USING FILM TO IMPROVE THE ABILITY IN WRITING THE STORY

USING FILM TO IMPROVE THE ABILITY

IN WRITING THE STORY

By: Lailis Syafiatis S.

Abstract

Teaching learning English concerns on producing both oral and written texts conveying in four integrated skills, consisting of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Among the four macro skills needed to be acquired by the students, writing is considered to be the most difficult aspect to master. The difficulty of writing lies not only in generating and organizing of ideas but also in translating these ideas into readable texts. So to interact student in writing teacher should have various methods. This research intends to examine the use of film and videos to teach writing to stimulate their visual. Besides, teachers have not made use of film and videos in teaching though they are supposed to help retain students‟ motivation, lengthen students‟ memory and better their skill. Furthermore, each technique still has some limitations so this study also provides some suggestions for teachers to partly deal with them.

Keywords: film, writing ability, the story.

Introduction

An English learner at least has to master kinds of the language skills. They are speaking skill, listening skill, writing skill and reading skill. We have to balance our language skill abilities in order to make our learning easier. If we can manage them well, we have to be able to maintain them too. We should pay attention about the English learning in order to get the best result. But some of students still feel that learning skill are very difficult and are not interesting. Learning through media can be one of solutions to increase student interest’s in the learning English. The media that can be used in learning English are films, television, books, radio, etc. it means that there is no limitation of learning English.

Film is one of the audiovisual media in learning English. Bazalgette, C (1989) cited in Watson state that television, film, video, radio, photograph, popular music, printed materials, and computer software can increase children’s critical understanding. This means that film is a language learning media that can build student’s critical understanding. In order to build critical understanding, students should understand the language used in the film.

However in Indonesia, film is still not widely used as a tool in learning English in publics schools, but TV or DVD Player can be used as a media to increase student’s interest in learning English since there are sounds and pictures on it, moreover every person is not only children but also adult like watch TV, so this media can create learning English in interesting way.

Geddes & Stutridge (1982) noted that student’s visual and critical awareness would increase through watching film activity. Through watching films, students are expected to understand what happened in the film and try to retell the story in the film. In order to students can retell the story in the film by writing it down in a piece of paper. student can improve their vocabulary, grammar and etc.

 Writing is very useful for us to write the written text well. In this skill, we are demanded to write the text as well as possible of course using some rules that are available.

Writing is an activity in generating ideas and thoughts in written form. In learning to organize informational content for writing, students gain insight into how authors handle complex ideas on paper.

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Kim (2007) stated that English test performed poorly even on small writing tasks, and most of them happened because of some difficulties such as choosing appropriate vocabulary, organizing the structure properly depending on the topic or the purpose  of writing, following correct grammar rules, and integrating ideas. It means that writing to retell story use film as media can improve student ability in grammar, vocabulary mastery and etc.

Theory

A.    Writing

1.      Definition of writing

Generally, writing is a way in sending massage from the writer to the reader. Similar to Donald hall said on his book “writing well” that writing is pretentious and wordy, but a massage comes through. Writing also is a way the writer think or a way of thinking which is shared to the reader, like Robert Scholes and Nancy R.Comley (1985)said that writing is a way of thinking as well as a means of communication. Fred D.White (1986) also said that writing is more than public communication, it is a way thinking?

            Writing is an individual activity similar to Jo McDonough and Christoper Shaw (1993) said that writing, like reading, is in many ways an individual, solitary activity.

Similarly, Trisha Phelps-Gunn and Diana Phelps-Terasaki(1982)said that writing is a useful, effective, enjoyable, and above all necessary component of the modern world. It provides the pleasure of sending a personal massage to a friend. It assumes career and financial importance in composition of resume or a business letter. They also said that writing is the most complex language mode, being four times removed from inner language, and adds the component of written expression to the earlier abilities. To Myklebust (1960), writing is composed of successful development in the three other language modes, deriving its focus from oral and visual receptive components.

            From the opinions above, writing is the way of thinking or sending massage from the writer to the reader which becomes the part of language or language skills and it’s also means communication.

2.      The stage in writing process

Whatever you are writing habits, they are simply the enabling conditions that allow you to begin and pursue writing process. These habits are the physical and psychological scenery for the central action. The intellectual procedure performs as move through of stage to produce a piece of writing. According to McCrimmon  (1983: 10)  The writing  process will be divided into three stages, they are:

1.       Planning

Planning is any orderly procedure used to bring about a desired result. As the first stage in the writing process, planning is of strategies designed to find and produce information in writing. When you begin any writing project, you need to discover what is possible. You need to locate and explore a variety of subjects.

2.    Drafting

Drafting in procedure for drawing an up preliminary, As the second stage in the writing process, drafting is a strategies designed to organize and develop a sustained piece of writing .Once planning has enabled to identify several subjects and encouraged you to gather information on those different perspectives, you need to determine what you can best accomplish in writing.

3.       Revising

Revising is a procedure for improving or correcting a work in progress. As the third and final stage in the writing process, revising is a strategies designed to re-examine and re-evaluate the choices that that have created a piece of writing. After have completed the preliminary draft, than to stand back from the text and decide what actions would seem to be most productive.

Writing is one of the language skills to be learned beside speaking, reading and listening. The teaching of writing might be combined with the teaching of the other language skill or component of language skills such grammar and pronunciation.

The writing activities should be structures in ways that help students learn to produce cohesive and discourse on their way to become self-sponsors of their own writing.

Harries in hamidsyukrie (1992:4) state that the aspect that build writing are the content of the writing (how to organize it), grammar (structures and dictions) and how to writing the spelling, punctuation and capitalization.

According to Abisamra (1996) in her English journal of teaching grammar in the context of writing said that an effective writing should consist of elements below:

a.          Focused on the topic and doesn’t contain extraneous or lose related information.

b.      Has an organizational pattern that enables the reader to follow the flow of ideas because it contains a beginning, middle and end and uses transitional devices.

c.          A written task should contain supporting ideas that are developed through the use of details, example, vivid language, and mature of word choice.

d.      A written task should follow the conventions of standard written English (i.e. punctuation, capitalization, and spelling) and has variation in sentence structure.

B.     General Concept of Narrative Text

Parera ( 1993 : 5 ) had opinion that a narrative was one of the forms of developing writing, for example character told the history of something based on the development of writing from time to time.

1.       Generic Structure of Narrative

The generic structure of narrative are :

a.    First is an orientation. The readers are introduced to the some minor characters. Some indication is generally given of where the action and when an action happen.

b.      Secondly is complication. This is where the writer tell how the problem arises, sometime something unexpected events will happen.

c.       Thirdly is resolution. It is an optional closure of event. The complication may be resolved for better or for worse, but it is rarely left completely unresolved. The writer can conclude that resolution is the end of a story.

3. Teaching Writing of a Narrative Text

Many students find writing to be the most difficult lesson since they have to write in English to procedure an English text. They have to write down what they think of in their mind and state in on a paper by using a correct procedure. So the writer will try use of media which make students more comfortable.

D.    General Concepts of Media

Media in a process of teaching is not a new thing for the teacher. Most of the teachers use media to help them giving particular information to the students. Media itself according to Azhar (2011:4) is a tool that to convey or deliver the message of learning. He also said that media is a component of learning resource or physical vehicle that contain instructional material on students’ environment that can stimulate student to learn.

There are a lot of media in teaching and learning processes. Nasution (2005:102) classify media into 5 type:

1.   Blackboard

This teaching tool is very populer, used by traditional or modern school and can be combined with other teaching tools such as radio, TV. Tool is used in every method of teaching. Blackboard can be used for writing that makes pictures, graphs, diagrams, maps and so on with white or colored chalk.

2.     Picture

Picture can be collected from various sources such as calendars, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets from travel agents, and etc.

3.     Model

Models can be an imitation of real objects such as model cars, trains, houses, animals, etc.

4.     Collection

Various collections can be organized as a variety of textiles, stones, dry leaves, currency, stamps, etc.

5.      Map and Globe

Geography and history lessons will be crippled without a map. kinds of maps shall be provided on each part of the world, also our economy, population, and so forth.

While Azhar (2011:33) divide a media into two categori:

1.      Traditional media

a.       A visual silence that projected.

• Opaque projection (invisibility)
•  Overhead projection
• Slides
• Filmstrips

b.      A visual that not projected

• Picture, poster
• Photo
• Charts, graphs, diagrams
• Exhibition, information boards

c.       Audio

•  Recording disc
•  Cassette tape, reel, cartridge

d.      Multimedia presentation

• Slide plus noise (tape)
• Multi-image

e.       A dynamic visual which is projected

•  Film
• Television
• Video

f.       Print

• Textbooks
• Module, Programmed texts
• Scientific magazines, period
• Loose-leaf

g.      Game

• Puzzle
• Simulation
• Pantomimic

h.      Realia

• Model
• Specimen (sample)
• Manipulative (maps, dolls)

2.      The latest media technology

a.       Media based on technology

• Take conference
• Distance schools

b.      Media based on microprocessor

• Computer-assisted instruction
• Computer game
• Intelligence tutor system
• Interactive
• Hypermedia
• Compact (video) disc

E.       Learning through the visual image

Several researchers (Knobel and Lankshear, 2003; Larson and Marsh, 2005;

Livingstone and Bovill, 1999) have noted that a great many visual activities take place in students’ lives outside of the classroom, such as ‘television, DVDs, computers, handheld computers, mobile phones and console games’ (Larson and Marsh 2005, p 70). Indeed, today’s students are exposed to more visuals than ever before. Not least of these is the Internet, which can be used for a variety of inherently visual purposes: to watch clips on youtube, create facebooks. Many students are also proficient with text messaging which involves the use of visual icons (i.e. emoticons), and computer games which often feature realistic images. Whereas static images (e.g. shapes, icons, and pictures) are the main focuses of the above studies, this paper looks specifically at the potential benefits of using moving visual images respect, They explore the role that moving images play in young people’s daily literacy practices and, like McFarlane et al (2002), argue that working with moving image media can lead to increased literacy. Reid et al (2002, p 3) suggest that such approaches can lead to the development of ‘problem-solving, negotiation, thinking (and) reasoning’ skills, and Horn (1998, p 172) notes that showing moving images (as opposed to film stills) ‘increases the expressive possibilities of visual language’.

1. Definition of Film

In this study, I use film as media of improving writing skill. A movie is one of the visual aids that can be used in a class, it makes lessons more fun.

But movies or film can also teach people about history, science, human behavior and any other subjects. Some films combine entertainment with instruction, makes the learning process more enjoyable. In all its forms, cinema is an art as well as a business, and those who make motion pictures take great pride in their creation ( Mery:2011).

An opinion movie given by Summer (1992: 476), film is:

a.       A roll of material which is sensitive to light and which is used in camera for taking photographs or moving pictures for the cinema,

b.      A story, play, etc. recorded on film to be shown in the cinema, on television, etc.

Meanwhile, Azhar (2011:49) define movie as picture in a frame where frame by frame is projected through the projector lens mechanically so that the pictures in the screen looks alive. Jesse (2007) states that movie is a photographic record of an artistic performance, but not an artform in it’s own right.

Based on the definition of movie I can conclude that movie is a photographic record of history, science,  and human behaviour that projected through the projecter lens and shown in the cinema or television.

2. Using Film in  Classroom

One common way in which film can be utilized in the classroom is as an alternative means of delivering course material. Goldfarb (2002) notes that since the 1980s in the USA, there has been a turn toward using the moving image as a teaching method. The use of film/TV in the EFL classroom (very often in the form of videos which illustrate real-world English communication such as ordering a meal) is considered particularly useful as ‘no teacher alone can reproduce the variety of situations, voices, accents, themes and presentation techniques that are a feature of this medium’ (Hill 1999, p 2).

A movie has a very significant role to motivate the student to learn writing and to make the atmosphere of teaching and learning more interesting. They will feel something new and different from what they usually get in their class. The writer hopes that with the use of English movie they will become more active as participant and more confident in express their feeling.

3.  Advantages and Disadvantages Using English Movie or Film

a.       Advantages using English movie

Nasution (2005:104) states that the advantages of using movie in teaching and learning process are:

1)   Movie is very good in describing a process, if necessary by using a “slow motion”.

2). Each student can learn something from the movie, from the clever one or less intelligent.

3)      Movies can take a child from one country to another country and from one period to another period.

4)      Movie can be repeated if necessary to add clarity.

b.      Disadvantages using English movie

According to Azhar (2011:50), he states that the disadvantages of using movie in teaching and learning process are:

1)      Procument of English movie generally is expensive and cost a lot of time.

2)      When the movie showed, the pictures will keep changing making all students are not able follow the information given through the movie.

3)      Movies not always approriate with the needs and desired learning objective.

This is the reason why the writer is interested in taking up the title of the research, because movie gives a new enjoyable atmosphere when they are learning in class. Altough this procument movie has disadvantages, the writer has some planning to overcome the problem by doing strategic stopping and rewind giving student a chance to receive the information given from the movie and remove some approriate scene shown in the movie so the students’ concetration will not wane if they watch for too long.

Conclusion

Language is very important that we need to communicate with the other people. It is a tool that is used to share the feeling or the idea of the people. It is very important because by using language we can express our desire. In English learning, a language is considered is more important especially in writing. To write a written text, we should use our own language to convey the message in our writing. There are so many ways to develop our writing. One of them is retelling the story. But to make it is easier; we need a media to help us. It is film. Film is considered as an interesting media in English learning process.

References

1.      Febrianti and anny. 2011. Using Music Videos To Improve The Ability In Writing Narrative Texts Of The Eleventh Graders In Sma Negeri 4 Malang. Unpublished S1 Thesis. Malang:State University of Malang.

2.      Clemenston, Theresa. 2005. natural english reading writing skill. Oxford: Oxford university Press.

3.      (http://revolution.allbest.ru/pedagogics/0019269.0.html)