The particular dialect or language that a person chooses to use on any occasion is called a code Story Circle Technique to Help Non-English Major Students in Writing Narrative Text Abdul Aziz Rifaat aziz_lie2@yahoo.co.id STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang, Indonesia Received : 23 April 2019; Accepted : 19 Mei 2019 URL : http://ejournal.iainpalopo.ac.id/index.php/ideas Abstract The objective of this study was to find out the significant difference of the students in writing achievement before and after using Story Circle technique. The second objective was to find out the improvement of the students in writing achievement before and after Story Circle technique. The pre-experimental method through one group pre test-post test design was used in this study. The population and sample of the study was all 3rd semester students of S1 Nursing Science program at STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang in academic year 2018/2019. The total number of the population and sample was 35 students. The sample was taken by using total sampling technique. The tests were administrated twice as pre-test and post-test. After the pre-test was administered, the treatment was implemented. The post test was given after the treatment. The results of the tests were analyzed by using t-test through SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) program. The result of the study showed that there was a significant difference of the students in writing achievement before and after implementing Story Circle technique. It can be concluded that Story Circle technique could improve 3rd semester students’ writing achievement at of S1 Nursing Science program at STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang in academic year 2018/2019. Keywords: story circle, narrative text Introduction English has taken a part as a tool for communication in this world. In Indonesia, English is taught from junior high school to university level. For some of elementary and kindergarten level, it is taught as additional or extracurricular skill. Since it is an important subject, students should master it and all four skills of English. 109 Copyright © 2019 The Author IDEAS is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 License Issued by English study program of IAIN Palopo IDEAS Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4129 (Online) Volume 7, Number 1, June 2019 pp. 102 – 208 mailto:aziz_lie2@yahoo.co.id Nurul Khairani Abduh Anderson Taxonomy-Based Intensive Test Evaluation Tool For Senior High School For most of the non-English major students, writing seems to be a serious and difficult skill to be learned. The students have a little interest to this skill if compared to other skills. The students have some problems in generating ideas and starting to write. Writing is a complex process. When the writer starts to write, the complex process of writing should be passed completely. Boardman (2002) states that writing is a continuous process thinking and organizing, rethinking, and organizing. The complex of writing specifically passes some stages. Peha (2003) asserts that writing is gradual activity involving stages like setting goals, generating ideas, organizing information, selecting appropriate language, making a draft, reading and reviewing it, than revising and editing. Sometimes, students worry to begin writing. They worry about having mistaken in doing it so that they afraid to start it. Byrne (1986) asserts that the students worry about expressing the ideas clearly within the boundaries of correct usage, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. However, the appropriate strategy to stimulate the students having an interest in writing is very important to be applied. Students at STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang also have the same problem as discussed above. The lack of vocabulary, worry about having mistaken, have no idea to start writing, or have no good strategy to write are the common problems faced by the students when they are asked to write the paragraph. The basic reason of those common problems is that the students do not feel that English is really necessary for their futures. STIK Siti Khadijah is Health science institution. The students feel that only health science subject support their future. English as one of compulsory subject at STIK Siti Khadijah seems unimportant for the students. This thought challenges the writer to build the interest in English especially in writing English. One of the strategies to do it is by selecting the appropriate and suitable technique in writing. There are actually thirteen genres of the text. According to Gerod and Wignell (1995), those genres are: spoof, recount, report, analytical exposition, hortatory exposition, anecdote, description, explanation, review, discussion, procedure, news item, and narrative. Narrative text as one of those genres has its own characteristics which make it different to other texts. Sari and Sabri (2017) states that narrative text is considered as a kind of text that entertains, teaches history, and comes to makes sense of phenomena in this world. According to Celce and Murcia (2000), Narrative is structured round the chronological development of events and is countered on a person or hero. Consequently, ― a Narrative is usually personalized or individualized tells about the events related to the person or persons involved. There are some features of Narrative Text. This feature makes Narrative different from other text. According to Knapp and Watkins (2005), those features are; use action verbs, use temporal connectives, written in the past tense, use mental verbs, use metaphoric verbs, use rhythm and repetition, and play with sentence structure. EFL students, especially non-English major students, sometimes confuse to differentiate between present and past tense. The students are able to use simple present tense correctly but not past tense. Non-English major students should be active in the process of writing. The teacher also should have various teaching techniques that suitable for the students. In contrary, the students would not interest in the process of teaching and learning. The students at STIK Siti Khadjiah are non-English major students. The students also learn English as general subject. Since it is given as general subject, most of the students do not really concern about the importance of 110 IDEAS, Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2019 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) English especially writing skill. The teacher as mediator in the classroom should provides some possible writing techniques to make this subject interested. Cole and Feng (2015) assert that writing has always been seen as an important skill in English language acquisition. As it is very important, the appropriate technique to deliver this skill will always also important to be applied. There are some techniques that could be one of the alternative techniques to be used in teaching writing. By applying some possible techniques, the teacher can use the most suitable and appropriate technique for the students in the classroom. Story circle is one of those various techniques. This technique offers the alternative in teaching writing especially narrative text. Principally, A story circle is a group of people sitting in a circle and sharing stories about their experience on a given topic or theme. Harmer (2004) defines a story circle as a common group- writing activity, which has all the students writing at the same time. Story circle is collaborative works that begin by the teacher as the trigger in this activity. The students write and support each other in this activity. According to Harmer (2007), story circle as a writing activity in which each student in the group has a piece of paper on which they write the first line of a story which the teacher dictates them. Moreover, the story circle is useful to build community within a group and explore the social sense of the learners. Story circle is a kind of collaborative group activity. This activity allows the students get in touch each other, build the connectivity, and discuss a material together. Welch (2004) states that the concept of circle writing is collaborative writing activity where the students add each other’s ideas by partially written stories from student to students, and ideas are generated as students adapt to each new paper. Raimes (1983) adds a small group of students can collaborative in teaching writing. There are actually many benefits of story circle. Sari and Sabri (2017) concludes some advantages of story circle technique as follow: 1. Story Circle can help students to put their ideas down in simplest way because students only have to adapt the ideas that their friends have already made before. 2. Story Circle inspires creativity in students as the writers of all age and experience because they are free to generate ideas in different perspectives after reading their friends’ writings. 3. Story Circle enhances storytelling skills and an understanding of narrative structure. 4. For all students, this technique is more fun, exciting, and lots of laughs because the story that they made together. 5. This technique can help teacher to build positive relationship among students because it involves the whole class cooperation to accomplish the task. In addition, Fransiska (2016) summarizes that the story circle could improve the students’ writing ability, to get in touch each other, able to share ideas, and able to share emotions. Moreover, she adds that story circle produces individual involvement in the sharing processes at a much deeper levels the participants anticipated when they started the process. By applying this technique, at least the students will get not only new ideas from the group member but also corrections from them. There were two previous related studies of this study. The first study was done by Sari and Sabri (2017). Their study was entitled Using Story Circle to Improve Students’ Ability in 111 Nurul Khairani Abduh Anderson Taxonomy-Based Intensive Test Evaluation Tool For Senior High School Writing Narrative Text”. This study aims to discuss one way of solving the problems of students in writing narrative texts, namely by using Story Circle. In this activity, students were divided into several groups and then the teacher read one of the narrative texts in the form of fairy tales, fables or legends that they have never known before. They rewrote the text they had heard before in accordance with the generic structure and language features found in the narrative text, but with different versions according to their imagination. After they wrote the first few sentences of the story on the paper they had each, the students gave the paper to a colleague on their left. Then, their colleagues added the next sentence based on the idea of the story that had been written before. This activity continued until they completed the complication section of the story. When the paper returned to the real owner, the student wrote down the resolution. Activities Story Circle is expected to be one of the variations of learning to write in the class so that students are able to pour their ideas properly and precisely, especially in English. In addition, through this technique, students can creatively and freely develop story ideas. The second study was done by Fransiska (2016). The title of her study was The Effectiveness of Using Story Circle in Teaching Writing” The study is aimed to find out whether there is significant difference in writing ability who are taught by using story circle and who are taught by using free writing. This research is an experimental research. The experimental research involves experimental (VIII.4) group and control group B (VIII.3) of 32 students of the eighth grade students of SMP N 1Pringsewu in academic year 2014/2015. Both classes were given pre-test. Then, the students give the treatment after that both groups were given post-test. Then, for collecting data the researcher applied writing test and analyzed the data by using t- test. The research finding of the research shows that there is any significant difference to writing ability between the students who are taught using story circle and those who are taught using free writing of Junior High School students. After the treatment, the mean is 71.50, the standard deviation is 9.795, the df is 62, and the value of the significance was 0.045 smaller than 0.05. If the significance is smaller than 0.05, its means that hypothesis is accepted. Therefore, it can be concluded that using story circle in teaching writing could improve the students to write. Story circle is a technique to motivate the students in learning English, especially in teaching writing. Based on the description above, the writer was interested at investigating the significant difference of the students in writing achievement before and after using Story Circle technique and the improvement of the students in writing achievement before and after Story Circle technique. The objective of this study was to find out the significant difference of the students in writing achievement before and after using Story Circle technique. The second objective was to find out the improvement of the students in writing achievement before and after Story Circle technique Methods The writer used pre-experimental method in this study. The design was pre- and posttest design approach. Creswell (2008) describes the pre- and posttest design approach as activities where the researcher assigns intact groups the experimental and control treatments, administers a pretest to both groups, conducts experimental treatment to the experimental group only, and then administers a posttest to assess the differences between the two groups. 112 IDEAS, Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2019 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) O1 X O2 Figure 1. Pretest-posttest design (Creswell, 2008) This study was done at STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang. The population of this study was 3rd semester students of S1 Nursing Science Program at STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang. The total number of the population was 35 students. The writer chose all the population as the sample. The total sampling was used as a technique to choose the sample. Since the total sampling was used in this study, the total number of the sample was the same as the number of the population. The writing test was used to collect the data. This test was distributed twice as a pre-test and post-test. The pre-test was given to the sample students before the treatment and the post- test was given after the treatment to investigate the significant difference of the students in writing achievement before and after using Story Circle technique. This test also investigates the improvement of the students in writing achievement before and after Story Circle technique. The data was collected by giving the first test as pre-test to the students. The next step to collect the data is by giving the treatment to the students. The last step of collecting the data was by giving the students the final test as the post-test. There were three stages in analyzing the collected data. They were scoring the tests, finding the means, and comparing the means. In scoring the students test, the writer used the writing rubric. The students who got the scores from 21 to 25 were given excellent grade, and those who got the scores 16 to 20 were given very good grade. Moreover, for those who got the scores from 11 to 15, they were given good grade, and for those who got the scores from 6 to 10, they were given fair grade. Finally, the students who got the scores from 0 to 5 they were given poor grade. The following table is the interval and grade of the scores: Interval Scores grade 21-25 Excellent 16-20 Very good 11-15 Good 6-10 Fair 0-5 Poor Table 1: The students’ interval scores and grades The writer analyzed those scores (pre-test score and post-test score) by using t-test through SPSS program. The means of pre-test score and post-test score were compared in order to investigate the significant difference of the students writing achievement before and after using Story Circle technique. Discussion The data showed that there was progress from the total scores of pre-test to post-test of 113 Nurul Khairani Abduh Anderson Taxonomy-Based Intensive Test Evaluation Tool For Senior High School the students. The progress can be seen from the mean score after pre-test and post-test. The mean score in the post-test was higher than the mean score in the pre-test. The students got a better writing achievement in post-test than in the pre-test. The diagram bellow describes the result in the pretest and posttest. Exc VG G F P 0 5 10 15 20 25 pretest postest Figure 2. Students pretest and posttest grade result From the figure 2 above, there were 3 students got poor grade in the pretest and there was no student at the poor grade in the posttest. There were 23 students got fair grade in the pretest and decreased to be 13 students in the posttest. There were 7 students got good grade in the pretest and improved to be 17 students in the posttest. There were 2 students got very good grade in the pretest and improved to be 5 students in the posttest. There were no student got excellent grade both in the pretest and posttest. However, there were some factors including external and internal factors that possibly cause the students’ improvement. The classroom conditions, classroom facilities, students’ motivation, or students’ interest are possible factors that could be possibly effect this improvement. Conclusion There were some conclusions from this study. First, there was a significant difference in writing achievement before and after Story Circle technique at S1 Nursing Science students STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang. Second, there was an improvement before and after Story Circle technique. It can be seen from the students’ pretest progress compared to posttest. However, some factors could influence students’ progress in writing such as students’ motivation, classroom condition, or classroom facilities. Suggestions The writer suggests two suggestions to the English teachers and students at STIK Siti Khadijah generally and at S1 Nursing Science Program STIK Siti Khadijah Palembang. The English teachers have many techniques that suitable for the students especially in teaching writing skill. Story Circle technique is one of the possible techniques to be applied by the teacher. Moreover, the teacher should know what is the students’ needs and wants. The priority must be in what the students needs so that the English subject material should be based on their needs. It is also suggested to the institution that there should be many English program to be implemented. English course, English corner, or conversation program are the example of the 114 IDEAS, Vol. 7, No. 1, June 2019 ISSN 2338-4778 (Print) ISSN 2548-4192 (Online) simple program and useful for the students especially health science program students. References Boardman, C. A. (2002). Writing to Communicate; Paragraph and Essay. New York: Longman. Byrne, F. (1986). Teaching Writing Skills. New York: University of Manchester. Celce, M & Murcia E. O. (2000). Discourse and Context in Language Teaching, USA: Cambridge University Press. Cole. J & Feng. J. 2015. Effectiveness Strategies for Improving Writing Skills of Elementary English language Lerners. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED556123.pdf Creswell, J. W. (2008). Educational Research: Planning, Conducting and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research. New Jersey: Pearson International Edition Fransiska, F. W. (2016). The Effectiveness of Using Story Circle in Teaching Writing. English Education: Jurnal Tadris Bahasa Inggris, 9 (2). Gerot, L & Wignell, P. (1994). Making Sense of Functional Grammar: an Introductory Workbook. Cammeray, NSW: Antipodean Educational Enterprises. Harmer, J. (2004). How to Teach Writing. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited. ________ (2007). How to Teach English. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. Knapp, P & Megan W. (2005). Genre, Text, Grammar: Technologies for Teaching and Assessing Writing. University of New South Wales Press Ltd. Peha, S. (2003). Writing Strategy Guide. http://www.ttms.org/teachingthatmakessense. Raimes, A. (1983). Techniques in Teaching Writing. China: Oxford University Press Sari, D. P and Sabri, M. (2017). Using Story Circle to Improve Students’ Ability in Writing Narrative Text. INOVISH Journal, 2 (1). Welch, W. (2004). Collaborative Circle Writing for Halloween. Retrieved from https://teachers.net/lessonplans/posts/3289.html 115 http://www.ttms.org/teachingthatmakessense