The implementation of pictures as media to improve students’ descriptive writing ability

The objective of this research is to find out whether there is any significant improvement in students’ descriptive writing ability after the implementation of pictures as media. This research is a quantitative research, which use a one-group pre-test and post-test design. The population of this research is the seventh grade students of Junior High School 1 Pringsewu. The sample for this research is class 7.1 which consisted of 30 students. The writing test is administered as the instrument of the research. The data is analyzed by using the Paired Sample T-test. It is used to prove the hypothesis in this research. The result of the T-test in this research shows that the value of the significant level is lower than the alpha level (0.00<0.05). It means that H1 is accepted that there is a difference in students’ writing ability after the implementation of pictures as media. The difference indicates that there is an improvement after the implementation of pictures. Thus, it can be concluded that pictures can be applied to improve students’ descriptive writing ability. Based on the result of the research, it is suggested to the teachers to practice the use of pictures as teaching media in writing descriptive text since it develops students’ writing skills.


I. INTRODUCTION
According to Crystal (2003), English is fast acquiring the position of a world language, and no other language has spread as widely over the globe.Its acquisition can guarantee the availability of opportunities to employment, traveling, higher education, and even better life (Crystal, 2017).Therefore, mastering English is a must since it is expected to be able to make people aware about the future.
Based on Government Regulation (PP, Number 28,1990), states that English is important and categorized as a compulsory subject in Junior High School level.In curriculum 2013, students are expected to use English in both spoken and written form, it can be seen from basic competence to be achieved by students as the goal of language teaching-learning process in Junior High School.In order to master it, the students must be proficient in four areas such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Comparing to those three other language skills, writing is the most complicated skill to be learnt.As stated by Westwood (2008, p. 56), writing is certainly the most complex of all skill to master because it requires the proper coordination of many various cognitive, linguistic, and psychomotor processes.Furthermore, Raimes (1983) states that writing is a skill in which we express the ideas, feelings, and thoughts arranged in words, sentences, and paragraph using eyes, brain, and hand.Writing is also used by students to fulfill any academic requirements at length such as writing observation report, book, and thesis (Supriyadi, 2015).Moreover, students in Junior High School are required to compose several kinds of text, one of which is descriptive text (Depdiknas, 2006).
In the teaching learning process, it can still be found that students still have problems in writing.As claimed by Campbell (2002) that the most difficult part of writing for students is putting their ideas and facts into papers because they are scared that their ideas will not be written appropriately.This situation demonstrates that many students still struggle to express thoughts and develop their ideas into written forms, particularly in paragraph writing.In writing, students focus not only on how to write good sentences or paragraphs, but also on how to write good content.However, there are some aspects of writing that must be addressed before they begin writing.As stated by Jacobs et al (1981), that there are five aspects of writing that students need to consider in order to make a good writing, they are: content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanic.
In fact, based on the pre-observation at Junior High School 1 Pringsewu by interviewing the English teacher, it is discovered that most of the students become confused when the teacher asks them to write.For example, when students are given a task to write descriptive text by the teacher, they have difficulties in exploring and expressing their ideas into words.Therefore, students quit writing and get worried as a result.
Based on the problems above, the researcher uses pictures as media to help students in resolving their writing difficulties, particularly in descriptive text.The picture is a two-dimensional visual representation of people and things (Brown et al, 1994).According to Wright (1989), picture has two advantages.First, since pictures can represent places, objects, and people, it is used to help students retell experiences or understand something.Second, picture helps students to understand general contexts.By seeing it, students are able to write sentences related to the picture they have seen, then students can compose the whole paragraph by combining the sentences.
Related to the previous research about pictures as media in teaching writing Kurotun (2015), states in his research with the title Improving Students'Abilitiy In Writing Descriptive Text by Using Picture at the seventh grade students of SMP Plus Azzahro Pegadon in the academic year of 2014/2015 that pictures can be applied as one of the techniques to improve students' writing ability since the result of the study shows that there is improvement of the test and observation from the first cycle to third cycle.
Another similar previous research was done by Rambe (2019).The objective of the study is to describe whether pictures can improve the students' descriptive text writing.The result of the research can be concluded that pictures are significantly effective to be applied toward students' writing descriptive skill.By using pictures, it helps students to improve their writing skill in writing descriptive text in terms of content, organization, vocabulary, grammar and mechanics.
In line with the research above, a research entitled using pictures as teaching media in writing descriptive text at SMPN 3 Garut by Vanes & Setiawati (2021) states that the implementation of pictures is anappropriate media to develop students' ability in writing descriptive text because it helps the students to express their ideas and the teacher will be more easily to explain in order to create a descriptive text.Furthermore, since previous studies show that the pictures is an effective media in improving students' writing skills, the researcher aims to conduct further research with the title ''The Implementation Of Pictures as a Media To Improve Students' Descriptive Writing Ability.''Since the objective of the study is to find out whether there is any improvement of the students' descriptive writing ability after the implementation of pictures as media, therefore the researcher formulated a research question as the main problem: Is there any improvement of students' descriptive writing ability after the implementation of pictures as media?

II. METHOD
This research was quantitative research.The researcher used one group pre-test post-test, it was to compare the students' scores in pre-test and post-test after the treatment (Hatch and Farhady, 1982).The population of this research was the seventh grade students at Junior High School 1 Pringsewu.The researcher used one class as the experimental class by using random sampling.It was used to make sure that all the classes get the same chance to be selected.
Since the aim of this research was to find out whether there was an improvement of students' descriptive writing ability by seeing the difference between pre-test (before the treatment) and post-test (after the treatment), the instrument of this research was writing test, it was writing descriptive text.The researcher administered writing test twice at pre-test and post-test to find out the difference of students' writing descriptive text ability after the implementation of pictures.The students made descriptive text for their favourite idol.The students are given a chance to make writing composition for about 60 minutes in each pre-test and post-test.
In analyzing the data gained from pre-test and post-test, the researcher analyzed the data by using following steps adopted by (Hatch and Farhady,2006).
1. Scoring the pre-test and post-test.After scoring pre-test and post-test from all students, then the average scores between two raters is taken to be the final score.
2. Tabulating the result of the test and calculate the mean.Before analyzing the data, the normality of the data should be analyzed in order to know whether the data are normally distributed or not.The data is tested by One-sample Kolmogrov-Smirnov.The significant level of 0.05 is used to determine the normality of the data.Then, to prove the hypothesis proposed in this research, the data was analyzed by using Paired Sample T-test.

Result
In order to see whether the objectives of the research can be achieved or not, the researcher analyzed the test result of the pre-test and the post-test which is displayed in table 4.1 and 4.2 below: ).Thus, it can be conclude that there is the difference of students' descriptive writing ability after the implementation of pictures as media.
The difference indicates that there is improvement of students' descriptive writing ability after the implementation of pictures as media in teaching writing.

Discussion
The findings of the study shows that students' writing ability improve significantly after implementing the pictures as media.It comes from hypothesis testing.The paired sample t-test result shows that the significant level is 0.00, which is lower than the alpha level (0.00 < 0.05).This means that H1 is accepted but H0 is rejected.Besides, the pre-test mean score is 61,06 and the post-test is 70,7 with the increase 9,64.By comparing the students' pre-test and post-test scores, it shows that the students' descriptive writing ability improve after implementing pictures as media.
It is in line with the result of the research by Kurotun (2015), who says that pictures can be applied as the effective media to improve students' writing ability.It is very hepful in teaching learning activities because when the students see a picture, it makes easier for them to write a descriptive text since it allows them to produce content through their thoughts, concepts, and knowledge of the pictures.
In addition, Rambe (2019) states that the aim of pictures in teaching writing is to help students express their ideas.For example, if students are asked to write about an artist or an interesting place, they will be confused if some of them have never visited there before.They have no idea what it's like.Without any pictures, students will have difficulties writing sentences or paragraphs since they may take a long time to express their ideas that are relevant to the topic.That is why pictures help students in getting the ideas easily only by looking at the pictures.
Moreover, it is also supported by Vanes and Setiawati (2021) that the students will be able to catch the idea of what has to be written by looking at the pictures.The activity of describing pictures enhances students' confidence in expressing ideas through words.
Similar to some of the studies above, Nurfainul (2019), Kartika,A., Nurkamto,J., & Pudjobroto,H (2013) also have a similar statement that the pictures is an effective media to apply in the class because the students can further develop their ideas to produce a simple writing depending their imagination what they feel and think.And by implementing the pictures in teaching writing almost all the students give more attention and more response to the teacher's explanation.Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of pictures as teaching media is effective to develop students' ability in writing descriptive text.
However, in this research there are several differences from the previous studies.First, most of the previous studies are designed as a classroom action research which there are several cycles to obtain the data.Secondly, the participant of the previous studies are the students in eight grade of Junior High School.While in this research, the researcher uses one class of seventh grade in Junior High School 1 Pringsewu as an experimental class which received treatment of teaching writing using pictures.Furthermore, after the researcher implementing the pictures as a media in teaching writing descriptive text, it can be concluded that the use of pictures can improve students' descriptive text writing ability.
Briefly, those are the explanation of the result of the research that is conducted by the researcher.It is also provided discussion of the findings related to the implementation of pictures as media to improve students' descriptive text writing ability.

IV. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS Conclusion
The researcher concludes that there is improvement of students' descriptive writing ability after the implementation of pictures as media.To see whether there is improvement or not, it can be seen from the difference score between pre-test and post-test, because the comparison of pretest and post-test score is an indicator that there is an improvement.In this research, the mean of pre-test is 61,06 and post-test is 70,70 with the increase 9,64.Moreover, the hypothesis proposed in this research is proven by statically result of Paired Sample T-test that significant value is lower than alpha (0.00 < 0.05).

Suggestions
In reference with the conclusions above, the writer gives some suggestions as follow: 1. Suggestions for English Teachers There are some limitations of this research such as the lack of property to support the teaching learning activity in the class, the teacher should make sure that there is a projector to show the pictures to the students.So that the English teacher can apply pictures as media to improve students' descriptive writing ability easily and effectively since it will help the students to produce concept through their thoughts by seeing the pictures.

Suggestion for further researchers
Because of the students' condition is different each other, the researcher must be smart to control the class in order to make the students to pay attention for every researcher's explanation.Not only that, before conducting the research, the researcher should improve their English skills.

3.
Drawing conclusion by comparing the means of pre-test and post-test.

Table 4
Moreover, there are 3 students who get the score around 66-70 in the pretest, in which increased to be 11 students who get 66-70 in the posttest.Then, there are only one student who get 71-75 in pretest, while in posttest, this interval of score is the highest percentage by having 16 students.For the last one, there is no students who get the score up to 75 in the pretest, while in the posttest there are 3 students who get 76-80.From the explanation above, it can be concluded that the lowest score in the pretest is 51-55 and 66-70 in the posttest.While the highest score in the pretest is 71-75 while in the posttest is 76-80.The table above shows that H1 is accepted and H0 is rejected, since the t-value > t-table with the level of significance at < 0.05.Based on the table above the significant level is 0.000 and it is lower than alpha level (0.00 < 0.05).Then, after comparing the t-value and t-table it can be seen that t-value (11,382) is higher than t-table(2,045 .2 shows the distribution of students' scores in both writing tests.However, there are several differences in the score's frequency.There are 3 students who are in the first interval score (51-50) in the pretest.While in the posttest, none of the students at the first interval score (51-50).It means that the students at the lowest interval of pre-test improved their writing.A similar case happens to the second interval score, there are 9 students who get 56-60 in the pretest, while none of the students who get 56-60 in post-test.After that, there are 14 students who get the score of 61-65 which is the highest percentage of score in the pretest.But, there is no student at this interval score in the post-test.