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TEACHING ENGLISH WRITING THROUGH JUMBLED WORDS TECHNIQUE

(At the Fourth Grade Students of SDN I Cisomang Cikalongwetan Bandung Barat)

NurhayaniE-mail: Nurhayani_90@yahoo.com

English Education Study Pogaram Language and Art DepartementSekolah Tinggi Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan

(STKIP) SILIWANGI BANDUNG

ABSTRACT

The objective of this research paper entitled “Teaching English Writing Through Jumbled WordsTechnique” was to find out how the effectiveness of using jumbled words in teaching writing English. Theresearch method was quantitative method. The design of this study: nonequivalent pretest-posttest controldesign. The instrument of this study was the test. The population in this research was the students ofElementary School I Cisomang, and the sample of this research was fourth grade students of ElementarySchool I Cisomang, it consisted of two classes (4A as experimental class and 4B as control class). Each ofthem consisted of 35 Students. The data were gained through giving pretest and posttest to the studentssample, and then the collected data were analyzed by using t test formula. The results of the data analysisshowed that the means score posttest of experimental class was 7.2, the means score posttest of control classwas 5.54, the tobs was 2.77, the tcrit value with df 68 and significance level at 0.05 was 1.67. Based on dataanalysis above, the alternative hypothesis of this research was accepted, because tobs was higher than t-crit

(2.77>1.67). It also meant that teaching English writing through jumbled words technique was effectivethan the teaching English writing without jumbled words technique.

Key words: Teaching, English Writing, Jumbled Words

A. BACKGROUNDEnglish is a very important tool for Indonesian

students, because English is an international languageand the most widely used language in the world.According to McArthur (1992:571), in Kaswan(2010:8) Language is “a human system ofcommunication which uses structured vocal soundsand can be embodied in other media such as writing,print and physical signs”.

Through language, we can communicate, send orget a lot of information, either in oral and written. Inlanguage teaching, there are four integrated languageskills, namely: Listening, speaking, reading, andwriting.

Writing is a method of representing language invisual or form. Writing systems use sets of symbolsto represent the sounds of speech, and may also havesymbols for such things as punctuation and numerals.Many students consider that writing is the mostdifficult subject among the other language skills.Writing is complicated, confusing and need morethought and concept.

English as a foreign language is taught fromelementary school to university level. In this study,the writer is interested in teaching English writingthrough jumbled words. Writing is one of the fourbasic skills. Writing involves some languagecomponent, namely: Spelling, Grammar, Vocabulary,and Punctuations. Braine and May (1992:60),

commented that writing needs clear sentence, goodgrammar, correct spellings, punctuation etc.

One of the aims of teaching English inElementary School is to enhance students to be ableto understand English words which they might find intheir environment. In fact, students often findproblems in learning the words. So it needs moreteachers’ attention to make the transfer of thevocabulary process easier to grasp and more fun tolearn.

Based on the background of the problems above,the writer has conducted a research entitled“Teaching English Writing Through Jumbled WordsTechnique.”

The writer would like to state the problem asfollows:1. How is the effectiveness of teaching writing by

using jumbled words for the fourth year of SDN ICisomang Cikalongwetan Bandung Barat?There are several aims of writing this paper,

among other things could be put forwards as follows:1. To reveal the effectiveness of teaching English

writing through jumbled words.

B. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION1. Teaching English Writinga. Definition of Teaching

According to Brown,(1980:7-8) said that:Teaching is showing or helping someone to learnhow to do something, giving instruction guiding of

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study of something, providing with knowledge,coursing no know understand.

b. Definition of WritingWriting is one of the four basic skills in language

learning. It is very important in teaching and learningEnglish. This skill would increase if the learners keeppracticing it. Writing is the ability to express, toconverts ideas, thought and feeling to someone else.Writing is very important in written communication.

Harmer (2004: 86) states “Writing is a processthat what we write is often heavily influenced by theconstraints of genres, then these elements have to bepresent in learning activities.”Nunan (1991:84) affirmed that, “Writing is clearly acomplex process and competent writing is frequentlyaccepted as being the last language skill to beacquired.”According to Halliday (1985 b) writing has involvedin societies as a result of cultural changes creatingcommunicative needs which cannot be readily met bythe spoken language. In the modern word writtenlanguage serves as arrange of function in everydaylife including the following:1. Primary for action

Publics’ signs e.g. on roads and stations2. Primary for information

Newspaper (news, editorial) and currents affairs3. Primary for entertainment

Light magazine, comic strips.Writing is the most difficult skills. We get a

massage formulated by someone else. We arereceiving some things therefore our role is receptive.In writing, the aspects include the use of vocabulary,structure of the sentence, composition of thesentence, spelling, and punctuation. These aspects areimportant to master in order to be able to producegood writing.

In developing the writing skills, therefore severalstages and allowed at the early stage. Communicationconsists of messages and short paragraphs. Later onus longer compositions, therefore the test shouldmeasure the various aspects of the students’ progresstoward the mastery of the skills.

2. Principles of Teaching English at ElementarySchool StudentsAccording to Alwasilah (1991:1) there are five

principle of language learning that should beconsidered in develoving curriculum, materials, andlearning teaching activities.The principles are based on the summary. The fiveprinciples are:

1.Children are learning by doing and use theobject around them, 2.Children learn through socialinteraction and teacher as the facilitator, 3.Thequality of materials should be one step higher thanthe accumulation of the existing comprehension, 4.Children should be given opportunities in using thelanguage they learn naturally, 5.Language learnershould communicate one to another in the smallcommunity.

So, learning English for the elementary studentswould be successful, if the learner in the atmosphereof social interaction.

3. Importance of WritingAccording to Rivers, (1968:242) Writing, as one

of the language skills, has given an importantcontribution to human’s work. There are so manyrecords of recent activities that we can read today,which can also be read in the future. Some importantfeatures of writing activities that are usually done bypeople are as follows:

a.Teachers write some important things on theblack board, or students may write some notes thatare dictated by the teacher, b.Lots of people whoare going to apply for job in offices writeapplication letters. Today, many companies askapplicants to write their forms in English. Anapplicant must be fluent both in spoken andwritten English, c.Many organizations orfoundations get offers from foster parents fromforeign countries for some students who havegood achievement in their study. The student whois going to be selected is asked first to write anessay in English about their country (in this caseIndonesian students), d.For those who get theopportunity to win the selection are asked to writein English to their foster parents at least once amonth; therefore, they need to have ability towrite in an acceptable English.

4. Jumbled Words in Writing ActivityKaswan (2010:169-174) said that: At the

beginning of learning English, students will write alittle. Those most involved copying the word orsentences. It is a good idea to use copying activity byencouraging children to think. It’s means usingactivities of puzzles, match, sort, or categorize. Copyat the level of word or phrasescan be uses of assistivedevices, such as drawing, writing models, flowchart,etc.There are some writing activities:

a.Word Games, this activity designed for givenexercise, especially for the set of words, such ascolour, states, cloting, etc. And then used foractivities other writing. Bingo, Crossword

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Puzzles, Acrostic Crosswords, Letter Boxes,Making Words from the Given Letters , JumbledWords, (write on the blackboard the words justlearned by students, or the difficult words spellingwith the scrambled letters. It’s good to have wordsrelated to one theme. For example, you can givethe students following words: Gdo, Sumoe, Owc,Knymoe, Ibdr (Dog, mouse, cow, monkey, bird)),b.Dialogue, c.Communication Activities,d.Writing for Fun.

C. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY1. Research Design

The research used quasi experimental with nonequivalent pretest-posttest control design. McMillanand Schumer, (2001:342) explained that:

This design is very prevalent and useful ineducation, since it is often impossible torandomly assign subject. The researcher usesintact, already established groups of subjects,given a pretest administers the treatment conditionto one group, and gives the posttest. The onlydifference between gives this design, then and thepretest-posttest control group design is in lack ofrandom assignment of subjects.The folowing shows the formula of quasi

experimental non-equivalent pretest posttest controldesign (McMillan and Schummer, 1989:323).

Nonequivalent Group Pretest-Posttest DesignGroup Pretest Treatment Posttest

A O X OB O O

Time

2. Research MethodThe main purpose of the research was to find out

how effectively audio lingual method in teachingspeaking.

This research used quantitative method.Quantitative study is an experiment design that testhypothesis through the use of objective instrumentand statistic analysis (Larsen-Freeman and Long,1991: 11).

3. Research InstrumentsThe writer teaches writing and making pretest

and posttest. However, relating to the design which isused in this research, the writer takes pre-test andpost-test as the instrument in collecting the data. Thegoal is to find out the students ability in arranging thewords into good sentences. The tests are given tomeasure if there is an increasing on theirunderstanding about jumbled after getting theirposttest.

4. Research PopulationAccording to Burns (1995: 65) “population is an

entire group of people or object or events…”Thepopulation of the research was the fourth gradestudents of SDN I Cisomang CikalongwetanBandung Barat, which consist of two classes, is classA and class B, they are 70 students.

5. Research SampleAccording to Burn (1995: 63) “a sample is any

part of population regardless of whether it isrepresentative or not.”

Sample of the research were two classes. Forexample, they were 4A and 4B. Each class consistedof 35 students. Class 4A was experimental class andclass 4B was control class. In this research, theresearch taught writing in 4A through jumbled words,whereas in class 4B taught writing without usingjumbled words.

6. Research Data CollectionThe writer obtained the data from the pretest and

the posttest. The pretest and posttest were given toboth classes, either experiment and control class.

7. Research Data AnalyzingFor analyzing the data, the researcher used the

formula as follow:-The Mean

To calculate the average score of the pretest andposttest result given to the experimental and thecontrol group using the following formula:X = ∑× (Hatch and Farhady, 1982: 108)- Standard Deviation

To calculate the Standard Deviation of scores ofthe two groups using the following formula:

SD =∑( × )

- Standard ErrorTo calculate the Standard Error using the

following formula:

S ( − Xc ) = +- T-Observed

To calculate t-observed using the followingformula:

Tobs = ( ) (Hatch and Hossein, 1982: 115)

8. Research ProcedureThe writer first completed the requirements for

the research included permit from the institutionSTKIP Siliwangi Bandung and the school where shewould do the research SDN I Cisomang

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Cikalongwetan which was located on CikalongwetanKab.Bandung Barat. Next, the writer preparedeverything related to the implementation of theresearch in the field such as: made a lesson planwhich was based on the school based curriculum(KTSP) and prepared the pre-test and post-test as theinstrument of the research.

D. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION1. Data Description of the Pretest and Posttest

ResultThe researcher obtained data in form of pretest

and posttest scores for the experimental class and thecontrol class, those scores displayed in tables below.

Table IPretest and Posttest scores of the Experimental Class

No Name Pretest Posttest1 Acep Fahri 6 82 Acep Permana 4 63 Alwi Rizki B 10 104 Anisa Septiani 3 65 Anisatul Puadah 2 46 Asri Sayyidah A 8 107 Dede Anisah 2 68 Elma Angelina S 10 109 Elma Sapitri 6 710 Eneng Komariah 5 711 Hasan Sadeli 6 812 Hasna Lailatul 7 813 Hilwa Kamila K 2 514 Hisni Nisa A 4 615 Ihsan Nulaziz 4 516 Imas Masitoh 8 1017 Imas Sopiati 4 618 Lilis Safitri 3 619 Mila 4 720 Mila Siti Jamila 3 521 Muma Maulana 2 422 Nabila Rahma 8 923 Nurani 7 824 Pajah Fitriah 7 925 Putri Suci E 5 726 Pebrian Erdiana 7 827 Rani Haryadi 4 828 Salma Nurul A 4 429 Salsabila Sopia 8 1030 Santi Santika 4 631 Sanusi 7 832 Susi Susilawati 3 633 Ulfah Febrianti 4 634 Wina Nurasiah 7 935 Yogi Ahmad 8 10∑186 ∑252

Table IIPretest and Posttest scores of the Control Class

No Name Pretest Posttest1 Ulfa Fitria 3 72 Fika Widia 4 53 Agung Gustian 1 34 Alfan Fauzan 5 55 Haifa Nabila 1 36 Hendi W 8 107 Iis Komariah 8 108 Irfan Hilmi 3 39 Muh. Hilman 0 310 Muh. Ihsan F 2 311 Muh. Rizal H 5 512 Muh. Sidqi M 0 313 Nabil Zihan 8 814 Nada Mariah P 6 815 Neng Resa 2 416 Nisrina Sifatus 7 817 Nurazizah 5 618 Putri Aqilah 3 419 Putri Mardiah 1 220 Reza Satya N 3 721 Risma Apipah 4 722 Sansan Ripaldi 4 823 Sidiq Ahmad S 2 424 Sinta 2 225 Sinta Oktia 4 426 Siti Rohimah 6 727 Siti Sajaah 3 628 Sobali Rohman 5 529 Syifa Septia 4 530 Tasya Lestari 5 631 Tedi M. 6 832 Sidik A 7 833 Samsul Maarif 5 634 Sulastri 3 635 Dimas Angga 5 5

∑ 140 ∑ 194

2. Data Analyzing of the pretest and Posttesta. Data Analyzing of the PretestA pretest was carried out in order to gain the data

of students’ entire behavior, especially Englishwriting on the two groups.a) The distribution of scores and calculation

the pretest data analysis- Experimental Class.

1. To calculate the mean = 5.32. To calculate standard deviation = 2.33. To calculate degree of freedom = 68

- Control Class1. To calculate the mean = 4

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2. To calculate standard deviation = 23. To calculate degree of freedom = 68

- To calculate standard error = 0.51- To calculate t-observed = 2.55

Based on the pretest data analyzing ofexperimental class and control class, result was afollow:

Table IIIThe Pretest Data Analyzing of Experimental and

Control class

Group N X S (− ) df

Experimental

35 5.3 2.3 0.51 68 1.67 2.55

Control 35 4 2 0.51 68 1.67 2.55

The table shows that there was a different inmeans (X) on SD (S). The T-test however describesthat the two groups were similar in the term ofsubject of knowledge background. Moreover, T-observe pre-test was lower than the T-critical value,the null hypothesis was accepted, therefore itindicated that both group had similarly in writinglevel.

b. Data Analyzing of the PosttestThe posttest was administered to both groups at

the end of the program to find out whether there wereany difference between the experimental group andcontrol group achievement.b) The distribution of the scores and calculation

of the Posttest data analysis.- Experimental Class

1. To calculate the mean = 7.22. To calculate standard deviation = 2.683. To calculate degree of freedom = 68

- Control Class1. To calculate the mean = 5.542. To calculate standard deviation = 2.353. To calculate degree of freedom = 68

- To calculate standard error = 0.60- To calculate t-observed = 2.77

Based on the posttest data analyzing ofexperimental class and control class, the result was asfollow:

Table IVThe Posttest Data analyzing of Experimental and

Control class

Group N X S (− ) df

Experimental

35 7.2 2.68 0.60 68 1.67 2.77

Control 35 5.54 2.35 0.60 68 1.67 2.77

The table shows that the writer took 35 students’for the samples in both groups, so that degree offreedom (df) was 68. Standard Deviation forexperimental class was 2.68 and 2.35 for controlclass.

The T-critical value needed for the selectedsignificance level of 0.05 with df 68 was 1.67.Fortunately T-observed was higher than T-critical(2.77>1.67) that we were quite safe in rejecting thenull hypothesis. Our two groups have scoreddifferently on the final test of speaking ability. Thedifferent was statistically significance.

There was a difference of score between X forexperimental class is 7.2 and X for control class is5.54. This supports our claim that teaching Englishwriting through jumbled words technique was betterand more effective.

Table VThe Improvement of the Mean scores

ExperimentalClass

ControlClass

Mean of Pre-Test 5.3 4Mean of Post-Test 7.2 5.54

Improvement of the Mean 1.9 1.54

The table above shows that the experimental classwas higher than the control class. It indicated thatteaching English writing through jumbled wordstechnique was able to improve students’ speakingability.

3. Testing HypothesisAs the researcher proposed in chapter 1 the

hypothesis was a follow: teaching English writingthrough jumbled words technique was more effectivethan teaching English writing without jumbledwords. Based on the hypothesis, the mean of theexperimental class should be higher than controlclass, the calculation of the data showed that:

T-crit = 1.67T-obs = 2.77T-obs > T-crit

T-obs was higher than T-crit and there was adifference between Xe and Xc. This means that thehypothesis was accepted. The result was significance.The research proves jumbled words was effective inteaching English writing.

E. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS1. Conclusionsa. The mean of the experimental class was bigger

than the mean of control class (7.2>5.54). Thedifference was 1.66.

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b. The standard deviation of the experimental classwas better than the standard deviation of controlclass (2.68>2.35). The difference was 0.33.

c. The t-observed was higher than the t-critical value(2.77>1.67) at the significance level at 0.05 withdf of 68. The difference was 1.1.

d. The result of the research showed that T-observedwas 2.77; the T-critical value at the significancelevel at 0.05 with the df 68 was 1.67.Based on the data above the alternative

hypothesis was accepted. Therefore, there wassignificant difference between students’ writingscores who taught by using jumbled words techniqueand the students’ writing scores who taught withoutjumbled words technique.

It also means that teaching English writingthrough jumbled words technique was effective thanthe teaching English writing without jumbled wordstechnique.

2. SuggestionsAt the end of this writing the writer wants to

cover several suggestions as follows:Teacher of English would be better if they use

jumbled words technique in improving Englishwriting skill. The method is one of the strategies inteaching English writing, especially for the studentsof SDN I Cisomang Cikalongwetan Bandung Barat.

The writer realizes that this paper is far frombeing perfect. Hopely, there will be anotherresearcher to make it perfect. Comments andcriticism would be welcome warmly.

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Halliday, M.A.K., (1985). Exploration inTheFunction of Language. London: EdwardArnold Publisher.

Harmer, Jeremy. (2004).How To Teach Writing. NewYork; Longman

Hatch, E. & Farhady, H. (1982). Research Designand Statistics for Applied Linguistics. Rowley,Massachusetts: Newbury House.

Hatch, E. and Hossein F. (1982). Research Designand Statistic for Applied Linguistics. NewburyHouse Publisher. Inc.

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