ANALYZING STUDENTS NARRATIVE WRITING USED BY THE FIRST GRADE AT SMP PASUNDAN 3 CIMAHI

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1 ANALYZING STUDENTS NARRATIVE WRITING USED BY THE FIRST GRADE AT SMP PASUNDAN 3 CIMAHI Akbar Taufik Hp carter_akbar@yahoo.com English Education Study Program Language and Arts Department Sekolah Tinggi Keguruan Dan Ilmu Pendidikan(STKIP)Siliwangi Bandung ABSTRACT The objective of the research entitled Analyzing students narrative writing used by the first grade at SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi was to find out the errors encountered in composing narrative writing made by the students at second year of SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi and to know the students ability in writing a narrative text. The method used in this research was descriptive qualitative method. The instrument used in this research was written test. The subjects of this research were 25 of the second year students of SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi. The collected data were identified, classified, and analyzed based on percentage category using Wray theory (P= x100%). The results of data analysis showed that: 83% of the students made errors in using tenses, and 17% of them made errors in using punctuation mark. Based on the data analysis above the writer concluded that students had problems in using tenses and punctuation mark in writing narrative text. Keywords: narrative writing A. Background of the Study English is the first foreign language in our country, which is taught from Elementary level to University level. English is also intensively used in international communication, in written as well as in spoken communication. In addition, many books of science, technology, art and other published issues are written in English. In English language, there are integrated skills to be mastered, such as: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. As Haycraft states (1978:8) that there are various skills in mastering of language respective skill: listening (understanding the spoken language), reading (understanding the written language), and productive skills-speaking and writing. The researcher chose students composing narrative writing as a material of narrative writing. By assumption the composition is the result of students product that can be analyzed clearly. Sofyan (1999:86) stated that narrative is a story which is connected with events based on the plot. The teachers use narrative text, it is because the narrative as a story of human experience, so that the students arrange easily the composition. As Keraf (1991:136) states that Narrative as a story tells or describes an action in the past time clearly so narrative is tried to answer the question: what had the element that can make story more interesting to the reader such as a conflict and conclusion of the story. B. Theoretical Foundation 1. Writing This section discusses the writing theories including the discussion of general concept of writing, the process of writing, and writing competence. Writing is the most difficult subject in the school since the students have to produce a text by using English. They have to write about what they think in their mind and state it on a paper by using the correct procedure. Writing systems use sets of symbols to represent the sounds of speech, and may also have symbols for such things as punctuation and numerals. Writing is an activity in which a writer expresses ideas, and concept into verbal in writing expression. Many people who prefer to read rather than write because writing feels slower and more difficult. Nevertheless the ability to write is needed both in school and social life. 1

2 2. The General Concept of Writing According to Byrne (1988:1) defines writing is the usage of graphic symbols letters or combinations of letters which relate to the sounds we make when we speak which are arranged according to certain conventions to form words. He also adds that the words are subsequently arranged to form sentences. Then, the sequence of sentences are arranged in a particular order and linked together in certain ways. In general concept of writing can be concluded that writing is a way to produce language that comes from our thought. It is written on a paper or a computer screen. In the cognitive view, writing is a non-linear, explanatory, and generative process whereby writers discover and reformulate their ideas as they attempt to approximate meaning. People need to learn to write for these purposes if they are to get anywhere. Besides these fairly predictable uses of writing, there is a whole range of possible uses: for personal pleasure, for learning, for recording and handling information and acquiring knowledge, for keeping in contact with people, for giving pleasure, entertainment, stimulation, even provocation through writing as verbal art, and even for therapeutic purposes. While not everyone will get involved in many of these uses of writing, we certainly want to open up for our pupils the full potential of writing. In relation to writing, there are some approaches such as product approach, process approach, and genre approach. 3. Writing Competence Hadley (2001) adds that the conventions include the abilities to choose from near synonyms, the precise word that conveys one s meaning, select a variety of syntactic structures, and adopt a style that will have the most positive rhetorical effect. Review research on the composing process in the native language Texts This section includes the general concept of texts and the discussion about genre and text types. Genre, genre based approach, and text types are briefly discussed because they closely relate to the concept of narrative texts. 5. The General Concept of Texts Anderson (1998) view texts as pieces of spoken or written language which are created for a particular purpose. A good piece of text requires the creator to make the right choices from the language system: choice about words, sentences, process, and features. These choices will reflect our purposes and context. The context is influenced by our culture and situation. There are two kinds of texts: literary and factual. 6. Narrative Texts In this section, theories on narrative texts are discussed, covering the concept, social purpose and schematic structure, and linguistic features of the texts. A narrative is a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. 7. Types of Narrative Texts According to Neo (2005:58) there are many different types of narrative texts, among others: a. Humor b. Mystery c. Romance d. Fantasy e. Crime f. Science Fiction g. Real Life Fiction. h. Diary Novels i. Theoretical fiction j. Adventure There can be a combination of narratives within each of these different types. Sometimes, the term genre is used for the type of narrative. A

3 genre is some kind of a category. The notion of genre is to help to generate the ideas of the story. C. Research Methodology This study used a qualitative method. The focus of this study is on the students capability and difficulties in writing a narrative text. That is the phenomenon that will be studied. This study adopted a qualitative approach. It attempts to investigate a particular phenomenon and it does not seek or claim to generalize findings to other contexts Croker & Heigham, (2009:9). This study focuses on particular points, which are: students ability and difficulties in writing a narrative text. This study also has similar characteristics to a case study. Like a case study, this research was carried out in a small scale, a single case 1. Setting The research took place at one junior high school in Cimahi, West Java province. The choice of this school was expected to help enhance the feasibility of gathering the data because the researcher has a good relationship with the staff of the school, thus it helped her to cope with the school regulation in doing the research. Then narrative is one of the materials that were required. Those reasons are expected to promote the feasibility of the study. 2. Data Collection Techniques To answer the following research questions, this study employed two procedures of data collection including collection of students texts and interview. Every procedure is explained below. 3. Collection of Students Texts The students narrative texts were collected and documented to support the data from another data collection method; interview. The numbers of texts collected were 30 students written by all students in the class. However, as will be shown in chapter IV, only nine texts representing low, mid, and high achievers were analyzed in detail due to the limitation of the time and space. This is one of the limitations of the text analyses as Fairclough (2005) states. The detailed analyses of those texts will be presented in chapter IV. Time in collecting the students texts was along the narrative genre was given. It is because the length of time required in collecting students texts also depends on the research interest (Croker & Heigham, 2010:75). 4. Interview Interview is one of methods in collecting data that is required in a case study. After analyzing the nine texts, students attended personal interview. The interviews were both from teacher and students. The interview was used to validate the data from text analysis. It is used to find out students opinion about their writing ability and difficulties in writing a narrative text and suggested for them to help solve their problems. 5. Data Analysis This section discusses data analysis of what have been gathered from students. The data analysis was conducted after the data collection. In order to catch the valid data, this research adopted data collection methods including students texts and interview. The data were analyzed qualitatively. 6. Analyses of Students Texts The analysis of students texts was conducted to answer both the first and second research question. Each text was analyzed in terms of the logic structures and how well each element in the text performs its function. The students texts were analyzed in terms of the punctuation and tenses. 7. Analysis of Interview First, the data from interview were first transcribed to make it easier to the researcher in processing the data. Second, the data from the interview were categorized based on the.the last, the data from interview were interpreted and discussed in relation to the theory that has been explored in chapter ii. In relation to that, the writer informed the interviewees that interview will be written down or transcribed and did not mention their names to keep it confidential. D. Findings and Discussions 1. Description the Data The main instrument of this research was the data from the students narrative text writing. The theme of the text based on writer interest. In collecting data, the writer asks the first grade students class of SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi to compose a narrative text. The data which was obtained in this research was the narrative writing which took from 25 students in SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi. They were got about a few researches. The Writer searched the skills of student 3

4 SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi. His complete data could be seen in a data. There were 25 drafts selected, it was important to inform that students writing ability was found at average level. Therefore, it was found quite difficult to categorize higher, middle, and lower achiever. Therefore, 25 drafts were selected to be analyzed. The analysis of student s texts was meant to see the punctuation of the text and the tense of narrative text. Table 1.The Result of the Students Errors No Name Type of errors Total errors Percentage Tenses Punctuation 1 Student % 2 Student % 3 Student % 4 Student % 5 Student % 6 Student % 7 Student % 8 Student % 9 Student % 10 Student % 11 Student % 12 Student % 13 Student % 14 Student % 15 Student % 16 Student % 17 Student % 18 Student % 19 Student % 20 Student % 21 Student % 22 Student % 23 Student % 24 Student % 25 Student % Total Student 1 Student 4 Student 7 Student 10 Student 13 Student 16 Student 19 Student 22 Student 25 percentage punctuation tenses Chart 1. Percentage of the Students Errors Table 2. The Percentage of Students Errors No Types Of Errors Total Errors Percentage (%) 1 Tense ,24% 2 Punctuation 36 16,82% Total errors Percentage x100%= x100%=83% Percentage x100%= x100%=17% 2. The Result of Narrative Text Writing Analysis and Data Analysis From Interview The Interviews were held after the students their writing exercise. There were five basic questions for the interviews and those questions were developing during the interview. There were twenty five students who were responding as the interviews. From the interview, shows that from 25 students, 95% (24 students) like the English subject. Related to the component skills there were: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Reading was the most favorite as the skills among the students chose writing. When the writer asked the students whether they like writing subject or not, 50% (12 students) answered yes.in relation to the error analysis, the reason why the students made error in tense, punctuation especially in grammar structure. For addition, the factor that caused errors was overgeneralization of English grammar such as adding-end to every verb to make it into past sentence. Finally, disordering is caused the different language rules between Indonesian and English made the students confused in constructing a sentence. Moreover, from 25 students, 35% (9 students) said that their efforts to minimize errors is learn and read a book to increase their knowledge about grammar and tense, 30% (7 students) said they will more careful do their exercise, then 30% (7 students) said that practice more in writing can minimize errors, and the last used a dictionary, the answer from 2 student (5%) to minimize errors. E. The Conclusions and Suggestions 1. The Conclusions Based on the data in chapter IV, the writer comes to his conclusion as follows: a. Most students of the first grade of SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi made two type of errors they were: - Errors in tense is 176 or 83% - Errors in punctuation is 36 or 17% The students understand little in learning English. b. Based on the result of the test that about 83% students made error in making tenses, the writer takes a conclusion that many students of the first

5 grade of SMP Pasundan 3 Cimahi have lack ability in writing narrative text. 2. The Suggestions In connection with the result achieved in this research, the researcher would give some suggestions as follows: a. The ability of making tense mastery for some students are still relatively poor, it is suggested that the teaching of tenses be intensified and the frequency and duration in the teaching tenses need improving. It needs more than two credit hours in one semester to process a wide range of tenses. b. It would be better if teaching tenses be integrated with other skill such as writing skills. Writing skills needs improving, because it is found very effective in mastering English tenses. c. The teacher should develop strategy in teaching English tenses, so that his or her students are not bored in learning tense. BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, M. (1997). Text Type in English 2. Australia: Mackmillan. Byrne, D. (1995). Teaching Writing Skills (7ed). England: Longman Group UK Limited. Croker, R. and Heigham, J. (2009). Qualitative Research in Applied Linguistics: A Practical Introduction. Palgrave Macmillan. Fairchlough, N. (2005). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge. Hadley, A.O. (2001). Teaching Language in Context. Boston Massachi. Heinle & Heinle Publishers. Hycraft, J. (1978). An Introduction to English Language Teaching. London: Longman Group Limited. Keraf, G. (1991). Argumentasi dan Narasi. Jakarta: PT Gramedia. Neo, E. (2005). Narrative for 0 Level. Malaysia: Longman. Sofyan, D. (1999). Mari Kita Mengangkat Martabat Bahasa Kita Bahasa Indonesia. Grafinda Media Pratama. 5

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