Implementing Critical Incident Technique to Enhance the Students Writing Ability in Recount Text

This thesis is entitled implementing critical incident technique to enhance the students' writing ability in recount text (a collaborative classroom action research to the first year students of MAN Gandapura). This research was done because many of the students in MAN Gandapura would unable to make a good paragraph of writing although for one paragraph because of that the researcher needed form this research to increase the students' ability in writing, especially in writing recount text. The researcher conducted the collaborative classroom action research as research methodology and referring to qualitative research. The object of this study was the students at the first year of MAN Gandapura; which consists of thirty students. The researcher found the analysis were the result of this research in MAN Gandapura sufficiently improving recount text through observation checklist, field notes, test and questionnaires as instrument to get the data from the research. The first data collected from observation checklist which the mean score of the observation sheet was increasing through each cycles. Second, the data collected by using field notes which record all the teaching and learning process in both of cycles; cycle 1 and cycle 2. Third, the average score of the students in doing pre-test in the first meeting in cycle 1 was 49, 06 and the average score of the post- test for the cycle 1 was 65,3 and cycle 2 was 72, 7 which more than 70 as criteria of success. The last was questionnaire analyzing of the students responded toward implementation of the critical incident (CI) technique. The result of students score to mark the item in the questionnaire was 80%. It meant the students motivate of using critical incident technique in writing recount text. After the researcher did all steps of the research (cycle 1 and cycle 2). The researcher concluded that the implementation of the critical incident (CI) technique in teaching and learning process could increase students' ability in writing recount text and got ‘agree' students' response when implementing the critical incident technique in the classroom.Key words: Writing, Recount Text and Critical Incident (CI) Technique INTRODUCTIONWriting is an activity to write the ideas and the feeling of the item which is displayed in mind. When talking about teaching writing commonly deal with kinds of writing and teaching strategies. There are control writing, guide writing and free writing. The teaching of control writing is usually for the beginner or for the students of senior high school. In this relation, writing is the attention of control composition is usually much right. The teachers' job is to prove relax control is having the students write what they have the teacher will prove whether the students cable to write and practice it.According to School Base Curriculum of MAN Gandapura, teaching writing to the first year students is hoped the students are able to express the meaning in short functional written text, simple essay like as Recount text, Narrative text, and Procedure text in real life context. The students are able to express the meaning and rhetoric procedures accurately, fluently, and acceptable by using several written languages in real life context like recount, narrative, and procedure

Understanding the Use of Cohesion Devices and Coherence in Writing

To make sense of the writing, the writer needs to understand the use of cohesion devices and coherence. It is important that writing be coherent as well as cohesive. A text is cohesive if its elements are linked together, and a text is coherent if it makes sense. This paper titled “Understnding the use of Cohesion Devices and Coherence in Writing”. This study is aimed to know and understand the using of cohsion devices and coherence in students‟ writing. To make sense of the writing, the writer needs to understand the use of cohesion devices and coherence. It is important that writing be coherent as well as cohesive. This article discuss the concept of writing, cohesion devices, and coherence. The last, this article describe the importance of understanding the use of cohesion device and coherence in writing

THE USE OF COHESIVE DEVICES IN RELATION TO THE QUALITY OF THE STUDENTS’ ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING

The ability to compose an argumentative text is important for ESL and EFL learners. In terms of the communicative nature of writing, cohesion is regarded as an essential textual component, not only to create organized text but also to the comprehensiveness of the text. Therefore, the use of cohesive devices is really important. Based on Halliday and Hasan Cohesion theory (1976)this study is intended to investigate the use of cohesive devices and also the relationship between the frequency of cohesive devices using and the quality of argumentative writing. An analysis of 30 students’ argumentative writing showed that the students were familiar with various cohesive devices and used them in their writing. Among the cohesive devices, reference had the largest percentage of the total number cohesive devices, followed by lexical devices and conjunction devices. Furthermore, it was found that there was no significant relationship between the number of cohesive devi ces used and the quality of writing. The findings of the study have some important implications for EFL writing teachers and learners

TEACHING THEME AND THEMATIC PROGRESSION TO TOURISM STUDENTS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON THEIR WRITINGS

Teaching writing to tourism students is challenging. Many students of diploma programs in hotel and tourism tend to focus to building practical skills such as cooking techniques or cutting methods, setting up table for lunch or dinner, or how to handle check-in or checkout, etc. They ‘hate’ writing exercises because they believe they will start career at operational level in the tourism industry where academic writing is not needed. As the result of this belief they lack of ability to expand idea or topic and what they can only produce short and undeveloped paragraphs. This paper discusses one alternative to approach to teaching writing i.e. using thematic progression. Using Halliday (2004) model students are introduced to the concept of information structure then to theme and rheme, and finally to thematic progression of texts. Then, the teacher guides students to identify how text is developed through its theme and rheme and to identify the types thematic progressions. Two writing tests were given i.e. pre and post teaching to see if there is any different in terms of text development, paragraph coherence, paragraph structure, thematic progression, and focus of text. A set of questions to measure students’ perception toward the lessons was also administered. The results show that students can manage to produce longer better-developed and cohesive paragraphs. Students’ positive perception toward theme-rheme and thematic progression concepts enable them to expand idea into longer text

USING A GENRE-BASED APPROACH TO IMPROVE THE ENGLISH WRITING COMPETENCE OF VIIIA STUDENTS OF SMPN 3 METRO LAMPUNG IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2011/2012

This research is a collaborative classroom action research, and the subject is VIIIA students of SMPN 3 Metro–Lampung in the academic year 2011/2012 and English teacher who teaches the eight grade of SMPN 3 Metro Lampung. The method of Kemmis & McTaggart was used in this research, consisting four steps: (1) planning, which prepared components of the cycle in genre-based approach including building knowledge of the field, modeling of text, joint construction of text, and independent construction of text; (2) action, which was the implementation of each cycle in the genre-based approach; (3) observation, observing which implemented the genre-based approach; and (4) reflection, which was a discussion between the researcher and collaborator about the findings in the observation and action phases. The research instruments were students observation guide, field note guide, and writing assessment guide. The data were qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative data were obtained from the results of classroom observation and field notes, and the quantitative data were the students’ pretest scores, scores in the independent construction of text in each cycle, and posttest scores. The reliability of the data was obtained by using the triangulation technique which combined the result of the observation, field note, and the result of the students’ writing. The result of the research shows that the improvement was achieved in every cycle. At the building knowledge of the field phase, the students competence in expressing vocabulary improved, at modeling of text phase, the students were able to understand the teachers’ explanation about genre, at the joint construction of text phase, the students were able to interact with their peers, and at the independent construction of text phase, the students were able to compose a text without the teacher’s guide and friends’ help. The result of the improvement can be seen from the comparation of the pretest result, each cycle result, and posttest result. The mean score of the students pretest result is 55.05, the result of the first cycle is 70.08, and the second cycle is 74.63, while the posttest result is 76.1. From those results, it can be concluded that the genre-based approach can improve the students’ writing competence. Keywords: genre-based approach, writing, cycl

Self-reported problems of L1 and L2 college writers: what can writing instructors do?

Understanding self-reported problems of L1 and L2 writers regarding the writing process holds important pedagogical implications for instructors to address their students’ specific writing needs. L2 writers were usually reported to have more difficulty setting goals and generating material, and to produce less accurate and effective texts (Leki, 1992; Silva 1993, 1997). This paper compares the self-reported writing difficulties of two groups: L1 (N=19) and L2 (N=19) freshman composition students from an American university. To analyze the group differences, a questionnaire (using 5-point Likert scale) about the perceptions of writing difficulties and approaches to writing process was used. Findings from the descriptive statistical analysis suggest that despite self-reported common problems, such as keeping clarity by using appropriate syntax, the L1 and L2 students presented different views on the importance of visuals in a text. While L1s find visuals to be least important for the reader to understand the text, L2s find visuals to be most important. The results reveal that although instructors focus on teaching essay organization, both L1 and L2 students need more instruction on creating better sentence structures. Encouraging L2 students to use visuals (pictures and graphs) in their persuasive essays would prove beneficial for them to overcome writing problems in English