CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
In learning English, there are four skills we must study. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The four skills mentioned are diveded into receptive and productive skills. Speaking and writing are productive skills, while listening and reading are receptive skills. Beside the four language skills above, reading is of great importance to student show mother tongue is not English, because they almost do not have oppurtunity to hear or to speak that language. Writing is a difficult thing for students if they are do not have basic knowledge, especially in writing the text.
The study of foreign language is parallel to children learning their first language. The study the language through four steps. The first is mastering listening skill. Children listen to every sound in the environment. The second is mastering speaking skill. In this step, they try to practice what they listen. The
third is mastering reading skill. Usually they start learning this language skill when the study in the kindergarten and elementary school. The fourth is mastering writing skill. Those are the four language skill which should be started by people when they study language.Writing is one of the important skills in teaching English. It has occupied a place in most English language course. People need to learn writing in English, for occupational or academic purposes. To write well, we must have good capabilities in writing process and aspects of writing. The writer must be able to organize the idea, to construct the sentence, to use punctuation and spelling well.
Beside, they must be able to arrange their writing into cohesive and coherent paragraphs and texts. When the teachers teach English in the school, they will find many students who have good writing skills ability, many students who have middle ability and may be they will find many students who have low ability in writing skill. These phenomena depend on each student, and they are also influenced by student’s learning style.
Teaching methods are needed in teaching-learning process, especially in teaching writing. Method is treated at the level design in which the role of teachers, learners and instructional materials are specified. Considering the explanation above, English teachers must have responsibility as they are demanded to have teaching strategy in order to solve the problem faced by student in learning English. Teachers must be able to arrange their assignments effectively. They are demanded to motivate the student in order to learn English well.
Writing is language activity that needs much cognitive concentration. When writing, a writer is challenged to use just linguistics code without helping of other codes, take for instance, gestures. A writer has to arrange some ideas and transform them into his thinking carefully in writing codes on papers. In fact, writing is different from writing Indonesian. English as stated above is a foreign language for Indonesian student. English is a new language that they often have trouble when they learn it. One of the reasons is the characteristics of English itself. For example, tenses, regular and irregular verb are not found in Indonesia. On contrary, Indonesia is a language which the students have got earlier basically, we believe that student of SMP have enough knowledge of it and have known to use it well and correctly. So it is possible that Indonesian, though it is a school language for most of them, can regard as the student’s mother tongue. They use Indonesian more frequently with them friends and teachers. Moreover, Indonesian is very close to them, to their speaking or writing habits. This is one thing that invites problems when the student writes the sentences composition in English.
