Developing Students Writing Skill by Movies

Developing Students Writing Skill by Movies
Mery apriani
NPM: 07211210286
Writing for Academic Purposes
FACULTY OF TEACHING LEARNING
ENGLISH AND EDUCATION PROGRAME
UNIVERSITAS IBN KHOLDUN BOGOR
2010
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
In English there are four language skills, they are listening, speaking, reading and writing. The students must master the four of language skills so they can use English actively and also passively. Writing as a part of the language skills besides listening, speaking and reading, must be taught maximally by the teacher to the student. Writing is also one media of communication. According to Byrne (1980:24) writing is a primary means of recording speech, even though it must be acknowledged as a secondary medium of communication, so that the writer can conclude that writing is very important as one media of communication, that can help us to have a good socialization, can express our idea, feeling, and our opinion so that we can have a good interaction with our society. Although, writing is very important for us, it is a difficult subject especially for the student. The reason is because writing is a mixture of our idea, vocabulary and also grammar. Writing skill are more complex and difficult to teaching, requiring, and mastering not only of grammatical and rhetorical devices but also conceptual and judgment, because of the difficulties of writing, some efforts have been done to solve the problem .The main objective is to make the writing become easier to learn for the students. Writing is a very important subject because in writing we must share idea from our brain, it is not easy to translate concept in our brain to be a written language, and we must also be clever to choose and to combine the vocabulary to create something that is meaningful .We also must pay attention to the grammar, so it is normal if the student think that writing is a difficult subject because they must pay attention to many things (idea, concept, vocabulary and grammar).
CHAPTER II
Theoretical Background
A film is one of the visual aids that can be used in a writing class. It makes lessons more fun. It can also be used to create situation for writing classes more clearly, that the students have big enthusiasm in teaching learning process in writing class.
Film, as stated in Microsoft Encarta (2006), is a series of images that are projected into a screen to create the illusion of motion. Furthermore, motion pictures are also called movies, film or cinema, are one of the most popular forms of entertainment, that have people to immerse themselves in an imaginary world for a short period of time. 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. Motion pictures are recorded using specially designed cameras that capture the images on rolls of film. After being processed and printed, the film is run through a projector, which shines light through the film so that the images are sparked on a screen. Most movies have accompanying sound.
The functions of film are to educate, entertain, enlighten and inspire the audiences, and in this case the writer tried to use film or movies in the teaching and learning process of narrative text writing. The writer thought that film can also be used as an alternative method in teaching narrative text writing, because the student will get a new experience in their class that is quite different from their daily
experience in their class, and for the teacher a film can be used as an alternative method in teaching that is suitable with their classroom situation.
And as an international language, English is also taught in Indonesia as a foreign language. The goal of English language teaching in Indonesia, as stated in the 12 December 1967 decree of the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, is to give students a working knowledge of the English language with the following detailed objectives in the order of importance: first is to develop students’ effective reading ability, second is to facilitate students to understand spoken language, third is to develop students’ writing skill, and to develop students’ speaking skill. One of the objectives of English language teaching is to give students an effective writing ability. Learning to write is a process of discovering and organizing ideas, putting them on paper and reshaping and revising them. Many students find writing to be the most difficult lesson since they have to write in English to produce an English text. They have to write down what they think of in their mind and state it on a paper by using a correct procedure. A well-written story lets your readers respond to some events; even
they can almost feel the same. The action details and dialogues put the readers in the scene and make it happen for them. Moreover, it often engages readers’ emotion so powerfully. It can play a large role on other types of writing. To figure the problems out, the writer tries to use a film of narrative text in teaching written cycle. Students can feel more relaxed in learning writing and it will be easier for them to produce a narrative text.
CHAPTER III
A. FINDING DATA
A film is one of the visual aids that can be used in a writing class. It makes lessons more fun. It can also be used to create situation for writing classes more clearly, that the students have big enthusiasm in teaching learning process in writing class.
1. Elements of Film
According to Bordwell, a filmmaker has to prepare some basic elements in making a good film. They are script, actors, sets, costumes, aspect ratio lighting, sound, special effects, music and sound effect.
a) Script
Most films are based on written screen plays, which can be adapted from material from other media, such as plays, novels or can be written originally for the screen.
b) Actors
Actors have a very important part in making a film successful in market. They have to be totally involved with the story. They have to act as if they experience the story themselves.
c) Sets
There are two basic kinds of set, the natural and studio constructed. Most members of the audience are not able to differentiate, because the skillful of the filmmakers can create desirable illusions as various and wonderful as they want.
d) Costumes
The clothes people wear reveal much about them; clothes can indicate social, economics, and occupational status and express individual personality.
e) Aspect ratio
The term aspect ratio and format refer to proportions of the film frame. The choice of aspect ratio is crucial to the final ‘look’ of the film. A story set in the open expanse of the desert or the sea, for example, will have more power if the aspect ratio makes it possible to capture that expanse visually. But if a wide screen format is used for dialogue scenes, in which one looks at first at one character in close up and then moves to another.
f) Lighting
Lighting in a film is generally manipulated as to amount, contrast, angle and the kind. Filmmakers talk about two kinds of key lighting; high key and low key. High key lighting tends to bring objects in thebackground or different planes of action into relatively sharp focus. Low key lightning generally requires the use of light from several sources rather than from a single major source, such as the sun. Contrast is important to the effect of lighting generally, the higher the contrast is, the more vivid the emotional tone and three-dimensional effect of the images will be.
g) Special effect
Special effects cinematography is one of the most complex elements in the creation of a film. It ranges from rear screen projection, in which previously photographed material is projected in back of the actors, to the use of elaborate optical benches in which photographed material is re-short to produce entirely new results.
h) Music
Most film viewers know that contemporary films use music in various ways, but few are aware of the extents to produce its effects emotionally and usually ‘blends in’, film music often not consciously noted. Musical usage can range from a stringer –a sharp, usually loud chord that accentuates surprise, revolution, or tenor-to a lush string section playing during a tender or passionate love scene to convey the emotions of two peoples. Music can totally change the mood of scene, rendering it comic, and serious, or deeply disturbing, depending on the filmmaker’s intent.
i) Sound effect
Sound effect involves not only noises that are directly related to what is seen on the screen, such as gunfire, storms, water, and wind. They can also be used to add to the mood and tone of scenes without being directly motivated by the action. With the increasing development of electronic music and varieties of amplified sound, the lines between naturalistic sound effects, music, and electronically generated sound that is used purely for emotional impact have blurred. Bordwell (57:1997) From Brodwell’s opinion, the writer can conclude that the element of film are Script ,actors ,sets ,costumes, dialogue, aspect ratio, lighting, special effect and music.
2. Types of Film
Bordwell and Thompson (1997:50) defined the types of movie or film as follow:
(1) Documentary film
A documentary film supports to present factual information about the world outside the film. As a type of films, documentaries present themselves as factually trustworthy. According to Bordwell and Thompson (1997:44) there are two types of documentary films, they are:
 Compilation films; produced by assembling images from archival
sources.
 Direct cinema; recording an on going event ‘as it happens’ with
minimal interference by the filmmaker.
(2) Fictional film
A fictional film presents imaginary beings, places or events. Yet, if a film is fictional, that does not mean that it is completely unrelated actuality. For one thing, not everything shown or implied by the fiction films needs to be imaginary, a typical fictional film stages its events; they are designed, planned, rehearsed, filmed and refilmed. In a fictional film the agents are portrayed or depicted by an intermediate, not photographed directly in documentary.
(3) Animated film
Animated films are distinguished from live-action ones by the unusual kinds of work that are done at production stage. Animation films do not do continuously
filming outdoor action in the real time, but they create a series of images by shooting one frame at a time.
(4) Experimental or avant-grade film
Some filmmakers set out to create films that challenge orthodox notion of what movies can show and how it can show it. Experimental films are made for many reasons, they are:
 The filmmakers want to express personal experience or view
point,
 The filmmakers may also want to explore some possibilities of
the medium it self,
 The experimental filmmakers may tell no story but they may
create a fictional story that will usually challenge the viewer.
3. Advantages of Film in Teaching Writing
Harmer (2002:282) states that the advantages of using film in teaching and learning process are:
1. Seeing language - in- use
One of the main advantages of film is that students do not just hear language, they see it too. This greatly aids comprehension, since for example, general meaning and moods are often conveyed though expression, gesture and other visual clues. Thus we can observe how intonation can match facial expression. All such, paralinguistic features give valuable meaning clues and help viewers to see beyond what they are listening to, and thus interpret the text more deeply.
2. Cross – cultural awareness.
A film uniquely allows students to look at situations far beyond their classrooms. This is especially useful if hey want to see, for example, typical British ‘body language ‘ when inviting someone out, or how American speak to waiters. Film is also of great values in giving students a chance to see such things as what kinds of food people eat in other countries and what they wear.
3. The power of creation
When the students make their own film as media in teaching and learning process, they are given the potential to create something memorable and enjoyable. The camera operators and directors suddenly have considerable power. The task of filmmaking can provoke genuine creative and communicative uses of the language, with students finding
themselves doing new things in English.
4. Motivation
For all the reasons so far mentioned, most students show an increased level of interest when they have a chance to see language in use as well as hear it, and when this is coupled with interesting tasks.
4. Importance of Writing
Writing, as one of the language skills, has given an important contribution to human work. Generally, writing can be interpreted as the act of forming or tracing a character on paper or other suitable materials with a pen or pencil. Rivers (1968:242)
distinguished writing from other skills according to the form; it was from the simplest form to the most highly developed one. From its simplest one, writing can be conceived as the act of putting down in conventional graphic from something that had been spoken. Another definition is given by Michael (1981:10) that writing could be a systematical visible and permanent representation of the auditory and transient phenomena of speech, Byrne (1980:24) defines that writing is a primary means of recording speech, even though it must be acknowledged as a secondary medium of communication.
Mean while, Flower suggests a more elaborate definition Flower, States writing is a social act that can only occur within a specific situation. It is therefore influenced both by the personal attitudes and social experiences that the writer brings to writing and the impacts of the particular political and institutional context in which it interviews, Analyses of surrounding practices and other techniques, researchers seek to develop more complete accounts to local writing contexts (1989:54). In line with Flower, Nystrand also states that writing is a matter of elaborating text in accordance with what the writer can reasonably assume that the reader knows and expects. Nystrand states: Writing is a matter of elaborating text in accordance with what the writer can reasonably assume that the reader knows and expects, and the process of reading is a matter of predicting text in accord with what the reader assumes about the writer’s purpose (1989: 75). Meanwhile, Meyers says that writing is a way to produce language when you do and when you speak. Writing is communicating with others in a verbal way. Meyers states: Writing is a way to produce language, which you do naturally when you speak. Writing is communicating with others in a verbal way. ssWriting is also an action-a process of discovering and organizing your ideas, putting them on a paper and reshaping and revising them
B. ANALYZING DATA
Writing, as one of the language skills, has given an important contribution to human work. There are so many records of recent activities that we can read today, which can also be read in the future. As a good teacher, we need to use visual aids as a method in writing teaching and learning process because by using visual aids, teacher can give new atmosphere in their class so that the students have a big enthusiasm in teaching learning process, besides visual aid can help students master the material that the teacher gives to them.
From Heaton’s statement above the writer can conclude that besides the other language skills (reading, listening, and speaking), writing is one of language skills that is more complex and difficult than the others. Because students must mastering the grammar and vocabulary. The students must have concept of writing not only in their brain but they also have to translate it in writing language, and it is difficult to write concepts that exist in our brain. So more students assume that writing is a difficult lesson and the result is that the student did not want to study writing or make a text of writing. It is important for teacher to find a method that can make students easily master the material and they can also enjoy the writing class. The writer hopes that film can be an alternative method in teaching narrative texts writing. There are many lots of methods of teaching that can be applied in teaching and learning process such as using pictures, song, card, games, film, drama and more methods that the teacher can use. This method can help the students and teacher in teaching and learning process.
The English teacher can use any kinds of method or visual aid but they must remember that the method must be suitable with their classroom situation; it must be
able to make the students feel comfortable and enjoy the lesson so they can easily master the material. He also had opinion in his book, Visual Aid for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (1965; 41), that the use of any kind of methods has goals to give the students the opportunity to express their own idea, using the language pattern that they have learned. The function of using all kinds of method of opportunity in using English in a way that enables them to express their ideas, interest feeling and needs, clearly, correctly and confidently.
Film, as stated in Microsoft Encarta (2006), is a series of images that are projected into a screen to create the illusion of motion. Furthermore, motion pictures are also called movies, film or cinema, are one of the most popular forms of entertainment, that have people to immerse themselves in an imaginary world for a short period of time. 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. Motion pictures are recorded using specially designed cameras that capture the images on rolls of film. After being processed and printed, the film is run through a projector, which shines light through the film so that the images are sparked on a screen. Most movies have accompanying sound. The functions of film are to educate, entertain, enlighten and inspire the audiences, and in this case the writer tried to use film or movies in the teaching and learning process of narrative text writing. From that statement the writer can conclude that visual aids are very important and useful in teaching learning process so that students will be more enthusiastic in learning writing in classroom. And many writer thought that film can also be used as an alternative method in teaching narrative text writing, because the student will get a new
experience in their class that is quite different from their daily experience in their class, and for the teacher a film can be used as an alternative method in teaching that is suitable with their classroom situation.
In this case we can conclude that movie or film is very useful in writing teaching process. Especially in writing narrative text, here there are many step how to write good narrative text.
1. Orientation
In which the writer tells the audience about who the character in the story are, where the story is taking place, and when the action is happen. (Can be a paragraph, a picture or opening chapter)
2. Complication
The story is pushed along by a series of events, during which we usually expect some sort of complication or problem to arise. It just would not be so interesting if something unexpected did not happen. This complication will involve the main character(s) and often serves to (temporally) toward them, for reaching their goal. Narratives mirror the complications we face in life and tend to reassure us that they are resolvable.
3. Resolution
In a “satisfying “narrative, a resolution of the complication is brought about. The complication may be resolved for better or for worse, but it is rarely left completely unresolved (although this is of course possible in certainly types of narrative, which leave us wondering (how is the end?) Based on the statement above, the writer concludes that the generic structures of recount are:
Firstly is an orientation. The readers are introduced to the main characters and possibly some minor characters. Some indication is generally given of where the
action and when an action happened. Secondly is complication. This is where the writer tells how the problem arises; sometimes something unexpected events will happen. 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. Furthermore, the generic structure of narrative text can be shortened as; orientation, complication and resolution.
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
writing is a very important subject because in writing we must share idea from our brain, it is not easy to translate concept in our brain to be a written language, and we must also be clever to choose and to combine the vocabulary to create something that is meaningful .We also must pay attention to the grammar, so it is normal if the student think that writing is a difficult subject because they must pay attention to many things (idea, concept, vocabulary and grammar). Besides that reason, there is another factor that makes writing be the most difficult subject. The other reason is that there are a lot of many kinds of texts in English, such as narrative, descriptive, recount, spoof and many more. Each text has different characteristics. There are generic social function, structure and lexicon grammatical features. Usually the student can differentiate each text from another and they mix all kinds of texts. This will be a challenge for the teacher to find out how the student can distinguish each kind of text from another. To solve that problem, a teacher must find out how to make them be able to distinguish each kind of text from another, the teacher also must try to develop the ability of writing, grammar and structure of the student, and they also must find out an interesting method or visual aid to teach writing, so they will be interested in writing class.
RFERANCE
Jennifer Peat, Elizabeth Elliott, Louise Baur, Victoria Keena. 2002. Scientific Writing Easy when you know how. BMJ Books, BMA House, Tavistock Square Publisher
Sherwin Cody. 2006. The art of writing and speaking English. The Old Greek Press. Publisher
Peter Elbow. 2000. Every one can write. Oxford University Press.
Mary kay stein, Linda Kucan. 2009. Inatructional Explanation in the Discipline. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York,
NY 10013, USA),