Proposal Thesis

Name               : Dewi Puspitasari

Class                : TBI 6-A

Subject                        : Seminar Thesis Writing

Title                 : Correlation between Teachers’ Grammar Expertise and the Student’s Achievement in Writing Descriptive Paragraph

Correlation between Teachers’ Grammar Expertise and the Student’s Achievement in Writing Descriptive Paragraph

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background of the study.

Language is a tool for communication between people because language is one of interrelated means between people, so they can understand each other. In oxford learner’s pocket dictionary (2008: 247) defined as language is system of communication in speech and writing used by people of a particular country. We use it to communicate with each other, to solve problems, to express emotions, idea and everything in their mind. In other words, language is one of the most important to carry out our activities of life. Language is also a communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals such as sounds, gestures, or written symbols. According to Ellis(1985: 99) “language learners vary on a number of dimensions to do with personality, learning style, motivation, aptitude and also age”.

In Indonesia, English is a foreign language. We also know that English is an international language that is used almost all of the countries in the world, as an international language it is used in international activities means as a means of communications. These dimensions are assumed tobe significant contributors that determine the success or failure in acquiring English language learning. Learning language is learning about communication and culture. English has been learned in every levels of education from elementary school up to university level. The aim of learning English is to improve students’ skill in both oral and written communication.

Based on the learning of English language, there are four skills should be taught to students. They are speaking, listening, reading and writing. In practice, learning the lessons taught writing after speaking, listening and reading. But this does not state that learning writing is not important. Writing is one of the important skills of a language. According to Harmer (2006: 79-80), writing is a basic language skill, as important as speaking, listening and reading. In fact, since writingis a very important lesson learning and writing also is the very difficult subject for the students. It is related to Oshima and Hogue (1999:3) that writing, particularly academic writing is not easy. It takes study and practice to develop this skill. For both nativespeaker and new learners of English, it is important to note that writing is a process, not a “product”.

In writing the students not only write something but they must also pay attention to the things that make the message be clear and understandable. So, the message can be understood well by the reader. Writing is a very important capability for being owned by students, writing is also an excellent communication tool. Through writing, each person will be able to convey feelings, ideas, and announcements to others. Sharples (1999:8) actually, writing is an opportunity; it allows students to express something about themselves, explore and explain ideas. Student can convey their ideas in their mind by organizing them into a good text so that the others know them and they can think critically.

Therefore, learning is very important for improve writing inparticular learning of English in Indonesia because the writing is a process of transformation of thoughts and ideas into clearly forms of writing. In addition, many people choose writing as a means of effective and efficient communicationof information to be conveyed in some ways like posting letters, business lettersand important information in a company's product. In the Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP) 2006 syllabus of junior and senior high schools curriculum require students to be able to write some kind of genre in writing. They are narrative, recount, descriptive, report,explanation, analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, procedure, discussion, reviews, anecdote, spoof, and news items.

Based on the above, the descriptive paragraph is one genre that must be mastered by students in learning English. Descriptive paragraph is text that have function to describe about an object, like a place, animal, thing and etc. Pardiyono (2007:34) state that descriptive paragraph was a type of written text paragraph, in which has the specific function to describe about an object (living or non-living things) and it has the aim that was giving descriptive of the object to the reader clearly. In fact, not all students are able to write descriptive paragraph properly and appropriate with the existing elements in the descriptive paragraph. Many students can’t write clearly. This matter is caused by some cases. Most of the students lacked vocabularies and also got difficulties in applying English grammar.

Grammar is the main of language that different with the other language. Grammar is one of the components of language. Coleman & Klapper (1998:8) stated that grammar is made in applied linguistic between implicit and explicit knowledge of grammar. English grammar sometimes makes Indonesian students confused because it is different from the grammar of their mother tongue. When starting to write, the students always got stuck. The students didn’t 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.

Usually the students don’t look their grammar, they might don’t understand well about the grammar that usually used to write descriptive paragraph. They also might difficult to distinguish the tenses that they must use to writing in descriptive paragraph, maybe the tenses is over.  It is same when the writer teach in course, when the writer try to ask the students to write descriptive paragraph, the students needed a long time to write it and also their complain about the grammar that they use and they have difficult to distinguish the grammar, because the grammar is over.

            The way of each teacher to teach is different. They have each personality and method or strategy or media that they use or implement in the classroom, but not all of the teacher that use the media when they teach. If the teacher teach deductively or monotonous, for the example the teacher giving a note on whiteboard, give some example, and then asked the students to take a note. Here students felt bored of the teaching methods since there was no interesting and attractive activity involved in their learning process. Teacher expertise might needed by all of students. The students might need the teachers’ grammar expertise in teaching descriptive paragraph to improve their achievement to write descriptive paragraph optimally.

One of the outcomes of these reform efforts has been an increased focus on teacher quality and on the evaluation of teachers (Dwyer&Stufflebeam, 1996). Define expertise as the possession of an organized body of conceptual and procedural knowledge that can be both readily accessed and used with superior metacognitive skill. The expertise can might include the teaching technique, media, method or strategy of teacher to teach, and soon. Students want to graduate from their institutions or school into the work place with expertise in some area of activity or profession.

Teachers need to understand the nature of the expertise that their students want to acquire. Teachers should also be interested in the expertise of teaching, which is necessary for them to be effective in helping their students to become experts. As teacher, we must prepare variety of technique or media or method of teaching learning process. Stough and Palmer (2003) similarly report that expert special education teachers have a complex body of knowledge and skills, including student-specific knowledge. Moreover, these teachers used their knowledge flexibly in order to address the unique needs of their students. The teachers also have cognitive characteristics of experts.

In sum, cognitive characteristics of expertise have been found to be “consistent and reliable” (Alexander, 2003, p. 3). If the teacher uses suitable way to understand the way how to teach using their expertise in teaching learning process, especially in grammar so the achievement of the students will be increase in writing descriptive paragraph, because grammar is one of the elements in writing descriptive paragraph. But based on preliminary study, the students still have many difficulties in writing descriptive paragraph, may be with the teachers expertise it will be increase achievement their grammar to writing descriptive paragraph clearly.

            That is why the writer wants to conduct a research on thesis “Correlation between Teachers’ Grammar Expertise and The Student’s Achievement in Writing Descriptive Paragraph”

B. Formulation of Research Problem

Based on the background of the study, the problem is formulated as “Is there any correlation between teachers’ grammar expertise and student’s achievement in writing descriptive paragraph of seventh grade students at MtsN Bandung Tulungagung. There are research problems as follows:

  1. How is the teachers’ grammar expertise in teaching descriptive paragraph?

  2. How is the student’s achievement in writing descriptive paragraph?

  3. Is there any correlation between teacher’s grammar expertise and students achievement in writing descriptive paragraph?

Hypothesis:                 There is correlation between teacher’s grammar expertise and students achievement in writing descriptive paragraph.

C. Research Objective

Regarding formulation of the research problems stated above, this study is intended to investigate the correlation between teachers’ grammar expertise and student’s achievement in writing descriptive paragraph of seventh grade students at MtsN Bandung Tulungagung.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

 In this chapter, the researcher presents an overview of the definition of achievement, writing process, the purpose of writing, the definition of descriptive paragraph, Generic structure, Language feature, the criteria of good description, the definition of grammar and teachers’ expertise.

A. Achievement

Travers (1970:447) states that achievement was the result of what an individual has learned from some education experience. Additionally, Yelon, Weinstein, and Weener (1977:301) express achievement as the successfulness of individual, while another source Smith and Hudgins (1964:95) says that achievement was to do one’s best, to be successful to accomplish tasks requiring skill and effort and to be recognized by authority.

Based on the opinions above, it can be concluded that achievement was the result, the successfulness, the ability, the progress in learning education experiences that the individual indicates relation with his/her educational learning. Achievement concerns with what someone has actually learn whereas aptitude was the potential for learning something. In other words, achievement was a success in reaching particular goal/status or standard, especially by effort, skill, courage, and so on.

B.     Writing

1.      Definition of Writing

Generally, writing is a way in sending massage from the writer to the reader. Similar to Donald Hall said on his book “Writing Well” that writing is pretentious and wordy, but a massage comes through. Writing also is a way the writer think or a way of thinking which is share to the reader, like Robert Scholes and Nancy R. Comley (1985) say that writing is a way of thinking as well as a means of communication. Fred D. White (2986) also said that writing is more than public communication; it is a way of thinking.

Writing is an individual activity similar to Jo McDonough and Christopher Shaw (1993) said that writing, like reading, is in many ways an individual, solitary activity. Similarly, Trisha Phelps-Gum and Diana Phelps-Teraski (1982) said that writing is a useful, effective, enjoyable and above all necessary component of the modern world. It provides the pleasure of sending a personal massage to a friend. It assumes career and financial importance in the composition of a resume or a business letter. They also said that writing is the most complex language mode, being four time removed from inner language, and adds the component of written expression to the earlier abilities. To Micklebust (1960), writing is composed of successful development in three other language modes, deriving its focus from aural, oral, and visual receptive components.

Writing was a process of formulating and organizing ideas in right words to deliver the aim and present them on a piece of paper. According to Jones in R. Cooper and Odell (1977:33) writing was synonymous with discourse, and discourse was discussed in terms of its aims, it relate to the function of language, and in terms of its feature, which are the separate elements, devices, and mechanism of language.

On the other hand, Reinking, Hard and Osten (1993:188) state that writing was a way of communication and of course communicates all the time. And then Deporter and Heracki (2002:179) explain that writing was a whole brain activity, which use bright brain side (emotion) and left brain side (logic). Although right and left brain sides are used in writing, right brain side has a big position because it was a place which appears new ideas and emotion.

From the explanation above, we can state that writing is way of thinking or sending massage from the writer to the reader which becomes the part of language or language skills and it also means communication. Writing was a whole brain activity to formulate and organize ideas in right words to deliver and communicate the aims to the reader and present it on a piece of paper.

2.      Process Writing

Langan (2005: 23-34) divide writing process in to four types, they are:

a.       Prewriting

In pre writing there are five types technique that will help you to think about develop a topic and words on paper. This technique help you to write in the first time you start to write something.

1.      Free writing technique

Free writing means jotting down in rough sentence or phrase everything that comes to mind about a possible topic. In this time, you can write anything in your mind without worried about the mistake, you can focus on discovering what you want to say about subject.

2.      Questioning technique

In questioning, you generate ideas and details by asking question about your subject. By asking the question you can get the ideas and think about the subject. The question such as: Why? Where? When? Who and How?

3.      Making a list

Making a list is also known as brainstorming. In this technique you can collect ideas and details that relate to your subject. You can pile ideas without trying to sort major detail. The purpose is just to make a list of everything about your subject that occurs to you.

4.      Clustering or Mapping

Clustering is another strategy that can be used to generate material for a paper. This method is helpful for people who like to do their thinking in a visual way. In this technique you can use lines, circle or arrows to show the relationship between the ideas and details that were you made.

5.      Preparing a starch outline

A starch outline is an excellent sequel to the first four pre writing technique. In a starch outline, you think carefully about the point you are making, the supporting items, arrange those items. The starch outline is a plan to help you achieve a unified, supported and well organized.

b.      Writing a first draft

In this time, be prepared to put in additional thoughts and details that did not emerge during prewriting. You can write and don‟t worry about the grammar, punctuation or spelling.

c.       Revising

Revising means rewrite a paper, building on what has already been done, in order to make your idea clearly. Revising is as much stage in the writing process as prewriting, outlining and doing the first draft. In revising, you can arrange your writing to put things in the right place. Finally, after you do all the things, you can write in paper. There are three stages to revising process: revising content, revising sentences and editing. d. Editing After you have revised your paper for content and style, you are ready to check or check errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling. Don‟t forget to eliminate sentence and skill mistake. Your writing is better after you finish this step.

According to Gebhard in O‟malley (1996: 139) also give steps in writing process in school:

1.      Pre writing

In the prewriting stage, student may use graphic organizers as an aid to clarify the concept they will use in writing.

2.      Writing

During the writing process, student can edit and revise their works; share ideas with other students on how improve their writing. 3. Post writing Students share their writing with other, read aloud what they have written or exchange writing with other student.

3.      The purpose of writing

O‟Malley and Pierce (1996: 137) divide the purpose of writing into three categories; a. Informative writing

b. Expressive/narrative writing, and

c. Persuasive writing.

Informative writing is commonly used if the writers want to share knowledge and give information, directions or ideas.

a. Informative writing includes describing events or experience, analyzing concepts, speculating on causes and effects, and developing new ideas or relationships. This type of writing can include a biography about someone from the writer’s life.

b. Expressive/narrative writing is a personal or imaginative expression in which the writer produces stories or essays. This type of writing is often based on observations of people, objects, and places and may include creative speculation and interpretations. It may include an autobiographical incident or a reflection in which a writer describes an occurrence in her or his own life. This type of writing is often used for entertainment, pleasure, and discovery or, simply, as „fun‟ writing and can include poems and short plays. c. In persuasive writing, writers attempt to influence others and initiate action or change. This type of writing is often based on background information, facts, and examples the writer uses to support the view expressed. Writers use higher-level cognitive skills in this type of writing, such as analysis and evaluation, to argue a particular point of view in a convincing way. This type of writing may include evaluation of a book, movie, a consumer product, or a controversial issue or problem. Writers can also use personal experience or emotional appeals to argue in support of their view.

2.3. Descriptive Paragraph

According to Ervina Evawina S (2010:7) descriptive paragraph is a paragraph clearly portrays a person, place, or thing in such a way that the reader can visualize the topic and enter into the writer’s experience. In fact, not all students are able to write descriptive paragraph properly and in appropriate with the existing elements in the descriptive text.

Additionally, descriptive paragraph was a paragraph may be defined as a group of sentences that are closely related in thought and which serve one comment purpose often used to describe what a person looks like and acts like, what a place looks like, and what an object looks like (http://www.exampleshelp.org.uk). Furthermore, Pardiyono (2007:34) state that descriptive paragraph was a type of written text paragraph, in which has the specific function to describe about an object (living or non-living things) and it has the aim that was giving descriptive of the object to the reader clearly.

            From the definition above, it can be concluded that descriptive paragraph was a paragraph that describes a particular person, place or event in great deal.

Furthermore, Jolly (1984:470) assert there are five types of writing descriptive paragraph. They are:

a. Describing Process

Describing a process not only explains how something was done, but also explains why it was done and what was needed to complete the process.

b. Describing and event

To describe an event, a writer should be able to memorize and remember what happened in the event. Supposed the writer will write about Tsunami that was happened in Japan. In this case, he / she has to explain all details related to the event, so that the readers can imagine the real situation and condition.

c. Describing a personality

In describing a person, the first thing that we do was recognizing his/her individual characteristics. We need to describe people occurs fairly areas of physical attribute (hair, eyes), emotional (warm, nervous), moral attributes (greedy, honest, worthy, trust), and intellectual (cleverness, perception)

d. Describing a place

Presenting something concrete was the way to describe place, for example: a home, a hospital, and school.

e. Describing an object

To describe an object accurately was done by providing the physical characteristics of the object such as the color, form, shape, and so on.

2.4. Grammar

Grammar is the main of language that different with the other language. Grammar is one of the components of language. Coleman & Klapper (1998:8) stated that grammar is made in applied linguistic between implicit and explicit knowledge of grammar.

2.5. Teachers’ Expertise

Stough and Palmer (2003) similarly report that expert special education teachers have a complex body of knowledge and skills, including student-specific knowledge. Moreover, these teachers used their knowledge flexibly in order to address the unique needs of their students. The teachers also have cognitive characteristics of experts. In sum, cognitive characteristics of expertise have been found to be “consistent and reliable” (Alexander, 2003, p. 3). As important as it is, expertise is not an easy goal to pursue these days because the concept has become a moving target. Over the last few decades systematic inquiry into the nature of expertise has changed our understanding of the concept.

The defmition of expertise has grown, by accretion. The bedrock, widely accepted view is that expertise is based on special knowledge or skills. For generations our institutions and teaching methods have been in tune with this view. We have produced experts by transmitting information (Barr and Tagg, 1997; Tiberius, 1970). The better learners were those who memorized more material and recalled more of it on exams; the better teachers transmitted more information to their students; and the better faculty developers had larger repertoires of strategies to suggest to teachers.

So, we can conclude that teachers’ expertise is the method or strategy of the teachers to transfer knowledge or information to their students. Teachers should have the good background knowledge and should creative in the teaching learning process to make the students enjoyable with the material.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHOD

 In this chapter the researcher describes the research method that used in this study. It consists of research design, population and sample, research variable, research instrument, validity and reliability testing, data collection method, research procedure and data analysis.

A.          Research Design

This research was use quantitative research. This research included in correlation design. Correlation design is quantitative research in which investigators measure the degree of relation between two or more variables using the statistical procedure of correlation analysis. This degree of association, expressed as a number, indicates whether the two variables are related or whether one can predict another. In this study, the writer will use correlation between two variables. In statistical correlation, there must be measures for each subject (person) in-group. If this condition is satisfied, the data can be inserted into a statistical formulation.

            It’s been clearly explained in the previous chapter that there are actually a lot of similarities between teachers’ grammar expertise and student’s achievement in writing descriptive paragraph. Thus, due to those similarities, there must be close relationship between teachers’ grammar expertise and student’s achievement in writing descriptive paragraph. In this study, the researcher really wants to know whether the correlation between those two variables are really existed or not. Accordingly, the most appropriate research design used in order to answer whether or not teachers’ grammar expertise has correlation to students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph of the seventh grade students of MtsN Bandung Tulungagung is correlational design.

B. Population, Sample, and Sampling

1. Population

Population is all individuals from whom the data are collected.  Research needs automatically place and population supporting the research. In this research the population was all students coming from the English teacher and students of MtsN Bandung Tulungagung.

2. Sample

In this study, it was necessary for the researcher to gather the data will take from part of the population involving in this study. Data will take from students among the population, which was then considered as sample. In this research, the writer will take 56 students from 135 students. The writer uses the random access sampling to get the sample because the class has the same quality and homogeny, there are no classification. The number of the sample for this research would automatically be less than the population. There were 56 students picked as the sample who were widely spread from the 2 classes of the seventh grade and 4 English teachers who teach at seventh grade.

3. Sampling

There are various ways in taking sample that could be involved in a research what so called as sampling. There are basically two kinds of sampling being divided into probability sampling and nonprobability sampling. And each is still elaborated into some other kinds of sampling. What sampling would be used in this research was Purposive Sampling which belongs to Non-Probability Sampling.

            The main characteristic in Purposive Sampling is that there is typical characteristic that must be owned by the sample involved in the research. In this research so much concerns with teachers’ grammar expertise and student’s achievement in writing descriptive paragraph, the sample was taken from the 2 classes of the seventh grade and 4 English teachers who teach at seventh grade.

C. Variable of the data

A variable is a construct or a characteristic that can take on different values or scores. Researchers study variables and the relationship that exist among variables (Ary et.al, 2006: 37). In this case, there are two kinds of variables: dependent variable and independent variable. Dependent variable is the output or effect. It shows the effect of manipulating or introducing the independent variables. While independent variable is the input variable. It refers to abstract processes that are not directly observable but that link the independent and dependent variables. In this research the dependent variable is teachers’ grammar expertise and the independent variable is student’s achievement in writing descriptive paragraph.

D. Research Instrument

In conducting the research, instrument played an important role in order to measure the involved variables. Here, it had purpose as a tool to get the data. It used to measure the students’ ability and for getting the data to prove the theory. This research will use a test and questionnaire as instrument. An instrument in which respondents provide written response to questions or mark items that indicate their responses (Ary et.al, 2006: 648). It is a list of question to be answered to get information. Questionnaire is a means as eliciting the feelings, beliefs, experiences, perceptions, or attitude of some sample of individuals.

In this research, the questionnaire is written in Indonesian in order to make

the respondents easier in understanding the question. The questionnaire consists of 10 questions in the form of multiple choices. In this case, the respondents only needed to choose one of the choices reflected to their real life. According to the statement before, there are four choices for each question, and each choice has a different score. The researcher will give 6 score for a choice or ya, give 4 score for b choice or sering, give 2 score for c choice or kadang-kadang, and give 1 score for d choice or tidak. For the descriptive paragraph test, the researcher will ask the students to write down descriptive paragraph. The researcher will give score on grammar, and give 5 score for excellent, give 3 for good, give 1 for enough.

E. Validity and Reliability Testing

Validity and reliability were the two criteria used to judge the quality of all pre-established quantitative measures. Before using these test, a try out to 25 students to find out the validity and reliability of the test.

a. Validity Testing

The validity of an assessment or tool indicates the extent to which it is an adequate measure of the curriculum and objectives it represent. The researcher want the information that obtained through an instrument to serve the purpose of research. According to Brown (1996: 231), there are four types of validity. They are content validity, criterion-related validity, construct validity and face validity. Furthermore, the researcher emphasized on the content validity.

Content validity is a kind of validity which depends on careful analysis of  the language being tested and of the particular test. These tests are made by herself aimed to measure the students’ achievement in writing descriptive paragraph appropriate with the materials that they learnt at class by their teachers’ grammar expertise. In this test, the researcher provided the multiple-choice test.

b. Reliability Testing

Lodico et al (2006: 87) stated, “Reliability refers to the consistency of scores, that is, an instruments’ ability to produce “approximately” the same score for an individual over repeated testing or across different rater”. It means that reliability of instrument was needed to make sure that the instrument could be consistent if used in other time. Therefore, the instrument as the test was reliable.

Before giving the test, the researcher made test to be tried out to know how far the reliability of the instrument. One of the ways to achieve the reliability was applied rater reliability. According to Brown (1996: 203), there were two kinds of rater reliability namely inter-rater reliability and intra-rater reliability. Inter-rater reliability was an essentially variation which two scorers or raters do the scoring then a correlation coefficient was calculated between them. While, intra-rater in which one scorer or rater does the scoring twice then two sets of them are calculated to get correlation coefficient.

F. Data Collecting Method

Administering a test or testing is one of the way in collecting data from the subjects, especially when the main purpose is to obtained the score of the subjects. Arikunto (2010:193) states that this can be defined as series of practices to measure one’s skill as well as his intelligent. There were two kinds of administered test covering teachers’ grammar expertise and students achievement in writing descriptive paragraph.

G. Data Analysis

As this study employed quantitative approach, the gathered data were automatically be in the form of number. The numerical data were obtained from the teacher’s grammar expertise and students’ achievement in descriptive paragraph score. After all data were gathered, first, the researcher tabulated them into tables which were expected to ease the reader understanding the data. Secondly, in order to know the correlation between the two involved variables, researcher employed computer calculation of Pearson Product Moment correlation using SPSS 16.0 program to analyze the data. This result the interpretation of how strong or weak the correlation between those variables. Thirdly, the researcher would take a conclusion based on the result showed by SPSS 16.0 program if the hypothesis was rejected or accepted. Then, finding out the significant correlation for all population, the researcher used product moment significant correlation formula as follow:

Where:

t : “test” value

r : Pearson coefficient correlation

n : Number of sample