Septiana
Wahyu Setyaningrum
2201412053
Academic
Writing 201_Essay Assignment
The Miracle of Pictures: An Easy
Way to Improve Written Recount
Have
you ever written recount text? It is difficult or easy for you? If you think
that recount text is difficult, I have an easy way to improve written recount. It
will be useful for students or also teachers will get new way on teaching
recount. By using pictures, it can improve students’ written recount. Here I
will explain three main points, recount, pictures and the relationship between
recount and pictures, that is improving written recount by using pictures..
First, let’s see the explanation of recount.
Recount
Sometimes
you want to tell other people about what happened in your life. Maybe it is
about experience that you faced or holiday that you did at weekend. All about
writing past event is called recount.
Based
on decd.sa.gov.au, recounts are used to relate experiences or retell events for
the purpose of informing, entertaining or reflecting. Recounts can be personal,
factual or imaginative.
Personal
recount – retelling an activity that the writer has been
personally involved in and may be used to build the relationship between the
writer and the reader e.g anecdote, diary journal, personal letter.
Factual recount – reporting the
particulars of an incident by reconstructing factual information e.g. police
reconstruction of an accident, historical recount, biographical and
autobiographical recounts.
Imaginative
recount – applying factual knowledge to an imaginary role in order to
interpret and recount events e.g. A Day in the Life of a Roman Slave, How I
Discovered Radium.
Procedural
recount – recording the steps in an investigation or experiment and
thereby providing the basis for reported results or findings.
Literary
recount – to retell a series of events for the purpose of
entertaining
Mark
Anderson and Kathy Anderson (1997, p.48-50) explained that the recount text
type retells past events, usually in the order in which they happened. The purpose
of a recount is to give the audience a description of what occurred and when it
occurred. The steps for constructing a
written recount are:
1. A
first paragraph that gives background information about who, what, where and
when (called an orientation)
2. A
series of paragraph that retell the events in the order in which they happened
3. A
concluding paragraph (not always necessary)
The
language features usually found in recount are:
1. Proper
noun to identify those involved in the text
2. Descriptive
words to give details about who, what, when, where and how
3. The
use of the past tense to retell the events
4. Words
that show the order of the events (for example, first, next, then)
Hartono
(2005, p.12) gives the example of recount text entitled On Mother’s Day by Mary
On Sunday it was Mother’s day. I
woke up at 7:00. I wanted to make breakfast for mum. I wanted her to have
breakfast in bed.
I got a present for mum and wrapped
it up. I put a bow on it.
Then I went to the kitchen and made
two pieces of toast. I put some butter and jam. I also made a cup of tea. Then I
put everything on a tray.
Then I brought the breakfast to mum’s
bed. I said, “Happy Mother’s day, Mummy.” And she said, Thank you so much.”
Then my dad came and said, “You don’t
have to cook on Mother’s day”. So we went to Pizza Hut for dinner.
Pictures
Pictures are as a media
that can be seen and observed. Pictures may be used in making cohesive and
systematic sentences to be the series of event which is constructed in a
chronological order. Pictures can attract us to create our ideas in writing. We
will get imagination about pictures that we see. The pictures will inspire us
in expressing our ideas into paragraph. The pictures are effective toward our
writing because we get motivation to increase our potential in writing text
after we imagine the pictures.
Pictures can be used to help the teacher in
delivering a material which is given to the student. Pictures are used to
stimulate the participation of the student in learning process. It is needed to
make learning process more attractive. It makes the material easier to be
accepted by the students.
According to Wright (1989, p.2), pictures are not
just an aspect of method, but through their representation of places, objects,
and people they are essential part of the overall experience. It means that,
pictures can help the learners to understand the meaning of a word because it
represents the meaning of it. Raimes (1983, p. 27-28) stated that pictures will
bring everything the outside world into the classroom in a vividly concrete
way. So a picture is a valuable resource as it provides:
1.
a shared experience in the classroom;
2.
a need for common language forms to use in the classroom;
3.
a variety of tasks;
4.
a focus of interest for students
Hill (1985) explained that the following ideas were
kept in mind while selecting the pictures:
1. Pictures
stimulate thinking, ideas and provide a context for learners to write.
2. Similar
types of picture stories were given to familiarize learners with the genre
of picture story writing and to avoid confusion.
3. Complete
picture stories were given to learners as they would provide mental
links,
save time, and help for continuity in writing.
Wright (1989, p. 193) explained that there are 20
types of picture that can be found, they are
1.)
Pictures of a single object
2.)
Pictures of one person
3.)
Pictures of famous people
4.)
Pictures of several people
5.)
Pictures of people in action
6.)
Pictures of places
7.)
Pictures from history
8.)
Picture with a lot of information
9.)
Pictures of the news
10.)
Pictures of fantasies
11.)
Pictures of maps and symbols
12.)
Pairs of pictures
13.)
Pictures and texts
14.)
Sequence of picture (Picture Series)
15.)
Related pictures
16.)
Single stimulating pictures
17.)
Ambiguous pictures
18.)
Bizarre pictures
19.)
Explanatory pictures
20.)
Student and teacher drawings
Moreover the using of pictures has function. Here
are some functions of picture for
the
teaching-learning activity. According Wright (1989, p.4-5) some functions of pictures
are
a.
Structures and Vocabulary
Pictures
are very useful for presenting new grammatical and vocabulary entries. They
also help to provide the situations and the contexts that light up the meaning
of words or utterances, and help the teachers to avoid giving a long
translation that might confuse the learners.
b.
Function and Situation
Pictures
can be used for the revision from one lesson to another. Pictures also can be
used as the basis of the written work, for example question writing. Pictures
also can increase the learners‟ motivation and provide a useful practice
material.
c.
Skills
Pictures
can be useful to give the learners an opportunity to practice the language in
real context or in the situations in which they can use it to communicate their
ideas. Based on the statements above, it can be concluded that pictures can be
used by teachers and students whatever the emphasis of the syllabus they are
following. Pictures have some functions that related to structure and
vocabulary, function and situation, and skills.
Improving
Written Recount by Using Pictures
Litasari on
her research stated that based on research in SMA Negeri 2 Banjarbaru,
the appearance of picture series as a technique in teaching writing narrative
text has improved the students’ writing ability in writing narrative text of
tenth grade students of SMA Negeri 2 Banjarbaru especially the students in X6
class as the experimental class. She concluded that the appearance of picture
series as a technique in teaching writing narrative text has improved the students’
writing ability in writing narrative text and using picture series had effects
in
improving
students’ skill in writing narrative text.
Sa’diyah on her study
revealed that the use of the picture series succeeded in promoting the students’
positive attitude toward the learning process. It proves that the presence of
the picture series as interesting realia increased the students’ attention and
seriousness in doing the writing task. The pictures also enhanced the students’
participation and interaction during the learning activities.
Based on Hestri’s research (2013) there is effectiveness
of using picture series to improve students’ writing ability in recount text at
the eight-grade students of SMP N 33 Purworejo in the academic year of
2011/2012. Pictures as media is effective to improve students’ writing ability
in recount text because the result of t-test was higher than t-table.
Based on the result of the study/research above, overall
it can be concluded that by using pictures, it can improve students’ written
recount. The pictures attract and interest students, so by using pictures,
students stimulate and motivate to improve written recount. And also the pictures
interest the student, so the students enjoy writing recount.
References
Anderson M and K.(1997). Text Type in English 1.South Yara:
Macmillan Education Australia PTY LTD
Hartono, Rudi. (2005). Genre-Based Writing. English Department
of Semarang State University. Unpublished.
Hestri,
Suli. (2013). The Effectiveness of Using Picture Series to Improve Students’ Writing Abilty
in Recount Text At The Eight-Grade Students of SMP N 33 Purworejo in the
Academic Year of 2011/2012. Retrieved
from http://ejournal.umpwr.ac.id/index.php/scripta/article/download/516/507
Hill,
L. A. (1989). Picture Composition Book. London: Longman.
Litasari,
Linda.(2012). An Experimental Study on
the Use of Picture Series in Teaching Writing Narrative Text at the Tenth Grade
Students of SMA Negeri 2 Banjarbaru. Retrieved from http://jurnal.unimed.ac.id/2012/index.php/jelt/article/view/924
Raimes,
Ann. (1983). Techniques in Teaching Writing. New York: Oxford University
Press
Sa’diyah,
Halimatus. Improving
Students’ Ability In Writing Descriptive Texts Through A Picture Series Aided
Learning Strategy. The English Teacher Vol. XL: 164-182. Retrieved from http://www.melta.org.my/ET/2011/164_182_Halimatus.pdf
Wright,
Andrew. (1989). Pictures for Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
