eighth grade of SMPN 1 Pringsewu.

Discussion

This section discussed the research findings. From the result explained before, it was found that
there was a significant improvement in students' writing recount text after teaching by using
picture series. The detail of the implementation picture series can improve students’ in writing
recount text achievement. Based on the statistical calculation on SPSS, it was a significant
improvement in students' writing recount text. The researcher analyzed the students’ scores to
know whether there was an improvement of students’ writing achievement. The result showed
that the mean score of the pre-test was 63.21 and the post-test as 79.27. The improvement of the
means score was about 16.064. It can be seen from the fact that during the pre-test, the students
were still confused about recount text.

Before the researcher conducted the research, the researcher also asked an initial observation
where the researcher asked the English teacher whether the students’ grades at the school were
still relatively low. Most of them also had a lack of vocabulary and they could not express their
ideas well. In this research, recount text was used as treatment, but the students forgot what kind
of tense they must use when they want to write a text requiring certain type of aspect like recount
text, which uses past tense in one of the language features. The example for the ideas did not
stand out well and confusing sentences with a wrong sentence structure, capitalization, and
vocabulary, “We go to the beach in lampung barat the famously beautifull.” In the sentence, the
verb was still wrong. Recount text used past tense not present tense, the word “go” it should be
“went”. The capitalization place “lampung barat” it should be “Lampung Barat”, and the spelling
of the word “beautifull” it should be “beautiful”.

During the treatment, students were excited to use picture series as the media in teaching writing;
students had enthusiasm in learning especially when they discussed in the class. When they were
asked to work in groups, their enthusiasm increased and they paid attention when the researcher
explained the material. According to Wright (1989), by using picture series can contribute to
improving the students’ interest and motivation in the teaching learning process. Students felt
excited and enjoyed the writing activity.

The result of the post-test was better. The students had shown better performance in their writing
tasks. Their spelling was getting better. They also managed to identify the verb tense and verb
correctly. The capitalization was also getting better. Then, they can easily develop their ideas. It
is because the learning process using picture series focused to make it easier for students to
compose and think about a sentence and arrange it into a paragraph, and there was also a revising
process so that students could correct mistakes in writing. So, this result made a good significant
progress in students’ writing performance, it because the use of picture series after they taught.
In this research, all of the aspects were improved. The organization aspect improved the most,
while the language use aspect improved the least. It happened because picture series inherently
provide a visual chronology of events. This visual aid helped students organize their thoughts
sequentially, making it easier for them to structure their recount text in a coherent and
chronological manner. Before students even begin writing, the picture series is a planning tool.
Students can create an idea or written outline of the key events they want to include in their
experience by analyzing the visuals. When students had a plan, it contributed to a more
organized and well-structured narrative. While in language use aspect, the problem was when
students had visual aids such as a series of pictures, they may focus more on describing the
events rather than using past tense as the language features. This can result in students forgetting
that the language use in recount text is past tense, not present tense, so that the sentences they
make do not match the language style.

It can be seen from the comparison between the students’ the pre-test score and the post-test
score. And, It concluded that there was a significant improvement in students writing
achievement of recount text after they taught by using picture series.

IV. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

Conclusion
This research aims to determine whether there was a significant improvement in students writing
recount text after being taught by using picture series in students’ recount text writing
achievement. Concerning the study, it was concluded that:

The use of Picture Series in teaching writing recount text positively affects students’ ability to
write recount text. It could be seen from the significant improvements of students’ writing score
in the pretest and post-test. It happened because picture series can stimulate the students’ ideas; it
helps them generate their ideas and write recount text well. Unlike before the treatment, the
students had the problem of lacking ideas and vocabularies. It can be concluded that the
implementation of Picture Series effective in improving students’ achievement in writing recount
text, as it serves as a helpful media for students to write more conceptually and structuredly.

Suggestions
Based on conclusion that have been presented, the researcher proposes several suggestions that
could be considered in finding of the research, the researcher would like to recommend some
suggestions as follows:

1. Suggestion for English Teacher

a. Since picture series can improve students’ achievement in writing ability, the English teachers
should apply it in writing class to develop their ideas to write. By using picture in this case
students’ photo, their memory will appear about what to write, making it easier and more
effective in the learning process.
b. The teacher should be more creative and modify the media, strategy, method, and other ways
that are suitable for the material. Finding an interesting topic is required to build an interaction
with students.
c. Teachers should give students writing tests or assessments more often because they rarely get
to writing assessments, so at first, they think they would be bored. But after using picture series
as media, writing becomes one of the media that attracts students to learn to write and makes it
easier for students to develop ideas.

2. Suggestion for Future Researcher

a. In this research, the researcher only focused on increasing students’ recount text writing
ability. The researcher suggests other researchers to find out the effect of picture series for
improving other skills such as reading, listening and speaking
b. In this research, recount text was used as a measurement tool to assess how much Picture
Series improved students' writing ability. The future researcher can also try to find out other
types of text beside recount text, such as procedure text, narrative text, and news item text.
c. In this research, the researcher also found the difficulties in managing the time in class. The
future research can also estimate the pictures and explanation with the time in class.

REFERENCES

Brown, H. Douglas. 2001. Teaching by Principles: an Interactive Approach to Language

Pedagogy. New York: A Pearson Education Company.
Harmer, J. 2004. How to teach writing. New York: Longman.

Raimes, Ann. 1983. Technique in Teaching Writing. (London: Oxford American English
Publishing).

Richard, C. Jack and Renandya, A. Willy. 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. USA:
Cambridge University Press.

Tchudi, N.S., Yates, J. 1983. Teaching Writing in The Content Areas: Senior High School.
Washington, D. C: National Education Association.

Wright, Andrew. 1989. Pictures for Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Yunus, Noor Azline. 1981. Preparing and Using Aids for English Language Teaching.
Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.