25 IMPROVING STUDENTS’ DESCRIPTIVE WRITING TEXT THROUGH PICTURE WORD INDUCTIVE MODEL (PWIM) STRATEGY FOR SEVENTH GRADE OF SMP INABA PALEMBANG Herizal Novi Afriani UIN Raden Fatah Palembang ABSTRACT: The objectives of this study were to findout (1) whether or not there is significant difference on students’ descriptive writing through Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) Strategy for seventh grade of SMP Inaba Palembang. The investigation of population of this study was the seventh grade students of SMP Inaba Palembang in the academic year 2013/2014, which consist of 98 students coming from three classes. The sample of the study were class 7.1 consisting of 33 students was treated as experimental group and class 7.3 consisting of 31 students was treating as control group, which selected using convenience sampling. The obtained data was analyzed by using regression analysis in SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) program. The result showed that there was a significant difference on students’ descriptive writing achievement taught using Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) and Teacher Method (GTM) since tvalue 19.484 was higher than ttable (t0.05, 62 = 1.99897), it could be stated that the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. Keywords: Writing, Descriptive Text, Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) Introduction Language is a tool for communication among people all over the world. According to Sanggam (2008, p. 1), language is a set of rules used by human as a tool of their communication. People use language to express their feelings, to adapt in social environment, and to communicate to each other. One of the languages that used as a tool for communication among contries is English which has role as an international language. Today, English is very important to be mastered because most people in the world use it to communicate and absorb knowledge, culture and technology. In our country, English has been chosen as the first foreign language to be taught as a compulsory subject to the students at schools from elementary to university. In learning English there are four skills that people should master, the skills are reading, listening, writing, and speaking. 26 Richard and Renandya (2002, p. 303) say that “writing is the most difficult skill for second language learners to master. The difficulty is not only in generating and organizing ideas, but also in translating these ideas into readable text. In the first year of junior high school, the basic competency that should be achieved in the writing English subject is that the students have ability to develop and produce written simple functional text in the descriptive and procedure. Based on the above, the descriptive text is one of the functional texts that must be mastered by students in learning English. Theoretically Wardiman (2008, p. 115) defines that descriptive text is a text that describes the features of someone, something, or a certain place. Descriptive text consists of introduction and description. Introduction is the part of paragraph that introduces the character, and description is the part of paragraph that describes the character. The students can use the simple present and adjective clause in writing descriptive text. In writing the descriptive text, students often find some difficulties. The students usually feel difficult to organize their ideas. Furthermore, many students made some mistakes and faced difficulties to build and develop their imagination. Based on the statement above, teachers must be able to organize learning- teaching activities. They have to master the materials, methods, and also technique or strategy to make the students understand and apply descriptive writing matters in practice. A good technique can help the students in comprehending and mastering the lesson. One of the teaching failures is caused by an unsuitable method or technique in teaching learning process. There are a lot of methods and techniques to get the English teaching effectively. Calhoun (1999, p. 21) defines the Pcture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) is an inquiry-oriented language arts strategy that uses pictures containing familiar objects and actions to elicit words from children's listening and speaking vocabularies. Teachers use the PWIM with classes, small groups, and individuals to lead them into inquiring about words, adding words to their writing, discovering phonetic and structural principles, and using observation and analysis in their study of and writing, discovering phonetic and structural principles, and using observation and analysis in their study of writing. Calhoun (1999, p. 30) says that PWIM is design to teach reading, writing, and language system. 27 Based on the writer’s experience when she did the observation on SMP Inaba Palembang, she found that the process of teaching–learning in the classroom is still passive. The students do not understand clearly about descriptive text, how to identify the descriptive text, and how to describe persons, places, and things in English writing. Beside that, the teacher uses the old technique in teaching descriptive text (Grammar Translation Method) which makes the students felt bored and difficult to understand the material when teaching learning process conducted. Therefore, the teacher needs to be more creative in teaching, including the use of technique. Concept of Writing Writing is an activity that has been widely described in the Qu'ran and hadith. as a hadith that explains about the importance of writing. “ Indeed, the first thing that Allah created was a pen, and then God said to him: "Write!". The Pen replied: "O my Lord, what should I write?" Then God said: "Write down everything until it comes provisions of the Hour". (HR. Ahmad and Abu Dawud).” (Abdullahroy, 2011) Therefore, writing is not only only students’ obligation at school, but also writing is a command of God that must be obeyed by humans. To support this statement, Allah says in the Qur’an sura Al-qalam: 1. “Nun. By the pen and what they inscribe.” Based on the explanation above, it can be interpreted that writing is important lesson for students both to fulfill their obligations as students and their status as creatures of God to execute his orders. Horsburg (2009, p. 9) states that writing is a laborious activity for the students, which is involves many skills: students must first be able to recognize that certain shapes from letters, and these letters represent particular sounds; when the letters are put together. Tompkins (1994, p. 7) states that the writing process is a way of looking at writing instruction in which the emphasis is shifted from students’ finished products to what students think and do as they write. 28 Concept of Descriptive Text Wardiman (2008, p. 115) defines that descriptive text is one of the functional texts which is difficult enough to be learnt by the students. Descriptive text is a text that describes the features of someone, something, or a certain place. Furthermore, Fiderer (2002, p. 17) define that descriptive text gives a clear picture of a person, place, object, event, or idea. Details for paragraphs come from the writer’s sense---smell, taste, touch, hearing, and sight. Concept of Picture Word Inductive Model According to Calhoun (1999, p. 21) Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) is an inquiry-oriented language arts strategy that uses pictures containing familiar objects and actions to elicit words from children’s listening and speaking vocabularies. Calhoun (1999, p. 24) states that for most of beginner writers, the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) is an interesting and enjoyable activity where the students can enjoy gaining object and events through picture. Basically PWIM is a strategy which uses the advantage of picture as the learning media in teaching and learning process. PWIM consists of pictures which are familiar to the students. It is to make the students able to identify it easily. Pictures used in the material are having some key words to make students find out what they will write about. The pictures have some words or key words are called picture word chart. According to Calhoun (1999, p. 23), there are several benefits of using PWIM strategy: 1) Students hear the words pronounced correctly many times and the picture word chart is an immediate reference as they add these words to their sight vocabulary. The teacher can choose to emphasize almost any sound and symbol relationship (introduced or taken to mastery). 2) Students hear and see letters identified and written correctly many times. 3) Students hear the words spelled correctly many times and participate in spelling them correctly. There are some steps in teaching writing using PWIM, Calhoun (1999: 23); 1) Select a picture. 2) Ask students to identify what they see in the picture. 29 3) Label the picture parts identified. (Draw a line from the identified object or area, say the word, write the word; ask students to spell the word aloud and then to pronounce it.) 4) Add words, if desired, to the picture word chart and to the word blanks. 5) Lead students into creating a title for the picture word chart. Ask students to think about the information on the chart and what they want to say about it. 6) Ask students to generate a sentence, sentences, or a paragraph about the picture word chart. Ask students to classify sentences; model putting the sentences into a good paragraph. 7) Read and review the sentences and paragraphs. Teacher’s Method in Teaching Descriptive Text In teaching writing descriptive text, the teacher at that school use Grammar Translation Method (GTM). GTM is not new. In this method, teacher is the main communicator of a classroom. All the activities and classroom tasks are given by teacher and student just memorize those and give examinations. Grammar Translation Method (GTM) in teaching writing descriptive text is as follow: (Serba-Serbi, 2011) 1) Teacher start the lesson and give descriptive text to the students. Teacher asks the students to read the text. 2) Teacher asks some question abaout the text. 3) After students read the text, teacher asks them to translate the text into Indonesian. 4) Then, teacher speak in Indonesian and offers the students to ask question if they find any difficult in translate the text. If there is no question related to the text, than the techer asks students to write the answer of questions below the text. After students finish their work, teacher chooses one students to mention the answer. If the students’ answer is incorrect, teacher chooses other students to answer the question until the answer is correct. 5) After the questions answered correctly, the teacher explain about the communicative purpose, rhetorical structure and gramatical patterns from the text. 30 Research Design The method that was used in this research was an quasy experiment with nonequivalent control group design. In its simplest form, it involves comparing two groups on one outcome measure to test some hypothesis regarding causation (Marczyk, et. at., 2005, p. 03). The figure of nonequivalent control group design is suggested by Arikunto (2010, p. 127) as follows. Where: O1 = Pretest in experimental group O2 = Post-test in expeimental group X = Treatment in experimental group with Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM). O3 = Pretest in control groupI O4 = Post-test in control group I C = Treatment in control group with Grammar Translation Method (GTM) Population and Sample The population for this research was all the seventh grades students of SMP Inaba Palembang. The mounts of students of SMP Inaba Palembang especially for seventh grade students are 98 students that comes from three classes. In this study, convenience sampling was used. They are 7.1 and 7.3. The number of students at 7.1 is 33 students and 7.3 is 31 students. So total number of sample is 64 students. Then the samples are divided into two groups 7.1 as experimental group and 7.3 as control group. Validity Test The analysis is done to the instrument of the research before used in pretest and posttest activity. a) Construct Validity According to McMillan and Schumacher (2010, p. 265), construct validity describes how well measured variables and interventions represent the theoritical O1 X O2 O3 C O4 31 constructs that have been hyphothesized (i.e., construct validity of the effects and causes, respectively). In this research , there are three validators to validate this research instrument. The three validators were Amalia Hasanah, M. Pd as the first validator, Muhammad Holandyah, M. Pd. as the second validator, and Aida Imtihana, M. Ag. as the third validator. From the result of three validators of this research instrument test, lesson plans, and materials. It can be stated that the research instrument of this study can be used after being revised little. it means that the instrument of writing descriptive text test was appropriate to be tested to the students. b) Content Validity Hughes (1989, p. 22) stated that “a test is said to have content validity if its content constitutes a representative sample of the language skills, structures, etc. which it is meant to be concerned”. A content validity is very important since it is an accurate measure of what it is supposed to measure. In order to judge whether or not a test has content validity, a specification of the skills or structures should be made based on the curriculum and syllabus. c) Reliability Test Reliability test is used to measures whether reasearch instrument used for pretest and posttest activities is reliable or not. Reliability can be defined as the extent to which a test material is consistent when administrated under similar condition. According to Fraenkle, et. al. (2012, p. 154), reliability refers to the consistency of scores or answer. The scores of reliability are obtained from tryout analysis which is done twice using the same sample and instruments. The school where the tryout analysis is different from the school where research study will be done. In doing this test, the writer took sample from SMP Islamy Palembang, and the school where this research study will be done at SMP Inaba Palembang. To test a reliability of writing test and to avoid the bias test, writer used interrater reliability. Interrater reliability is essentially a variation of the equivalent from type 32 of reliability in that the scores are usually produced by two raters, the scores are lined up in columns, and a correlation coefficient is calculated between them. The rank order correlation formula is suggested by (Carrol and Hall, 1985, p. 119), as belows: Where: R : Rank-Order Method ݀ଶ : Different Score n : The Number of the Students Normality Test The function of normality test is to know whether the sample is normal or not. Basrowi (2007, p. 85) state that the data can be classified into normal when the p-output is higher than mean significant difference at 0.025 levels. In this study to know the normality of the sample was used one sample kolmogronov smrinov in using SPSS 18. The data are obtained from students’ pre-test and post-test scores in control group, pre-test and post- test scores in experimental group.The result show that the score control and experimental groups were 0.834 and 0,618. Then, in posttest in control and experimental groups were 1.122 and 1.006, it can be concluded that the data were considered normal since they are higher than 0.025. Homogeneity Test The function of homogeneity test is to determine the students’ scores are homogeneous or not. In this study to know the homogeneity of the sample was used levene statistics by using SPSS 18. The homogeneity test is used to measure students’ pretest and posttest score in control and experimental group in analyzing the homogeneity, the writer used levene statistic. The result showed that the pretest scores was 0.284. and posttest scores 8.292. It can be conluded that the data was homogeneous since the score was higher than 0.05. )1( )(6 1 2 2    nn d R 33 Result of Hypothesis Testing In testing the research hypothesis, it is described by measuring; Firstly, means significant improvement that used to find out the improvement of the students’ pretest to posttest average scores taught using (PWIM) strategy (experimental group). One way anova is used to find out whether there was a significant progress from the scores of the pretest to the posttest of experimental subjects, which is found from whenever the tvalue of matched ttest calculation is higher than t0.05, 62 = 1.9989 and the level of significance is lower than α = 0.05 (95% of confidence level). Conclusion Based on the finding and interpretation, the result of this research showed that the use of Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) has successfully improved the eighth year students’ writing ability in writing the descriptive text at SMP Inaba Palembang in academic year 2013/20114. The conclusion could be drawn from the result of research as follows: (1) students mean score from pretest to posttest has increased 20.5 point from 52.9848 to 73.4848. From the score, reacher conclude that there was significant difference on students’ writing descriptive achievement taught using PWIM and GTM. 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