TEACHING DESCRIPTIVE WRITING USING “FRESH” TECHNIQUE

(An Experimental Study at Tenth Grade Students’

of SMA AlbidayahCangkorah)

Widi Rahayu

E-mail:

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English Education Study Program Language and Arts Department of

Sekolah Tinggi KeguruandanIlmuPengetahuan (STKIP) Siliwangi Bandung

ABSTRACT

The objective of the research entitled “Teaching descriptive writing using ‘FRESH’ technique at SMA Al-BidayahCangkorahKabupaten Bandung Barat” was to find out whether or not teaching descriptive writing using ‘FRESH’technique was effective to improve the students’ writing ability. This research used quantitative method with two group pretest-posttest design. The population of this research was 95 of the tenth grade students of SMA AlbidayahCangkorahKabupaten Bandung Barat in the academic year 2016-2017. The sample of this research was 60 students. The data were collected by giving pre-test and post-test, and the data were analysed by using SPSS. The results of data analysis showed: the mean scale of experimental group is 22.16 and mean scale of control group is 16.50. Standard deviation of experimental group is 9.709 and control group is 11.306. T-observed is greater than t-table and with Sig (2 tailed test) is 0.042 is smaller than 0.05, it can be concluded that the different between two group of experimental group and control group is significant different. It can be concluded that the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. In other words, teaching descriptive writing using ‘FRESH’ technique had significant improvement on students’ writing ability.

Keyword: Teaching Descriptive Writing, ‘FRESH’ technique.

1

  1. INTRODUCTION

English is a global language, everything that happen in the world almost use English. Crystal (2003:2) proposed that of course English is a global language, they would say. You hear it on television spoken by politicians from all over the world. Wherever you travel, you see English signs and advertisements. Whenever you enter a hotel or restaurant in a foreign city, they will understand English, and there will be an English menu.

Four Major skills in communicating through language are often broadly defined as listening, listening and speaking, reading and writing. In many situations where English is taught for general purposes, these skills should be carefully integrated and used to perform as many genuinely. Communicative tasks as possible, where this is the case, it is important for the test writer to concentrate on those types of test items which appear directly relevant to the ability to use language for real life communication.

Pinter (2006:74) cited that writing is a complex skill progressing from the level of copying familiar words and phrases to developing an awareness of text structures, genres, the processes of drafting and editing, and writing for an audience.

The difficulties which is faced by the students in descriptive text on of them is in the form of paragraph. This matter is caused by some cases. Most of the students lacked vocabularies and also got difficulties in applying English grammar. When starting to write, the students always got stuck. The students did not have many concepts to write something. Besides, when doing some writing exercises, the students needed a long time to think the idea to write something put into a descriptive paragraph.

From the reason above this study entitled was conducted “Teaching Descriptive Writing Using “FRESH” Technique”

  1. LITERATURE REVIEW
  1. Teaching
  2. Definition of Teaching

Salandanan (2008:4) stated that “teaching is what occurs when teachers by virtue of their instructional activities succeed wholly or in part in enabling pupils to learn.”

  1. Writing
  1. Definition of Writing

Based on Harmer (2004:86) “writing is a process that we write is often heavily influenced by constraints of genre, then element have to be present in learning activities.”

  1. Writing Process

Hedge (2005: 52-54) proposed the writing process is divided into four parts, they are:

a)Prewriting: there are four prewriting techniques will help to think and develop a topic and get words. They are free writing, questioning, making a list, and preparing a scratch outline.

b)Writing: be prepared to put in additional thoughts and details that did not emerge during prewriting.

c)Revising: revising means rewriting an essay, building on what has already been done to make it stronger. There are three stages to the revising process: Revising content, revising sentence and editing.

d)Editing: after revising for the content and style, the next step is editing for error grammar, punctuation and spelling.

  1. Kinds of Text

According to Gramley and Patzold (1992:66), there are five major kinds of text:

1)Narrative texts have to do with real-world events and time, they may be fictional (fairy tales, novels) or nonfictional (newspaper report), they are characterized by a sequencing of events expressed by dynamic verbs and by adverbials such as “and then”, “first”, “second”, “third”

2)Descriptive texts are concerned with the location of persons and things in space, they will tell us what lies to the right or left, in the background or foreground, or they will provide background information which, perhaps, sets the stage for narration, it is immaterial whether a description is more technical-objective or more impressionistic subjective, state or positional verbs plus adverbial expressions are employed in descriptions.

3)Directive texts are concerned with concrete future activity. Central to these texts are imperatives (Hand me the paper) or forms which substitute for them, such as polite questions (Would you hand me the paper?) or suggestive remarks (I wonder what the paper says about the weather).

4)Expository texts identify and characterize phenomena. They include text forms such as definitions, explications, summaries and many types of essay.

5)Argumentative text, depart from the assumption that the receiver’s beliefs must be changed. They often start with the negation of a statement which attributes a quality or characteristic activity to something or someone. They also include advertising texts, which try to persuade their readers that a product is somehow better, at least implicitly, than others.

  1. Descriptive Text

Gerrot and Wignel (1995:208) cited that descriptive text is a text which has social function to describe a particular person, place, or thing.

There are two stages within a descriptive text:

1)Identification: has purpose to define, to classify or generalize about phenomenon.

2)Description: has purpose to describe attributes of each category of the phenomenon.

  1. Types of Technique

Crookes & Chaudron in Brown (2001:134) stated that techniques are divided into three categories. They are controlled, semi controlled, and free.

1)Controlled techniques: Warm-up, setting organizational, content explanation, role-play demonstration, dialogue or narrative presentation, dialogue or narrative recitation, reading aloud, checking, question-answer, display, drill, translation, dictation, copying, etc.

2)Semi controlled techniques: brainstorming, storytelling, question-answer, referential, information transfer, information exchange, warm-up, narration/exposition, etc.

3)Free techniques: role-play, games, report, drama, simulation, interview, discussion, etc.

  1. ‘FRESH’ Technique

“FRESH” technique is the new one of generating ideas to write a descriptive text in which each letter of the acronym has meaning. “Fact” stands for “Fact”, “R” stands for “Reason”, “E” stands for “Elaboration”, and “SH” stands for “Shift”, which can also mean decision or conclusion (Faisal, 2010, p. 8).

“FRESH” technique adapted a strategy developed by De La Pazand Graham (1997) for younger middle schoolstudents, upgrading it so that it would be morepertinent for high school students. The De La Pazand Graham strategy centered on two sets ofmental operations encapsulated in the mnemonicsSTOP and DARE. STOP concentrated mostlyon the planning process and reminded students to(a) Suspend judgment by listing reasons for eachside of a position before deciding on a premise,(b) Take a position after evaluating the listedideas, (c) Organize ideas from strongest to weakestor most important to least important, and (d)Plan and write more while writing the essay.DARE served to remind students about basic elementsthey needed to include in their paper: (a)Develop a topic sentence, (b) Add supportingideas, (c) Reject possible arguments for the otherside, and (d) End with a conclusion.

  1. Teaching Descriptive Writing Text Using ‘FRESH’ Technique

For “Fact”, the teacher guides the students to find a strong fact to describe something, for example the title is “My Adorable Cat”:

“I have a cat at home. Its name is Kean. It is a regular house cat.”

Then, that fact is strengthened by one or more reasons:

“I like my cat because it is an adorable cat.”

After that, the teacher elaborates it (why is it an adorable cat?). The teacher has to elaborate it in detail in order that the readers can get clear description of it.

“The fur is beautiful. It is orange with white and black spots. It is soft so I like to cuddle it. The eyes are so bright. Those are white and black with yellow in the middle.”

Finally, the teacher gives a conclusion based on the information above.

“Those features make me love it so much. Of course, I will take care of it well.”

From those sentences, it will be a good descriptive paragraph:

My Adorable Cat

I have a cat at home. Its name is Kean. It is a regular house cat. I like my cat because it is an adorable cat. The fur is beautiful. It is orange with white and black spots. It is soft so I like to cuddle it. The eyes are so bright. Those are white and black with yellow in the middle. Those features make me love it so much. Of course, I will take care of it well.

(Faisal, 2010:10)

  1. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
  1. Research Design

Based on McMillan and Schumacher (2001:166), “research design refers to a plan for selecting subjects, research sites, and collection procedures to answer the research question(s). The research design applied in this study was pre experimental by using one group pretest-posttest design.”

  1. Research Method

In this study, quasi experimental method was applied. This kind of method was used because of the fact in the real situation. Non-equivalent design as used because this was done based on the requirements as follows: There are experimental class and control class; and Experimental class is a class which gets treatment from the writer, whereas control class is the class which does not get the treatment.

Crowl (1996:10) said that quantitative research method is used to examine questions that can be answered by collecting and statically analyzing data that are in numeral form.

  1. Population and Sample

In this research, the writer took 30 students of tenth grade SMA Al-BidayahCangkorah in academic year 2016-2017. As the population and took two class of tenth grade SMA Al-BidayahCangkorah at the sample were entire population.

  1. Instrument

In conducting this research, the writer gives a pre-test and then the writer would teach writing descriptive text using songs, after that, the writer gives a post-test.

  1. Pre-test

In the first meeting the writer used pre-test to know students’ writing ability. In the pre-test, one class was asked to write a descriptive text without using songs.

  1. Treatment

In this step the writer taught students about descriptive text using songs. The writer did the treatment in two meetings.

  1. Post-test

After giving the treatment, the researcher gives the post-test. The test was similar with the pretest. The post-test will be done after the treatment given to the students to practice writing a descriptive text using song in the class.

  1. Data Collection(s) Technique

In collecting the data of this study the writer used test, for took the data from pretest and posttest. Pretest was given to the subject before doing teaching and learning process. Meanwhile, posttest was given after applying teaching and learning process.

At the first session, the pre-test is administered to find out writing ability of both classes. Both classes were taught the lessons for several weeks. At the end of the teaching phase, both classes are tested using the post-test.

To analyze the data, the writer use SPSS and find the results by using inferential statistics (normal distribution, homogeneity of variances and t-test). Not only analyzing the data, the researcher also treated the data by using descriptive statistics test.

  1. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
  1. Result

The data of student’s pre-test and post-test experimental group and control group can be seen in the following table:

Table 1Student’s Pre-test and Post-test Score of Experimental Group

Name / Pre-test / Post-test / Gain Score
Student 1 / 40 / 65 / 25
Student 2 / 60 / 70 / 10
Student 3 / 60 / 75 / 15
Student 4 / 45 / 70 / 35
Student 5 / 40 / 55 / 15
Student 6 / 50 / 70 / 20
Student 7 / 50 / 75 / 25
Student 8 / 45 / 55 / 10
Student 9 / 45 / 55 / 10
Student 10 / 45 / 65 / 20
Student 11 / 40 / 65 / 25
Student 12 / 40 / 55 / 15
Student 13 / 45 / 55 / 10
Student 14 / 60 / 75 / 15
Student 15 / 40 / 65 / 25
Student 16 / 40 / 65 / 25
Student 17 / 25 / 50 / 25
Student 18 / 20 / 60 / 40
Student 19 / 30 / 60 / 30
Student 20 / 55 / 65 / 20
Student 21 / 50 / 65 / 15
Student 22 / 55 / 65 / 10
Student 23 / 40 / 60 / 20
Student 24 / 20 / 60 / 40
Student 25 / 20 / 55 / 35
Student 26 / 45 / 60 / 15
Student 27 / 45 / 65 / 20
Student 28 / 50 / 70 / 20
Student 29 / 30 / 60 / 30
Student 30 / 20 / 65 / 45
Total / 1.250 / 1.745 / 515

Based on the result of data above, the writer obtains the total score in pretest experimental group is 1.250 and the total score in posttest experimental group is 1.745.

Table 2Student’s Pre-test and Post-test Score of Control Group

Name / Pre-test / Post-test / Gain Score
Student 1 / 20 / 45 / 25
Student 2 / 20 / 45 / 25
Student 3 / 50 / 80 / 30
Student 4 / 40 / 40 / 0
Student 5 / 20 / 50 / 30
Student 6 / 40 / 45 / 5
Student 7 / 35 / 45 / 10
Student 8 / 40 / 50 / 10
Student 9 / 40 / 75 / 35
Student 10 / 40 / 70 / 30
Student 11 / 50 / 65 / 15
Student 12 / 40 / 50 / 10
Student 13 / 45 / 55 / 10
Student 14 / 45 / 70 / 25
Student 15 / 20 / 50 / 30
Student 16 / 40 / 45 / 5
Student 17 / 40 / 55 / 15
Student 18 / 35 / 40 / 5
Student 19 / 50 / 75 / 25
Student 20 / 60 / 60 / 0
Student 21 / 40 / 40 / 0
Student 22 / 25 / 35 / 10
Student 23 / 25 / 40 / 15
Student 24 / 20 / 40 / 20
Student 25 / 20 / 45 / 25
Student 26 / 45 / 50 / 5
Student 27 / 40 / 45 / 5
Student 28 / 20 / 45 / 15
Student 29 / 30 / 50 / 20
Student 30 / 35 / 50 / 15
Total / 1.070 / 1.550 / 470

Table 3Descriptive Statistics

N / Minimum / Maximum / Mean / Std. Deviation
Experimental group / 30 / 10.00 / 45.00 / 22.1667 / 9.70987
Control group / 30 / .00 / 40.00 / 16.5000 / 11.30685
Valid N (listwise) / 30

Based on the table of descriptive statistics shows that minimum scores of experimental group is 10 and maximum scores is 45, the minimum scores of control group is 0 and maximum scores is 40. Meanwhile mean of experimental group is 22.16 and mean of control group is 16.5. Standard deviation of experimental group is 9.7 and control group is 11.3. The data shows mean of experimental group is bigger than control group.

Table 4One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test

Experimental group / Control group
N / 30 / 30
Normal Parametersa,b / Mean / 22.1667 / 16.5000
Std. Deviation / 9.70987 / 11.30685
Most Extreme Differences / Absolute / .155 / .151
Positive / .155 / .151
Negative / -.105 / -.141
Kolmogorov-Smirnov Z / .849 / .825
Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) / .467 / .504

Based on the table 4.4 data are normal bacauseAsymp. Sig. (2-tailed) of the experimental group is 0.467. Those score is higher than the level of significance (0.05) while the Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) of the control group is 0.504 is higher than the level of significance (0.05).

Table 5 Independent Samples Test

Levene's Test for Equality of Variances / t-test for Equality of Means
F / Sig. / t / Df / Sig. (2-tailed) / Mean Difference / Std. Error Difference / 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower / Upper
Score / Equal variances assumed / 1.766 / .189 / 2.083 / 58 / .042 / 5.667 / 2.721 / .220 / 11.113
Equal variances not assumed / 2.083 / 56.705 / .042 / 5.667 / 2.721 / .217 / 11.116

From the data above, the result of F (1.766) with Sig. (0.189) is higher than 0.05. It means that the data is homogeneous. The result of t observed with significant confidence 95% is 2.083. Based on t-table value for df (degree of freedom) 58 is 56.7. It means that t-observed is higher than t-table and with Sig (2 tailed test) is 0.042 is lower than 0.05. In other words, the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted and Null Hypothesis (Ho) is rejected

  1. Discussion

After the writer calculated the data, data analysis showed that:

  1. Mean of experimental group and mean of control group

Mean of experimental group is 22,16 and mean of control group is 16,5. Standard deviation of experimental group is 9,70987 and control group is 11,30685. It means that there is improvement on students” writing ability as a result of using “FRESH” technique in descriptive text.

  1. The normal distribution of test

The data are normal because Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed) of the experimental group is 0,467 and control group is 0,504. Those score is higher than the level of significance (0,05). It means that the data of both experimental and control group are normally distributed.

  1. The results of hypotheses

T-observed is bigger than t-table and with Sig (2 tailed test) is 0,042. It is smaller than 0,05, it can be concluded that the different between two group of experimental group and control group is significant different. It can be concluded that the hypotheses (Ha) was accepted because the result of t-observation is lower than t-table (t0<t). In other words, teaching descriptive writing using ‘FRESH’ technique is effective on students.

  1. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
  1. Conclusion

The conclusion of this research proved that ‘FRESH’ technique can develop students writing skill of descriptive text at the tenth grade of SMA AlbidayahCangkorahBatujajar. The conclusion above is supported by data analysis such as stated on chapter IV, as follow; the mean of pre-test was (41,6) and the mean post-test (63,1), it indicated that the mean of post-test was higher than the mean of pre-test also can be seen from the result of computing data, which was analysed used test formula with level significant 0,05. It indicated that tobsttable(0,042 > 0,005), it means that ‘FRESH’ technique can develop students writing skill of descriptive text.

  1. Suggestion

After discussion all the fact that found during and after the tests, found that the students still hard and confuse in creating descriptive text overcome that, the writer suggest as follow:

  1. Teaching Descriptive Writing Using ‘FRESH’ Technique could be tried to apply at the tent grade students of SMA AlbidayahCangkorahBatujajar.
  2. Teacher should share about the teaching approach (teaching descriptive writing using ‘FRESH’ technique) with another teacher or the writer in order to know the advantages and disadvantages the ‘FRESH’ technique as technique in teaching and learning.
  3. The English teacher must be more creative, innovative and attractive in teaching and learning process, to make classroom atmosphere alive, especially in teaching learning descriptive text.
  4. The teacher should keep motivation for student’s performance in writing especially in writing descriptive text, because they still lack of vocabulary, and teacher can suggest the students to use dictionary.
  5. Further research can be done with the larger population and sample.
  1. REFERENCES

Brown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles an interactive approach to language pedagogy. New York: Longman.