Putri Anggraeni, et al / Journal of English Language Teaching 6 (1) (2017) 171 ELT FORUM 9 (2) (2020) Journal of English Language Teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt Team pair solo plus pictures for teaching writing descriptive text Siti Muamalah English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Article Info ________________ Article History: Received in 11 May 2020 Approved in 29 November 2020 Published in 30 November 2020 ________________ Keywords: Team Pair Solo; Cooperative Learning; Picture; Teaching Writing; Descriptive Text ____________________ Abstract ________________________________________________________________ This study was conducted to explore the implementation of Team-Pair-Solo and pictures by an English teacher in teaching writing descriptive text. There were just a few studies that tried to analyze how Team-Pair-Solo or pictures were used by the English teacher in the teaching and learning process. Most of them only focused on the improvement of the students’ achievement. Thus, to fill the gap in the literature, I conducted this study. The objectives were to describe the implementation of Team- Pair-Solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by an English teacher, explainthe difficulties the English teacher faced, and describe how she solved those difficulties. In this study, I used qualitative method. The participant was an English teacher in one of the schools in Tegal in the academic year of 2019/2020. I used questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis as data collection methods. The results revealed that the teacher integrated Team-Pair-Solo and pictures with lecturing technique, a game and other language skills. This study showed that there were two difficulties faced by the teacher namely students’ lack of enthusiasm and crowded students. To solve those difficulties, the teacher conducted a game and asked the students to memorize vocabulary as the punishment for the crowded students. In conclusion, Team-Pair-Solo was an interesting technique and pictures were helpful media that helped English teacher in the teaching and learning process and were somewhat easy to be implemented. The technique and media helped students to be actively engaged in the classroom activity. © 2020 Universitas Negeri Semarang  Correspondent Address: p-ISSN 2252-6706 | e-ISSN 2721-4532 B3 Building FBS Unnes Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 E-mail: sitimuamalah11@gmail.com Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 172 INTRODUCTION English has become an international language for a long time, and it has been learned by Indonesian since they are in elementary school. Yet, many students in Indonesia still face difficulties in mastering English, especially in writing. Indeed, among the four English skills that have to be mastered, writing skill is regarded as the most difficult skill. Widyanita (2017) said that the learning of writing skill is as difficult as the teaching of this skill. It is because, in writing, the writer has to pay close attention to some components such as grammar, content, vocabulary, punctuation, and sentence structure. Writing is a complex activity and it needs some steps during the process. There are four steps during the writing process as stated by Harmer (2004) namely planning, drafting, editing, and final draft (p. 4-5). From that process, we can see that writing is not an instant activity, that’s why mastering writing skill is not easy for students and the students need to practice a lot by using some steps in order to be able to improve the skill of writing (Detapratiwi, 2013). Discovering the correct technique is important to help teachers in teaching writing to their students in order to make the teaching of writing easier and more fun so that the students are interested in learning and they can enjoy the teaching-learning process and finally they can master the skill. In curriculum 2013, teaching-learning process is required to use student centered learning approach. Students are required to be active in the teaching-learning process and in fact, cooperative learning techniques use student centered. Moreover, in the syllabus, it is stated that Vocational High School students are required to master some of the genre texts, such as descriptive, announcement, recount, and narrative texts. All of those texts are difficult for them if in the teaching-learning process teachers only use conventional techniques (Fajlin, 2017). In this study I chose cooperative learning as an alternative in teaching writing. Kassner (2002) said that cooperative learning is a system which is well-developed in which to teach students in small group settings (p. 17). There are many cooperative learning techniques that can be used as an alternative in teaching writing, one of them is Team Pair Solo. According to Kagan (as cited in Wibisono, 2017) Team Pair Solo is a technique that can develop student’s virtue learning. Through this technique, students can learn and work together in groups first before they solve the problems on their own. Students can help each other during the group process so that it can motivate them to learn. In addition, Team Pair Solo involves students’ participation and they have to work cooperatively with their classmates in groups. Furthermore, to be more effective in teaching writing especially writing descriptive text, it is good if the teachers use pictures as the media. According to Asrifan (2015) teaching using pictures is very suitable to be applied to the students as a media in writing and also is very helpful for the students in generating and organizing their ideas in writing through pictures. Also, Raimes (1983) stated that pictures provide an experience for students in the classroom, a common base that leads to a variety of language activities (p. 27). In this study, I used the theory from Carroll and Wilson (as cited in Widyanita, 2017). They said that writing as a process means giving students time to pre-write, write, post-write, proof read and edit their papers. It means teaching writing, not just assigning it, but also the teacher has to find the appropriate technique in teaching so that the students will be interested in joining and following the lesson. This study also used the theory from Klimek (2009) about cooperative learning. Klimek said that cooperative learning is where teams of students, with various abilities and skills, work together on different activities to learn about a subject. The cooperative learning that I used here was Team Pair Solo. Kagan (as cited in Sutarno, 2015) stated Team Pair Solo is teaching technique that allows the students to work on problems first as a team, then with a partner, and later they will easily solve the problems by themselves. It means that before doing problems alone, in Team Pair Solo, the students first do them as a team and as a pair, receiving plenty of tutoring, encouragement and support. In addition, Team Pair Solo is a technique that can develop student’s virtue leaning. Those virtue learning are cooperation, helpfulness, leadership, self-motivation, and pride. Through this technique, students can learn and work together in group first before they solve the problems on their own. Students can help each other during the group process so that it can motivate them to learn (Kagan, as cited in Wibisono, 2017). I also used the theory from Sadiman (2003) that pictures media are pictures that are related to the subject, useful for conveying messages from teachers to students (p. 21). This means that when pictures used as the media in teaching, the pictures can help the students understand the material Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 173 easily. Alexander (1988) said that the use of picture may trigger a desire to learn more about the topic being presented (p. 44). Moreover, Chairenna (2007) stated that the use of picture in teaching writing can help the students catch and express their ideas easily by looking at the picture (p. 13). There were many previous studies that discussed about Team Pair Solo and picture in helping students improving their skills such as done by Sumarsih and Sanjaya (2011), Khasanah (2013), Siregar and Nugroho (2015), Hapsari, Sudarsono, and Bunau (2015). Sumarsih and Sanjaya (2011) conducted a study with the objectives were to improve students’ achievement in writing descriptive through the application of Team Pair Solo and the resullt showed that students’ performances were improved in every test. Khasanah (2013) found that the students’ ability in writing descriptive text improved after being taught by Team Pair Solo combined with picture guessing game. It could be seen from the students’ test results which were improved namely from the average score 71.68 to 79.15. Moreover, Siregar and Nugroho (2015) revealed that the picture’s implementation in teaching descriptive text made the students gain more vocabulary and be more interested in following the lesson. It also created interesting atmosphere and stimulated students’ creativity as well. Team Pair Solo and picture were not only effective to teach writing skill, but also to teach another skill. For example, Hapsari, Sudarsono, and Bunau (2015) reported that the use of Team Pair Solo is very effective to teach reading comprehension. The examples above showed that Team Pair Solo and picture used by many researchers in various of skills improvement. However, the studies were only focused on the improvement of students’ skills. The studies only focused on the result of the implementation of Team Pair Solo and picture as media whether or not the technique and the media gave impact on students’ ability, for example, in writing. Moreover, the research only focused on the improvement of students’ score to indicate the success of the implementation of Team Pair Solo or picture in a certain skill. There was just few studies that try to examine or analyse how Team Pair Solo or picture are used by the teacher in the teaching and learning process. The previous studies have not investigated yet how an English teacher teach in a class using a certain teaching technique in this case Team Pair Solo and also the picture used as media. Therefore, based on the reviewed, to fill the gap in the literature, I conducted a research dealing with analyzing an English teacher in implementing Team Pair Solo combined with pictures in teaching writing descriptive text. I analyzed how the technique and media were applied by the teacher in a certain school. The reason why I chose this topic was because there was only few studies related to it and by doing this research we could find out how Team Pair Solo and pictures were implemented in that school. The research emphasized on the process of the implementation of Team Pair Solo and the used of pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by English teacher. The process studied were how an English teacher implemented Team Pair Solo technique and pictures as media in the classroom, what difficulties that faced and how she solved those difficulties. METHODS This study used qualitative research design. This was a case study because the aim of this study was to describe the implementation of Team Pair Solo technique which was combined with pictures to teach writing of descriptive text by an English teacher. Marshall and Rossman (2006) defined qualitative research that it is pragmatic, interpretive, and grounded in the lived experiences of people. In addition, Rossman and Rallis (2003) said that there are five characteristics of qualitative research namely it is naturalistic, draws on multiple methods that respect the humanity of participants in the study, focuses on context, is emergent and evolving and it is fundamentally interpretive. This study explored and investigated how an English teacher implemented Team Pair Solo which was combined with pictures in her teaching and learning process, in this case when teaching writing of descriptive text. In this study, I took an English teacher in one of the schools in Tegal as the research participant. The reasons was that she was the practitioner of cooperative learning in which it was in line with my research topic. Other than that, I was the alumnus so that it was easier for me to get the permission procedural. As the instrument in this research, I used questionnaire, interviews, observations, and document analysis for collecting the data. The procedures of collecting data were as follows: the first that I did was gave the questionnaire as soon as I met the English teacher. After it done, the next step was conducting classroom observation. In this step, I observed the teaching and learning process when the teacher was implementing Team Pair Solo and pictures as media in teaching writing descriptive text. I made Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 174 an agreement with the English teacher on what day and what time I could conduct the classroom observation. After we agreed, I could immediately conduct the classroom observation. The next step was that doing the interview towards English teacher and some students from TKR one to TKR six. The interview with the teacher was conducted after the classroom observations from TKR one to six were done. Whereas the interview with the students were done directly after the clasroom observation. The last was document analysis. The document analysed was the lesson plan made by the English teacher. The document analysis was done throughout the study. I informed the English teacher that I needed her lesson plan in the first meeting and asked for conducting the classroom observation. Then, there were three steps of analyzing data in this study namely data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. The first one is data reduction. In this step I collected all data from questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis (lesson plan). After all data were gathered, I started to analyze the data one by one carefully and selected the important findings that I got from the research instruments and then I simplified the data until it transformed into important data that I used for presenting the results in this study. The second one was data display. In this research, I presented the data display in descriptive form. In this step, I organized all the data and described the answer of the research questions, such as describing the implementation of Team Pair Solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text in this schooland explaining the difficulties faced by the English teacher and how she solved them. The third was conclusion drawing and verification. The conclusion in this study was made based on the data obtained and was made by using my own words and thoughts reflecting to the findings of this research. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Team Pair Solo and Pictures for Teaching Writing Descriptive Text The purposes of this study were to describe the implementation of Team Pair Solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by an English teacher, the difficulties that faced by English teacher and how she solved them. The data were collected through questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. The participant in this study was one of the English teachers in one of the schools in Tegal named Mrs. Putri (pseudonym). She was the practitioner of cooperative learning. From the questionnaire, it is known that Mrs. Putri has been teaching English for about five to ten years and in her teaching and learning process, she implemented k-13. Mrs. Putri taught x grade of TKR (Teknik Kendaraan Ringan). There were six classes in total and I observed all those classes. Since this research was a qualitative case study, I would present the findings in the form of descriptive explanation. Based on the data, I presented the findings as follows: The Integration of Other Language Skills as well as Another Teaching Technique in Teacher's Instruction Based on the classroom observation, it was found that Mrs. Putri taught descriptive text materials by implementing one of the cooperative learning techniques namely Team Pair Solo. She combined it with pictures and another teaching technique namely lecturing technique. During the observations, I also found that Mrs. Putri taught not only writing skill but also other languange skills like speaking, listening, and reading. Based on document analysis, Mrs. Putri did not make a lesson plan for her teaching and learning process. Instead, she used the lesson plan from the last year academic. In fact, the lesson plan was also used for more than one meeting. In the lesson plan, cooperative learning method and media pictures were not stated. The learning approach stated in the lesson plan was scientific learning with some models of learning such as discovery learning, demonstration and direct instruction. Instead of english, the lesson plan still used Indonesian language. Broadly, Mrs. Putri’s way of implementing Team Pair Solo technique and pictures to teach writing of descriptive text was the same in all classes she taught, there was only a little bit difference namely in TKR six where she used a game in this class. She used some aids to support teaching and learning process like LCD, PPT, video learning, and some pictures. The following was the description of how Mrs. Putri implemented the techniques and the media in TKR one till five (Field Notes, 18-19/09/19). At the beginning of the lesson, Mrs. Putri opened the class by greeting the students and then checked the attendant list first as usual. After that, she began the class by reviewing some vocabulary the students learned in the last meeting, showing again pictures of places and asking the students to Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 175 redescribe in brief. Then, the teacher did question and answer about the last meeting’s material to make sure that the students had already understood the materials well. Next, she began to explain what they were going to learn of that day namely still about descriptive text but at this time they were going to learn how to describe people. Starting with describing the phisycal look of someone, then, Mrs. Putri continued the lesson by teaching them how to describe someone’s personality as well. She taught some vocabulary related to someone’s personality such as kind, honest, arrogant, etc. Mrs. Putri then asked the students to look at the PPT, there was a video lesson about descriptive text. The video was about how to describe what someone looked like. During the playing of the video, Mrs. Putri translated the meaning and explained the content of the video to make sure that the students understood the vocabualry and content in the video. The students paid attention to Mrs. Putri’s explanation. In the PPT, there were also some pictures of artists such as cinta laura, demian, wayne rooney, yuki kato, rina nose, and nisa sabyan. The students together were asked to decribe those artists. In this activity, all of the students were enthusiast and active during the lesson. They actively described those artists even though not always using English. When the students described it in bahasa then Mrs. Putri would tell them the English of it. After describing the artist orally, then the students were given an example of a good descriptive text. The example showed how to make a good descriptive text in which there were two parts namely identification and description. The teacher explained about it clearly. After explaining the example of good decriptive text, Mrs. Putri began the next activity namely asked the students to make a group of six as a team. The members of the team were decided by the teacher since if the students chose by themselves it would take a long time. Also, it was to make sure that the team was heterogeneous with some students had higher abilities than others so that the students who had higher abilities could teach those who had lower abilities. In this activity, Mrs. Putri did not explain that she would use Team Pair Solo technique. She just directly asked the students to make a group of six as a team. After the students made the team, then, each team was given worksheet. She, then explained what the students needed to do namely they were required to do team work. The students seemed understood the teacher’s instruction’s well since the teacher made the instruction clear. On the worksheet, there was a picture of an artist with some questions related to the artist such as their physical look, what the artist was wearing, the artists’ main job and etc. that the students needed to discuss together with their team in order to find out the answer. When the students began the team work, Mrs. Putri went around to each group to check whether the team work worked well or not. From the classroom observations, the team work activity ran smoothly in all classes. The students did the work appropriate with the teacher’s instruction. The students seemed actively discussed with their friends in a team, they worked and discussed together with their team to answer the questions given. The next activity was pair work. In this activity, the students were asked to make a group of two. In pairs, the students had to discuss some questions given by the teacher. The questions in this pair work were different from the questions in group. The questions were in the form of some clues given related to the personality of the artist being described. Here, the teacher explained that the students were required to guess the personality of the artist based on the clues given. After they did pair work, the next activity was that the students conducted solo activity. They were asked to practice making a complete form of descriptive text based on the information they got from work and pair activity. In solo activity, the students completed the work individually, they did it on their own yet there were some students that seemed having the difficulty in composing complete descriptive text. Some of them cooperate with his partner. When the teacher knew this, she went to those students and helped them solving their problems. That was the end of the Team Pair Solo activity. However, Mrs. Putri gave some students chance to those who were brave to read their work in front of the class. Then after that she also asked the students to give comments to their classmate’s work. In some classes, like TKR one till four, the students were enthusisat to come forward reading their work in front of the class. However, in TKR five, only several of them were brave enough to come forward. Nevertheless, when the teacher asked the students to give comments to their friend who came forward, almost in all classes, there was no student who was brave to give comments, the students seemed shy and did not dare to raise their hands in order to get the chance to give comments. Hence, the teacher then pointed to some students to give their comments. Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 176 All language skills were included in Mrs. Putri's classes. For example, listening skill. It happened when the teacher played the video learning and the students listened to it. Then, writing skill. It was when the students were writing a draft of descriptive text during the Team Pair Solo activity. The next was reading skill. It was applied when the students were asked to present their work in front of the class by reading their work. Then the last was speaking skill, it was applied when the students gave comments to their friend who came forward presenting his work. Mrs. Putri also used the combination of techniques in her teaching. They were Team Pair Solo and traditional one. At the beginning of the lesson, she used the traditional technique first namely explaining the material in front of the class while the students in their seats listening to the teacher’s explanation. The purpose of explaining the material fisrt was that to give the students input of the materials first so that when they started to learn with their group they already had the knowledge of the materials being taught. In addition, the pictures that were used by Mrs. Putri also could make the students motivated during the lesson. The pictures were some artists that were well- known and had various characters such funny beautiful and handsome. In the interview, almost all of them said that they really liked the pictures because the pictures helped them to get the ideas of what they were going to describe. The pictures made the lesson be more fun and more enjoyable. The Integration of Game in Teacher's Instruction for Building Students' Enthusiasm The class in which taught by using Team Pair Solo technique combined with pictures and game was TKR six. However, in this class, the descriptive text materials was just about to be taught unlike the other five classes that had one meeting discussing about descriptive text materials. Therefore, in this class the descriptive text materials was still about describing places. Based on the interviews, at first, the teacher would use the same technique and media to teach descriptive text in this class without any game since the materials for this class was left behind the other five classes. However, in fact, during the teaching and learning process, several students seemed bored and not enthusiast in joining the class. Only a few of them were listening to the teacher’s explanation. The teacher said that this maybe because the English subject for this class was in the last hour of class, the students might feel tired. Hence, the class was not really conducive. Because of that condition, the teacher decided to conduct a game. The following was the description of how Mrs. Putri implemented the techniques and the media as well as the game in TKR six (Field Note, 170919). At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher greeted the students and checked the attendance list. After that, the teacher began the class. Since the descriptive materials was just about to be discussed in this class, so the first thing that Mrs. Putri did was exploring the students’ knowledge about descriptive text. Mrs. Putri then asked the students what descriptive text was. After the students answered the question, the teacher then gave them appreciation by saying good job to them because of their braveness answering the question and she explained about the definition of descriptive text. After that, Mrs. Putri began to explain the generic structure of descriptive text. However, in this activity, some students seemed start not paying close attention to the teacher’s explanation. Some of them start having chat with their seatmate, some seemed they were sleepy, so the teacher then decided to play a game. The game was that the teacher played music and there was a pen given to one of the students. When the students were ready to play the game, the music would be played. During the music was being played, the student gave the pen to the next student continuously until the music stopped by the teacher. When the music stopped, the pen was also had to stop moving and the students who held the pen when the music stopped, he had to come forward and tried to describe a place orally in front of the class. Unfortunately, this activity took much time because the students had a little vocabulary to be used in decribing the place. As the consequence, the group work activity in this class was dismissed. The teacher immediately asked the students to make a group in pairs and gave each group worksheet to be discussed together with thier partner before finally they did the solo activity to complete the task given. Also, in this class there were no students who got the chance to come forward reading their work beacuse the time was over. From the observation inTKR six, Mrs. Putri implemented Team Pair Solo inappropriate with the steps because she dismissed the team work activity. The reason was because the time was not enough if the team work activity was included since the game activity took much time. Based on all of the data I obtained and analyzed, it was found that Mrs. Putri implemented Team Pair Solo in the same way in all classes that I had observed except in TKR six. Each classes received the same instructions. She used the combination of the traditional technique and Team Pair Solo. She could implement Team Pair Solo technique step by step properly. However, in TKR six she used a game. Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 177 The use of the game made the implementation of Team Pair Solo in this class inappropriate because the team work activity was dismissed. Difficulties Faced by the English Teacher and How She Solved Them Based on the observation, it was found that the teacher could teach well. However, there were difficulties faced by the teacher, they were students’ lack of enthusiasm and crowded students. To solve those difficulties, the teacher conducted a game and asked the students to memorize vocabulary as the punishment for the crowded students. There were also difficulties faced by the students namely students’ limited vocabulary, students’ pronunciation problems and students’ sepaking problems. There were some efforts that were done by Mrs. Putri in order to help the students gain more vocabulary. The first was that Mrs. Putri always asked the students to bring dictionary whenever there was English class so that when they found the difficult words, they could directly open the dictionnary that they brought. In addition, Mrs. Putri also did another effort namely she would ask the students to memorize vocabularies as much as possible and then test them. To overcome students’ pronunciation as well as students’ speaking skill problems. The efforts that Mrs. Putri did were asked the students to speak in English as often as possible and gave additional acitivity by asking the students to come forward to reading their work so that the teacher could correct the students’ pronunciation if they pronounce them wrong so that the students would know the correct pronunciation. Discussion This study showed that one of the reasons of difficulties in writing was lack of vocabulary. It was found through the observation in six classes that there were many students who still had difficulty in composing the descriptive text because they knew little vocabulary. In the interviews with the students, many of them admitted that the diffculty that they faced was they did not have a lot vocabularies in mind so that they had to often open the dictionnary to look for vocabularis they had not known yet. The same statement also revealed by the teacher, she said that many students were lack of vocabularies. This was related to the findings of Pratiwi (2012). In her study, she revealed that vocabulay became one of the most difficult aspects found in the students’ writing. The use of Team Pair Solo could help the English teacher in teaching writing descriptive text. Mrs. Putri said that through the implementation of this technique, the students were more active and enthusiat in joining the lesson. Moreover, the group and pair work made the students could have the chance to help each other in terms of peer tutoring since the team were heterogeneus consisted of students with high ability and those with low ability so that the students who had higher ability could help their friends who had lower ability. This was related to the thoery I used from Klimek (2009) that in cooperative learning, the team of students consists of students with various ability working together on different activities to learn about a subject. Furthermore, Team Pair Solo technique has the steps in which those steps are what make the learning successful because helping the students in building their confidents especially when dealing with more difficult content material (spring, as cited in Ogunleye, 2011). Nevertheless, from the classroom observation, it was also found that students’ enthusiasm and motivation were somehow changeful. It happened in TKR six when the students started to get bored. Being in this kind of situation, the English teacher had to be clever finding ways to overcome this problem so that the students keep being involved in the lesson activity. Fortunately, here Mrs. Putri could solve the problem by creating a game to make the students’ enthusism and motivation to learn back. This problem was also proved by Widyaningsih (2014) that the English teacher should also be creative in using interesting activities in order to attract the students’ involvement in the teaching and learning process. Moreover, through the implementation of Team Pair Solo, students’ activeness leveled up to some degree. It could be seen from the classroom observation such as when the students were in group of six as a team, they became more active and enthusiastic in doing the task. They actively discussed the task with their friends in group. This findings related to the findings of Rambe (2014) who revealed that the use of Team Pair Solo could increase students’ activeness and thus improve their achievement. The same finding was explained by Yati, Syarif and Amri (2018) that the implementation of Team Pair Solo technique guides students to be active and more participate during learning activity. They added that each step of this technique invites the students to participate and more active during learning activities. In addition, Susilawati (2015) found that Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 178 through the implementation of Team Pair Solo, the students were participate in the teaching learning process happily and each student is active. Furthermore, the use of pictures were also an effective way to teach writing especially descriptive text. Based on the interview, almost all of the students said that they like the media which were some pictures of some famous artists. The students added that the pictures also help them a lot in terms of catching ideas of what to be described by just looking at the pictures. This was in line with Heaton (1990) who claimed that pictures provide students with ideas for tasks like describing people, objects, places, and even processes, enabling them to give their full attention to use written language (p. 107). Secrica, Jismulatif and Afrianto (2017) reavealed in their study that the use of pictures can help the teaching and learning process run well. The students are able to gain the ideas in writing a composition especially writing a descriptive text by looking and understanding the pictures. From the interviews that I had done with the teacher, she revealed that Team Pair Solo and pictures was a suitable combination and was effective to teach decriptive text material. By the combination of Team Pair Solo and pictures, it created a more lively learning atmosphere, creating an active learning environment, communicative, enjoyable and not boring especially the pictures seen were idols. In addition, the students also stated that the combination of Team Pair Solo and pictures was good since it helped them to be active and creative, helped them a lot in composing descriptive text. Due to the fact that the students actively involved in the learning process, the class become alive and fun. The teacher displayed the pictures of some artist in PPT, the students actively described those pictures together, there were some students that sometimes did it using funny word that make the whole class laugh that made the atmoshphere in class became more fun and enjoyable. Through the implementation of Team Pair Solo, the class activity become more interesting and it created enjoyable circumstance. All of the students participated in these activities and made the class alive and cooperative, and the students were more confident to study writing skill. Those kind of situation was also found by Hapsari, Sudarsono, and Bunau (2015), they explained that during the process of teaching and learning, the implememntation of Team Pair Solo made the students were active and enthusiastic. When the group work was in progress, the class was so alive with some students who tried to explain each other about their understanding related to the given task. The students showed their enthusiasm when they discussed in group. Then, the group broke in pairs. They helped each other by explaining to their partner who didn’t get deep understanding about the text. By the treatment, the students’ confidence and their courage got improved. Team-pair-solo can improve students’ social skills and students’ motivation by giving support and helping each other. CONCLUSION Based on the results of the study, it could be concluded that the use of Team Pair Solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text was somewhat easy to be implemented in the classroom activity. The findings of this study showed that the technique and the media were appropriate to teach students in writing descriptive text material. Team Pair Solo and pictures were a suitable combination and were effective to teach decriptive text material since it could create a more lively learning atmosphere, an active learning environment, communicative, enjoyable and not boring especially the pictures used were idol pictures. Team work- pair work- solo activity were the steps in Team Pair Solo. The team and pair work made the students could have the chance to help each other in terms of peer tutoring before the students work on their own. The team were heterogeneus in which consist of students with high ability and those with low ability so that the students who had higher ability could help their friends who had lower ability. Those steps could help the students in building their confidents so that it could create successful learning. The pictures used by Mrs. Putri also made the students more creative. It was related to the pictures that could help them get the idea of what going to be desribed by observing the pictures. In addition, the pictures made the teaching and learning process be more fun and exiciting as well as increased students motivation to learn as seen during the observation that the students gave positive response by showing their interest, enthusiasm and motivation during the lesson. From the explanation above it could be concluded that the use of Team Pair Solo and pictures in teaching writing descriptive text by the English teacher was successfully implemented. However, although Team Pair Solo and pictures were easy to be implemented, still, there were some difficulties that faced by the English teacher. The teacher had to be able to overcome those difficulties in order to Siti Muamalah/ ELT Forum 9 (2) (2020) 179 make the teaching and learning process could be successful. Otherwise, those difficulties somehow could be serious problems. In the teaching and learning process, Mrs. Putri found some difficulties when she used Team Pair Solo technique and the lecturing technique in her classroom. From the data gathered, some difficulties were revealed, they were crowded students and students’ lack of enthusiasm. There were also some difficulties faced by the students namely students’ vocabulary mastery, students’ speaking skills, and pronunciation problems. From the observations and the interviews, what Mrs. Putri did to overcome those two difficulties were that she asked the students who triggered the fuss to write vocabulary as much as possible and memorize them which then the teacher tested that student’s memorization in front of the class. This was used as the punishment for the students and it worked to make the student did not repeat their mistakes anymore. Whereas for the second difficulty namely students’ lack of enthusiasm, the teacher conducted a game that was created by the teacher herself. The solutions for the difficulties faced by the students were Mrs. Putri did some efforts like asking the students to always bring dictionary, having the students memorize vocabulary as much as possible and tested them. Other solutions were for students’ speaking skill and pronunciation problems namely the teacher asked the students to speak in English as often as possible and gave additional activity by asking the students to come forward to reading their work so that the teacher could correct the students’ pronunciation if they pronounce them wrong so that the students would know the correct pronunciation. Based on the conclusion, I would like to give some suggestions: the first one was that the English teacher could give more variations such as game in which it should be well prepared. English teacher should pay attention more about the game chosen. The chosen game should be a game that can improve students’ vocabulary given that the students' vocabulary was still low. In addition, I suggest that instead of using paper dictionary, the teacher and students can try using electronic dictionary to help the students gain more vocabularies. Another suggestion is that, in terms of making lesson plans, in order to help the teacher arrange the teaching and learning activities, it is suggested that the English teacher makes an appropriate lesson plan for each meeting. Furthermore, for other researchers, it is expected that the future researchers can explore other areas that have not been explored yet such as conducting a research using Team Pair Solo which was combined with another cooperative learning techniques or combined it with another media. Furthur, it is recommended that future researchers can use Team Pair Solo not only in writing descriptive but also in the other genre of text or even in the other other skills other than writing. Although this study was well prepared and it has reached the aims, still there were some limitations. The first one was that this study was lack of formal interview since I only used semi- structured interview during the study. According to Singh (2002) “a formal interview is a systematic procedure to dig up information about the respondent where a set of questions is asked in the order that has been prepared by the interviewer and the answers are recorded in a standardized form”. Hakim (2013) stated that “a formal interview is important since it has higher validity compared to the informal one”. The second limitation was for the data triangulation, I didn’t ask the students about their opinions on how the teacher implemented Team Pair Solo and pictures whether she could implement the technique and the media well or not, or whether she seemed to have difficulty or not in implementing Team Pair Solo and pictures. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my advisor, Puji Astuti, S. 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