CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In order to discuss the study more systematically and easier to understand, in

this chapter, the researcher intends to clarify some sub-chapters such as,

background of the study, limitations of study, problem statements, objectives of

study, significances of study, and definition of key terms.

A. Background of the Study

Language is the most important communicative tool of mankind that is

used to comprehend and express information, thoughts, and feelings both in

spoken and written forms. Today, English becomes an important tool for

international communication. Thus, communicative competence in English is

very important. In this case, communicative competence has whole

understanding that is discourse competence. It is an ability to understand

and/or produce spoken and/or written text that is realized in four language

skills. These are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The four language

skills are used to respond to or create discourse in society. Therefore, English

is aimed to create the graduate junior high school students to be able to

communicate in English both in spoken and written forms.

The Indonesian Ministry of National Education states that English

becomes one of the compulsory subjects that is taught in Junior High School.

According to Permendiknas No. 68, Tahun 2013 (Depdiknas, 2013: 4),

English as compulsory subject in junior high school has some objectives.

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First, the junior high school students should be aware about the essence of

English to increase the national effort of global society. Second, the junior

high school students can develop their understanding about the relevance of

language and culture. Third, the junior high school students can develop their

ability to use English for academic purposes both in spoken and written forms,

such as reading newspaper, reading manual, reading procedure, and so on. The

last, the graduate junior high school students should have discourse

competence in the level of functional literacy skill. It means that they are

expected to use English in spoken or written form to communicate with

others. In order to conduct an effective communication, the students should

have at least four language skills. Those four language skills can be used as

basic knowledge to use English in communication as the major goal of

teaching and learning English.

English is taught at schools in order that students are able to master the

four skills, they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Harmer (2007:

265) states as follows:

...we use language in terms of four skills- reading, writing, speaking and
listening. These are often divided into two types. Receptive skills is a
term used for reading and listening, skills where meaning is extracted
from the discourse. Productive skills is the term for speaking and writing,
skills where students actually have to produce language themselves.

Among those four skills, writing is the most difficult skill to learn and to

master, because writing is an active or productive skill so that students who

are learning writing have to learn how to find ideas, and express them into

writing. Richards and Renandya (2002: 30) state that There is no doubt that
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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 texts. In line with these idea, Brown (2004: 218) states as

follows:

We also fully understand the difficulty of learning to write well in any

language, even in our own native language. Every educated child in
developed countries learns the rudiments of writing in his or her native
language, but very view learn to express themselves clearly with logical,
well-developed organization that accomplishes an intended purpose.

According to the basic competence in the junior high school curriculum,

in learning writing, students are expected to write some texts for example

letters, short messages, greeting cards, monologs such as descriptive, recount,

narrative, procedure and report texts. To produce those writing products,

especially monologs, students have to follow the writing steps. Seow (2002:

316) states as follows:

Process writing as a classroom activity incorporates the four basic

writing stages, planning, drafting (writing), revising (redrafting), and
editing, and three other stages externally imposed on students by the
teacher, namely responding (sharing), evaluating and post-writing. ...
Teachers often plan appropriate classroom activities that support the
learning of specific writing skills at every stage.

In fact, most students hardly ever follow the writing stages in their

writings. They often copied texts from the students who were good at English

subject. Sometimes they just rearranged jumbled sentences given by the

teacher or taken from the textbooks.

The facts above frequently happen in many schools. Based on the

observation in SMPN 3 Mejayan at class VIII C, it seemed that the students

were rarely taught to write in English. They just did the assignment and
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discussed the answers together. When the students were asked to write, they

were reluctant to write even a very simple text, and the products of their

writings were far from the expectation. Actually students were expected to be

able to write a good text with good content and coherence, but in fact, they

could not do it well. Students did not have any ideas to write. In other words,

they had blank minds when they were asked to write a text, for example a

narrative text.

Students in junior high school should be able to write or produce

narrative text. It is not something attractive and fun for them to write narrative

text although narrative text have purpose to entertain the reader. They know

many stories related to narrative text but when they have to produce their own

narrative text, they face many difficulties. Many students cannot get and

generate their own idea. Some students have idea but cannot express it in their

own sentences. They also have difficulties in arranging the idea into good

order to form a good narrative text. They also lack of vocabularies related to

the idea that they want to write.

The teacher usually asks the students to write sentence as many as they

can but they do need to know how to make their students write as many as

they can. This fact encourage the research to focus on helping the students

developing their writing ability. Writing narrative text requires more attention

in detail. There are complex rules in writing that cannot be ignored. When

students write something, they have to pay more attention in word spelling,

punctuation marks, dictions, grammar, purpose of their writing, and idea of

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their writing itself. However, the researcher finds that it is difficult for

students to generate narrative text based on their idea. They are confused

about how they will write their idea and arrange it into good narrative text. It

happens because usually they are only given examples of narrative text. After

that they should write or produce their own narrative text with limited

guidance. It is the main problem that the researcher wants to try to solve by

conducting this research.

Regardless of the obstructions found by students, writing is a very

important competence. It is because nowadays people, who take technology as

their means of communication, seem to be impossible to be separated from the

activity of writing, from the simplest like sending short messages through

mobile phones and to the more complex like making business letter via e-mail.

The importance of writing is also seen from the fact that the skill has become a

need for people to compete in the global era. Students need to prepare

themselves for their future. They need to be able to write an application letter

when applying for a job and many other kinds of written texts when doing

their job later. In addition, writing is a means of expressing ideas or

communicating with others. There are situations in which the ability of writing

is crucial or written language is a need, as it is said by Nunan (1993: 38) that

writing is needed to communicate with others who are removed in time and

space, or is used for those occasions on which a permanent or semi-permanent

record is required. Such situations can be easily found in the real life every
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day, for instance, when someone was visiting a friend but he could not meet

and he left a note.

Based on the issues above, the researcher offers to apply task based

teaching technique when teaching students in writing narrative texts. In

developing supplementary writing materials, the application of Task-Based

Teaching is the most suitable method to use, because it has appropriate

principles in teaching writing. According to Nunan (2004: 19), the principles

of Task-Based Teaching use a need-approach in content selection, use some

authentic texts, focus on the target language, and use the students personal

experience to enhance the students ability. A previous research has been

conducted previously by Hai-yan (2014) entitled The Task-based Teaching of

Writing to Big Classes in Chinese EFL Setting it was found that the task-based

approach is effective to teach big classes English writing, as it deepens

students understanding of the task-based approach and enhances various

aspects of writing.

The use of authentic texts in Task-Based Teaching can encourage

meaningful communication. Besides, this method is also a student-centered

method in which the materials come from the students real world activities.

To ensure the effectiveness of Task-Based Teaching development in writing

materials, the outcome of Task-Based Teaching is based on the assessment at

the end of the language teaching. Therefore, Task-Based Teaching is

applicable for developing the writing materials, because the content of the
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learning materials generates its own language and creates an opportunity for

the students language acquisition.

Based on the explanations, creating supplementary writing materials are

worth doing as an additional lesson besides the course book to enhance the

students writing ability. Therefore, this research also tries to help the teacher

to develop supplementary writing materials using Task-Based Teaching that

can be used in the teaching-learning process. To contribute new findings at

different level and grade of education, the researcher conduct a study about

The Implementation of Task Based Teaching on Writing Narrative Text to

The Eighth Grade Students of SMPN 3 Mejayan in the Schooling Year of

2015/2016.

B. Limitations of Study

In this research, the researcher focus on the process of teaching writing

that is enjoyable and interesting for students. By conducting that kind of

teaching and learning process, students would be stimulated to explore their

writing skill. Based on the background of study above, the following is the

limitations of this study.

1. This study focuses on students activity in the implementation of task

based teaching in teaching writing narrative text and the advantages and

disadvantages of the implementation of task based teaching in teaching

writing narrative text.

2. This study takes the eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Mejayan in the

schooling year of 2015/2016 as the subject of research.

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C. Problem Statements

Based on the limitations of study above, the following are the problem

statements of this study.

1. How is the implementation of task based teaching in teaching writing

narrative text for eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Mejayan in the

schooling year of 2015/2016?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation of task

based teaching in teaching writing narrative text for eighth grade students

of SMPN 3 Mejayan in the schooling year of 2015/2016?

D. Objectives of Study

Based on the problem statements, the objectives of this study are

identified as follows:

1. to describe whether the implementation of task based teaching in teaching

writing narrative text for eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Mejayan in the

schooling year of 2015/2016.

2. to find out the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation of

task based teaching in teaching writing narrative text for eighth grade

students of SMPN 3 Mejayan in the schooling year of 2015/2016.

E. Significances of Study

Related to the objectives of the study, this research is expected to give

contributions for the students, English teachers, and other researchers:

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1. For the students, this research was expected to be a motivation to improve

their ability in writing narrative texts. Besides, the teacher implementation

of this study can ease them in writing narrative texts, so that their ability in

writing will be improved.

2. For the English teachers, this research is expected to be one input to

improve their teaching strategies especially in teaching writing.

3. For the other researchers, this research is expected to be one of references

for relevant researches.

F. Definition of Key Terms

1. Task Based Teaching

Task-Based Teaching is an approach which is based on communicative

competence by using interactive tasks in language instruction. The core of

developing materials by using Task-Based Instruction emphasizes the

learning materials by using tasks as the primary unit that is used (Richards,

2006: 23).

2. Narrative Text

Anderson and Anderson (1997: 8) state that narrative text is a piece of text

which tells a story and in doing so entertains and informs the reader or

listener. Narrative texts is concerning with a story. The story includes

some events which is presented to amuse the readers or listeners. So,

written narrative texts are aimed to entertain the readers.

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3. Teaching Writing

Harmer (2007: 86) states that writing is a process that what we write is often

heavily influenced by the constraints of genres, then these elements have to be

present in learning activities. Teaching writing is to teach English language

learners to written language by some to be spoken language put into

written form. The assumption that teaching writing is putting the spoken

language into written form is only true for activities like taking down

dictation or transcribing a tape.