EEJ 4 (1) (2014)

English Education Journal

http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/eej

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ INDIRECT SPEECH PRACTICE IN WRITING THROUGH

PICTURES OF LOCAL STORY NARRATIVE TEXT

Miftah Nindya Rahmawati 

Prodi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Program Pascasarjana, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia

Info Artikel Abstract

________________ ___________________________________________________________________
Sejarah Artikel: Having realized the importance of English as one of the international languages, the students
Diterima Oktober 2014 should master English writing skill as a means to deliver and share information, feeling, and
Disetujui Oktober 2014 thought in the globalization era. To produce a good writing, many language aspects should be paid
Dipublikasikan attention well. Grammar is one of them. In the process of writing, students often fail to apply their
Juni 2014 knowledge of grammar. The condition is understood since in changing direct speech into indirect
________________ speech involves many types of grammar text and the changing of elements such as pronouns,
Keywords: verbs, and adverbs from the quoted speech sentences. This study aims to improve students’
Indirect speech, practice, indirect speech practice in writing through pictures of local story narrative text. An action
pictures of local story research was carried out at twelfth graders of science program in SMA Negeri 1 Pabelan Semarang
narrative text regency. The procedures included planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting. The result
____________________ showed that the great improvement occurred. Students were enthusiastic to involve in the
teaching learning process. The great students’ improvements were obtained when the students
were successful in changing direct speech into indirect speech. Therefore, the use of pictures of
local story narrative text is able to improve the students’ indirect speech practice.

© 2014 Universitas Negeri Semarang


Alamat korespondensi: ISSN 2087-0108
Kampus Unnes Bendan Ngisor, Semarang, 50233
E-mail: pps@unnes.ac.id

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INTRODUCTION communicate using meaningful and appropriate

sentence in written context. The other experts,
Writing is actually a challenging activity but Richards and Renandya say that knowledge of
in fact, to produce a readable text is something grammatical system of the language was one of the
uneasy. When writing, a student should frequently many components which underlay the notion of
have more time to think than she or he does in oral communicative competence (2002:145). This
activity. Writing activity demands a student to bind statement convinces everybody that grammatical
her or his idea in accurate language use. It means system actually is really needed in teaching and
that a message she or he wants to convey should learning language. Also, Ur in Thornbury
be put in good order, correct structure, and (1999:14) states that there is no doubt that
appropriate word choice. While according to Kern knowledge – implicit or explicit – of grammatical
(2000:172), writing is essential to academic rules is essential for the mastery of language.
language learning for a number of reasons. First, While Thornbury himself states that many learners
through writing, students develop their ability to come to language classes in the expectation that at
think explicitly about how to organize and express least some of the time they will be studying the
their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in ways grammar of the language (1999:20). According to
compatible with envisioned reader’s expectation. Cameron (2001:241) “It is different because the
Second, writing allows students to create and first language is already a huge system that a child
reshape meaning through explicit manipulation of has in place; because, in comparison, the child will
forms. Third, writing provides time for students to encounter such a small amount of the foreign
process meaning. Teacher should find ways or language; and because it is “foreign” – often the
strategies to make students produce fluent, language ‘belongs’ to people in a distant and
accurate, and appropriate written English text. strange culture.” For Indonesian who learns
There are some aspects which need to be English as a foreign language, writing and
considered if the goal of the English teacher is to grammar tend to be difficult because different
enable students to produce fluent, accurate and languages means different writing styles of
appropriate written English. According to organization and different grammatical rules.
Broughton (1980:116) they are mechanical The condition was also experienced by
problems with the script of English, problems of students at the twelfth grader of science program
accuracy of English grammar and lexis, problems of SMA Negeri 1 Pabelan Semarang regency. Many
of relating the style of writing to the demands of a students often complain and get confused when
particular situation, and problems of developing the teacher asks them to write sentences or
ease and comfort in expressing what needs to be complete paragraph using correct grammatical
said. From this statement, it can be known clearly rules.
that grammar is one of important factors that Firstly, some students may find themselves
involves in writing. in a situation where they do not want to write.
Moreover, Murcia says that grammar in They may get bored if technique of teaching,
writing will help writers develop their knowledge especially writing skill, is taught only using
of linguistic resources and grammatical systems to traditional way. Secondly, the students have lack of
convey ideas meaningfully and appropriately to self confidence to express their idea, feeling, or
intended readers (2001:233). It means that thoughts in written form. They think writing is
grammar in writing will give more or less complicated skill and need a long time in process.
contribution to develop students’ ability to They should organize the idea in such a way and

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the language which is used tends to be seems linear and transparent, it is difficult because
standardized. Thirdly, most of the students often of its many steps. It also involves such things as
say that lack of grammatical knowledge is source backshift, which requires L2 students to know the
of their failures in constructing or completing tense that is “one back” from the tense in the
sentences in a text. Indonesian and English quoted speech sentence and to know how to shift
grammar are much different in the rules. within the pronoun paradigm and the adverb
Based on the problems above, it is an urgent system.”
need to implement teaching technique that can Indirect speech includes many types of
solve the problems. To solve the problems, the grammar text and the changing of elements such as
writer conducted an action research. In this study, pronouns, verbs, and adverbs from the quoted
the writer implemented the interesting technique speech sentences. So, it needs a lot of time and
of teaching grammar in writing using media practices to be skillful. Then, teacher plays an
picture. The appropriate pictures that were chosen important role to support students in grasping
were pictures of local story narrative text. Pictures enough of grammatical knowledge to construct
of local story narrative text could be interesting indirect speech in English. Then, one of the
and innovative media for teacher in teaching effective ways to foster it is by teaching them
grammar in writing. By using pictures, through practice. Ur (2009:19) defines practice as
Megawati&Anugerahwati (2012) state that the the rehearsal of certain behaviors with the
students are able to practice grammatical rules by objective of consolidating learning and improving
changing direct speech in the speech balloon into performance. In this case, the students should be
indirect speech. This kind of assessment can be provided with opportunities to practice the
used to measure grammatical measurement structures they are learning. Teachers get students
(Brown, 2003:226). to demonstrate the target behavior and then
Pictures of local story narrative text are monitor their performance. Harmer argues that
series of picture that told students about whatever the reason, teacher needs to help such
Indonesian cultural heritage stories. The writer students build the writing habit so that they
implemented these pictures of local story narrative recognize writing as being a normal part of
text that were completed with dialogs in controlled classroom practice and they come to writing tasks
writing. Controlled writing was to present some with as much enthusiasm as they do other
paragraphs to students in which they had to alter activities (2007:329
dialogues that follow pictures of local story
narrative text into required structures or grammar METHOD
throughout. In this research, the writer used
narrative text and indirect speech as grammar Having conducted preliminary research to
which were controlled. Narrative was chosen identify the problems, the researcher carried out a
because it was one of text kinds which was taught classroom action research at twelfth grade
in the twelfth grader. And then, indirect speech students of science program in SMA Negeri 1
was chosen because its existence could not be Pabelan Semarang regency which had 26 students.
separated from narrative text. They are closely The aim of action research was to solve the
interconnected.. Converting direct speech into problems faced by the students in the teaching and
indirect speech is considered something learning process in the classroom and to make
complicated for students. It is like what Cray in Liu improvement of the practice which lead to the
& Master (2003:19) states that, “Though the rule positive change.

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This action research consisted of three An observation checklist was used to

cycles which covered six cycles. The series of monitor the students’ participation and
cycling activities were planning, acting, observing performance during the teaching and learning
and reflecting. In planning the action, the process through pictures of local story narrative
researcher prepared lesson plans, instruments, text. Students’ journal was an alternative form of
and pictures of local story narrative text. In acting, gaining written data to get students’ feedbacks and
the researcher implemented the teaching strategy responses. Questionnaire was given to students to
of using pictures of local story narrative text in get information about their feelings, thoughts, or
class XII-science program of SMA Negeri 1 Pabelan action in learning and practicing indirect speech
from February to March 2013. In observing, the using pictures of local story narrative text. The
researcher was assisted by a collaborator to researcher used field note to record all
observe the results of the implementation of information, events, activities, and students’
pictures of local story narrative text strategy. behavior that happened during the teaching and
Reflection involved an analysis of the results of the learning process. Students’ practice projects were
action implementation during the cycles. The data given to get the information of data about students’
obtained in the observing stage were compared to ability in producing indirect speech. By seeing
the indicators of the criteria of success which students’ practice project results, the lacks of
concerned on two aspects: the teaching and grammatical rules that the students still had in
learning writing process and the product of the changing direct speech into indirect speech were
students’ practice project. The criteria of success in found and then improved.
the process if firstly, 85%-100% students of
twelfth graders of science program of SMA Negeri FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
1 Pabelan responded positively during the
implementation of pictures of local story narrative The data gained in the preliminary research
text strategy to practice indirect speech. Secondly, showed that the student’ s involvement in the
85%-100 students of twelfth graders of science teaching learning process and the result of
program of SMA Negeri 1 Pabelan were motivated student’s work in changing direct speech into
during the action. The criteria of success in the indirect speech in writing narrative text were very
product if the students’ score and the average poor. The researcher assumed that the students
score of all students was equal or above the failed to understand and produce the correct
minimum passing criterion, which is 75. (75 are indirect speech because they had lack of
the standard minimum score used in SMA Negeri 1 knowledge and also opportunities to practice.
Pabelan, Semarang regency). To be competence and skillful, the students
The researcher collected two kinds of data, had to be given review about the grammatical
namely numerical data and verbal data. The knowledge of indirect speech and more
numerical data were obtained from the results of opportunities to practice in changing direct speech
the students’ project. Meanwhile the verbal data into indirect speech. The teacher also had to use
was represented by information showing the interesting way or media to draw students’
students’ attitude and behavior during the interest and improve students’ involvement in
implementation of the strategy. Therefore, the teaching learning process. Due the condition, in
instruments of this study were observation meeting 1 of each cycle, the teacher taught the
checklist, students’ journal, questionnaire, field grammatical rules of changing direct speech into
note, and the results of students’ project. indirect speech and gave a lot of examples in

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applying the rules. In meeting 2 of each cycle, the because the result was not in the criterion of
teacher gave student a project to know about success. It was because the average score of all
student’s ability in mastering the rules using students was still under the minimum passing
pictures of local story narrative text. The criterion, 75 and only three students were above
researcher provided some pictures of local story the minimum passing criterion, 75. This meant
narrative text which were modified using speech that the teaching learning process by using of
balloons. The direct speech was written in speech pictures of local story narrative text to improve
balloon. The students were given instruction to students’ indirect speech practice in writing
change the direct speech in the speech balloons narrative text had not made a significant
into indirect speech. Then the indirect speech that improvement yet.
they produced must be filled into the incomplete The further analysis revealed that most of
sentence of the story passage which followed the students had still lack of knowledge of grammar in
pictures. changing direct speech into indirect speech. They
had mistakes in pronoun and spatial deixis.
Cycle 1 However, the mistakes of temporal deixis
In the first meeting the result of observation dominated. The researcher found most students
showed that the teaching learning process ran still had a lot of difficulties when they should apply
fluently. The action plan worked well. However, a set of backshifts from present tense to past tense
based on the result of observation checklist, the and from past tense into past perfect tense. Most
students’ involvements had not resulted in students also still failed to change direct speech
expected outcome. Generally, the students were into indirect speech in statement, question and
not cooperative in the teaching learning process. command. The researcher and the collaborator
Many students did not give good responses when also found that students had problems with
the teacher gave motivation and told the learning pronoun, adverb of time, adjective, auxiliary, and
objective to the class. From the analysis of the regular-irregular verb.
result of observation checklist in the cycle 1 in the
first meeting the researcher and the collaborator Cycle 2
got, the fact showed that the students’ activities When the observation checklist was
during the teaching and learning process were not conducted in the first meeting in cycle 2, the
in the criterion of success. Most of students were collaborator observed the students had seemed to
not active yet in every learning activity. involve and participate seriously and actively in
After a little review was given, the the teaching learning process. Most of students
researcher and the collaborator distributed the had paid attention well when the teacher
pictures of local story narrative text which had presented the materials. They had showed big
been completed with indirect speech in the speech interest in the subject taught. In the middle of
balloon. Some instructions were given before the explanation, many students even were eager to
students practiced to produce indirect speech. The make interruptions to get better understanding.
result of the students’ practice project showed an They also wanted and asked the teacher to give
improvement compared with the pre-cycle. The more examples in order to reduce their confusion.
average score of the result of students’ practice in Briefly, the students gave positive responses to the
pre-cycle was 41.7. While the average score of the teaching learning activities. From the analysis of
result of students’ practice in cycle 1 is 51.4. the result of observation checklist in the cycle 2 in
Nevertheless, the researcher was not satisfied the second meeting, the researcher and the

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collaborator got the fact that the students’ participation in all learning activities. All learning
activities during the teaching and learning process activities had met the criterion of success. The
had improved. The students had tried to do their percentage of the students’ involvement achieved
practice projects seriously. Most of them had self not less than 85%.
confidence to finish their practice projects by In the second meeting, it could be seen that
themselves. the students’ activities during the teaching and
From the result of students’ scores, there learning process using pictures of local story
was a significant improvement for the average narrative text had also resulted in expected
score. It was higher than the average score in cycle outcome. In doing the practice projects, the
1. The average score in cycle 1 was 51.4 while the students’ behavioral changes were in the category
average score in cycle 2 was 69.3. Nevertheless, very good. Not less than 85% of all students had
the researcher and the collaborator were satisfied showed very good behavior. This finding showed
enough yet with the score results. It was because that the students’ behavior change had met the
the average score and the students’ scores did not criterion of success.
meet the criterion of success, 75. The further
analysis revealed that most of students had still CONCLUSION
lack of knowledge of grammar in changing direct
speech into indirect speech. They had a lot of In conclusion, the twelfth graders of science
mistakes in pronoun deixis, the use of yes-no and program of SMA Negeri 1 Pabelan, Semarang
wh- question, adjective, and to infinitive. In cycle 2, regency in the academic year of 2012/2013 had
most of students gave positive comments about some problems when they produced indirect
the practice project. They stated that the practice speech in writing narrative text. Most of students
project was a nice study, easy, interesting, and a got some difficulties in pronoun deixis, spatial
good job. They liked it. Some of them said that the deixis, and mainly in temporal deixis. Pronoun
practice project made them happy, gave them good deixis was a number of adjustments in the
experiences, and made their English better. It reference of first and second person pronouns.
meant, during cycle 2, the students could enjoy the Many students still also had difficulties in using
learning process than during cycle 1. personal pronouns (subject and object), possessive
Based on the analysis, it was found that the adjectives (my, your, his, her, its, our, and their),
implementation of the strategy had improved possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his/hers, ours,
significantly. However, the researcher and the yours, theirs), and reflective pronouns (myself,
collaborator still were not satisfied with the results yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves,
because the knowledge of indirect speech themselves). Spatial deixis was the shift of pointer
grammatical rules that the student had was still words like this, now, here and tomorrow that
low. not met all the criterion of success yet. should be changed into that, there, the next day,
Considering those the findings in cycle 2, the and so on. While temporal deixis was the
researcher and the collaborator decided to movement from direct quotation to indirect
continue to the next cycle. quotation that involves a surprisingly elaborate set
of backshifts from present tense to past tense and
Cycle 3 past tense to past perfect tense.
When the observation checklist was The implementation of pictures of local
conducted in the first meeting in cycle 3, the result story narrative text to improve the students’
showed that most students had positive and active indirect speech practice in writing narrative text

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was generally divided into two main learning got identification of the strengths, weaknesses and
phases. Firstly, the students were given knowledge suggestions concerning about the setting of the
about indirect speech. The students were involved class, the interaction between the teacher and
and encouraged in number of learning activities to students, and other things that happened in the
listen attentively when the teacher gave class during the teaching learning process. In the
explanation about indirect speech, to make product, the results of students’ projects showed
interruption when they needed to get clearest that the achievement of the students was getting
explanation, to ask questions when they were not improved from cycle to cycle. The improvement of
clear enough, and to request some more examples the students’ scores had met the criteria of success.
to get better understanding. Secondly, the students Therefore, the researcher could conclude that
were given pictures of local story narrative text pictures of local story narrative text could be used
which were completed by direct speech in the as media to teach grammar in writing skill.
speech balloon. In this phase, the students were
practiced to convert the indirect speech in the
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