Teaching the students’ writing skill in Retelling the Story through Film

“Teaching the students’ writing skill in Retelling the Story through Film”














Ayu Hernawati
08211210054
Semester 6C






English Education Program
Faculty of Teachers Training and Education
Bogor Ibn Khaldun University
Introduction

The Important of Writing Skill

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. By using our communication style, it will reflect us. We can connect the information which wants to be conveyed each other. There are a lot of languages that are used in the world. One of them is English language. English is considered as an international language by some people. As an English learner, we must be able to master it. There are a lot of ways that can be used by us. If we could master the language, we would have added our ability especially in English learning. 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. One of language skills that we have to learn is writing skill. Writing skill 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.
So, I wrote a paper that is titled “Teaching the Students’ Writing Skill in Retelling the Story through Film”. In retelling story, the student can improve their ability to write the text well. Because the students are demanded to be able to retell the story of the film by their own language, it can also add their new vocabularies and it can improve the creativity of the students.




Theoretical Background

Writing skills are specific abilities which help writers put their thoughts into words in a meaningful form and to mentally interact with the message. Writing skills help the learner the creativity, comprehension and the unity in writing. If learners have mastered these skills, they will be able to write so that not only they can read what they have written, but other speakers of that language can read and understand it. We have to write with a good compression among one sentence to the other sentences to convey the information and the message. In writing, we are also demanded to recognize the sequence of the sentences. Creativity is also needed in writing because it includes the ability to write freely anything the learner wants to write. We can also retell a story through writing text. It means that we retell anything that happened in that story. In this case, the story can be a film. In other words, the film has something to say about some kind of issue: it comments upon this issue; it offers an explicit or implicit interpretation of the issue. Meaning may also usefully be thought of as the expression, and communication, of an impression, an observation, a reflection, or a judgment about something; it may, furthermore, take the form of an argument about or a critique of this same phenomenon. In addition, to describe a film as meaningful suggests that we perceive this film as offering a way of making sense of something that it represents. Considered as a whole, these events combine to form the plot of the story. Events only become interesting when we can see what affect they have on the living beings that populate our story. The core of a story is not so much what happens, but more importantly it is how the characters react to the events and the other characters which they come in conflict with. Such conflict can manifest itself as either dialogue or as dramatic actions. By reading between the lines or watching the actions of a character, we are able to understand their point of view. As the story develops, we see how the characters change as a result of what has been happening to them. Through film, the brain or the thinking of the students will be stimulated quickly because the picture that is showed in a film is very interesting. The effects that are added in film can add the students’ imagination in order to be able to retell again the plot of the film using their own language and their style. The teacher has also a good function in choosing the film that is considered is available to be watched by their students and of course the film should have a lot of education values.


Finding Data


In making the writing more effective, we should avoid word, phrases, or sentences that are too predictable. Writing is more than just a skill. For one thing, it offers many people individual rewards that are suited to them and not available any other way. In proportion to these rewards, it is harder to learn and in fact requires an approach different from those we would employ to learn skills. Furthermore, writing requires considerable ability to examine our own thinking for flaws. In order to write so other people will read the result, we must learn to anticipate the ways readers will test and prove what we say. We take the opinions of other people as guides in learning to think critically about our own words. Finally, we can learn to write only if we acknowledge that our learning is never complete. This last difference between learning to write and leaning skill is a bit mysterious, but, like the others, it follow from the real nature writing. We are supposed to learn basic writing skills at the beginning of our college careers that we can use in our later work. We sometimes see that people who can write in one way seem to be able to use their ability to write in a variety of fields. This makes us think of writing as a single skill that can be applied to a variety of situations. It also makes us think of writing as a talent, something you are more or less born with or without, since some people seem to nave this board ability and some don’t. We have only recently replaced the skill view of writing with a better view and it takes time to bring people up to date. We need to remember that writing is much more complicated than we use usually think. But merely reminding ourselves is generally not enough. We need a better mental picture of writing. This was a rather paradoxical turnabout of researches’ expectations. Looking for better ways of leaning to write, they found ways of writing to learn. The techniques they discovered have led to curricular reform on many campuses as the powerful tool of writing has come to play a more central role in student learning in writing across the curriculum or has specially designated intensive writing courses, then we are participating in this revision of collegiate education. The techniques remain good ways to write, as well. One of the main ways we change our minds is by continually looking at how ideas fit together. We see ideas that attach, that are implied or contained, and that follow in some way from the one we started with. Connecting ideas in this way or separating ideas usually seen as connected is also one of the main ways people revise their writing. When we write, we often feel that we are really wrestling with words, even though we know that those words make up sentences, paragraphs, and larger units. It is word by word that we make meaning as we write. This feeling of wrestling with words comes as we read, also, particularly if the words are difficult for us. So we might well conclude that direct study of words is the way to improve our reading and writing.
Writing is a very difficult skill for students to master. Writing is an ill-structured and complex task that requires a number of cognitive processes such as planning, translating, reviewing, and monitoring (Hayes, Flower, Schriver, Stratman, & Carey, 1987). High-quality writing further requires a large amount of situation specific adaptation, with the features requiring adaptation being relatively abstract and complex constructs like the writing goal, the genre, and the audience. In order to teach these complex and abstract elements of writing effectively, rich instructional explanations are highly likely to be required. Instructional explanations can be described as a network of goals, actions, and Knowledge assumptions. Modeling is a form of explanation that is characteristic – even defining – of science (Gierre, 1988). Nersessian (2008) refers to model-based reasoning practices as the signature of research in the sciences, both in the discovery of new scientific ideas and in the application of more familiar ones. Models are analogies in which objects and relations in one system, the model system, are used as stand-ins to represent, predict, and elaborate those in the natural world. Familiar examples include billiard ball models of the behavior of gases and solar system models of atoms. Although familiar, these examples are somewhat misleading in that they suggest a ready-made model structure mapped onto nature. In practice and in history, models and worlds are more typically co-constituted (Nersessian, 2008). Modeling is a form of argument that is central to science and that has other instructional advantages as well: it renders student thinking visible to teachers and peers, it fosters representational competence, and it enhances bootstrapping between mathematical and scientific sense-making. They must find ways of encouraging students to develop and use thoughtful criteria for evaluating the interest and fruitfulness of scientific questions and for deciding whether evidence is Trustworthy and can be accepted as supporting the claims it accompanies To fully realize the benefits of reciprocal peer review in many settings, an automatic administration mechanism is required due to the logistical complexity of keeping tracking of scores – if not hundreds – of papers, reviewers, and reviews. A web based platform for reciprocal peer review offers unique opportunities for improving writing instruction across the board. First, students as authors write first drafts in response to any task given by the instructor and submit them online. Then, students are randomly assigned a set of three to six of these first drafts to peer review. As reviewers, they analyze the written texts in detail along several evaluative dimensions in response to prompts that incorporate explicit rubrics. Students submit written comments and ratings online. To fully realize the benefits of reciprocal peer review in many settings, an automatic administration mechanism is required due to the logistical complexity of keeping tracking of scores – if not hundreds – of papers, reviewers, and reviews. A webbased platform for reciprocal peer review offers unique opportunities for improving writing instruction across the board. This chapter examines the less-explored aspect of generating instructional explanations: the role of providing peer reviews. In particular, we focus on the question of whether providing peer reviews improves the reviewer’s own writing skills. Peer reviewing is active processes that can help the reviewer learn which features of writing are desirable and which features are undesirable. Thus, reviewers are engaged in exercising important skills for writing (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Fitzgerald, 1987; Flower, Hayes, Carey, Schriver, & Stratman, 1986). These activities may improve the reviewers’ own writing skills, by finding strengths and weaknesses, reinforcing successful strategies, and calling attention to unsuccessful strategies that the reviewers have already used in their own writing.
However, low-quality examples can help students develop knowledge about various constraints on writing and apply the learned constraints to their own writing. Low-quality examples can also provide more opportunities to detect, diagnose, and revise errors than high-quality examples. While revising errors, students may think deeply what errors are critical, why they are harmful, and how to fix them. For instance, Zimmerman and Kitsantas (2002) found that coping models that showed how to revise errors were more beneficial in acquiring writing skill than mastery models that did not include any error. Thus, low-quality examples can help students to improve writing by reducing errors. In this research, we examined the role of giving reviews as an example of providing instructional explanations. We investigated the gains for reviewers-as-writers rather than the more traditional focus of reviewers-as-surrogate-feedback source. Thus, this research speaks to the pedagogical value of providing the reviews in addition to its practical advantage of making rich feedback available more often to students.
The motion picture development and production process of the film is made because of some reasons. They are to encourage students, to use critical thinking as they learn how production designers contribute, to the process of creating a motion picture, to engage students in an exploration of film as a medium of communication, to help students become more visually literate. In learning process, the students may select the films they wish to view during the following activities. The good films consider how the set or location will look from various angles and distances, and in different lighting conditions, as demanded by the script. It will encourage the students to “see” the architectural components of production design by studying photos or paintings by artists like Vermeer and Giotto and point out examples of the defined architectural terms. Then have them focus on one scene in a selected film and discuss how camera movement and lighting work with the basic set design. For futuristic or fantastic stories, they consult with scientists and engineers to create sets that are both imaginative and believable. Sometimes, however, designers choose drama over realism, selecting props or furnishings that may not be absolutely accurate, but are emotionally true. The Students can learn about the connection between set decoration and visual storytelling by creating a detailed environment for a specific character. To test whether they have picked appropriate details, have them share their descriptions with their classmates. The colors illustration affects how we view a film, have your students observe and describe places in their everyday world in terms of color. Ask them how the colors of their classroom, bedroom, doctor’s office, etc., make them feel. Then have them write a scene set in their school or neighborhood and describe what colors and textures they might use to heighten the drama.



















Analyzing Data


Writing is one of the language skills that should be mastered by the students. Sometimes, the students think that writing skill is not too important but as a student, we should be aware that we can mold our thought, feeling, ideas, and everything in our writing. We see ideas that attach, that are implied or contained, and that follow in some way from the one we started with. Connecting ideas in this way or separating ideas usually seen as connected is also one of the main ways people revise their writing. When we write, we often feel that we are really wrestling with words, even though we know that those words make up sentences, paragraphs, and larger units. It is word by word that we make meaning as we write. This feeling of wrestling with words comes as we read, also, particularly if the words are difficult for us. So we might well conclude that direct study of words is the way to improve our reading and writing. With writing, we can channel our thinking into a good paragraph even a text. In writing, we should make a text that has a unity in the word by word or sentence by sentence in order to make the paragraph has one point in order to not make the paragraph is ambiguous. Building that point into our statement of purpose – the general indication of what we are trying to do – will help give direction to our planning and writing. In making the writing more effective, we should avoid word, phrases, or sentences that are too predictable. Writing is more than just a skill. For one thing, it offers many people individual rewards that are suited to them and not available any other way. Writing looks like an easy doing but if we create thinking but we can not develop it based on the rules that are needed in writing itself, it will not be a good text or written text. We are supposed to learn basic writing skills at the beginning of our college careers that we can use in our later work. We sometimes see that people who can write in one way seem to be able to use their ability to write in a variety of fields. This makes us think of writing as a single skill that can be applied to a variety of situations. In writing, we are also demanded to be able to convey the message. We do hope that our writing can be understood by the readers with the differences of point of view clearly. We should develop our min and imagination in order to make the readers feel everything that we have written. Writing requires considerable ability to examine our own thinking so, we have to learn how to write well and receive a lot of opinions as a guide to make our writing will be better. There are so many ways to write well. We should learn the basics of writing before and we need to remember that writing is much more complicated than we use usually think. In writing we should arrange sentence by sentence that has continuity between each other. To keep our writing still on the rules, the teacher are suggested to find the better way in order to make writing looks easier in English learning process. One way that can be used by the teacher to make writing is easier is retelling the story. By retelling the story, the student are hoped to be able to remember the story then mold their imagination with their own language without ignoring the sequence of the story. If they can remember it, it will be easier for them to combine their own thinking with a story. A story that is shown will be looked more interesting if it is provided with good media too. In this case, we choose the media that we think it can make the student fell cozier when they study in the classroom. Its media is film. This media is made to enhance student interest in and knowledge about the motion picture development and production process, to encourage students to use critical thinking as they learn how production designers contribute to the process of creating a motion picture, to engage students in an exploration of film as a medium of communication, and to help students become more visually literate. In English learning process, especially in writing process, the film is aimed to help the student in stimulating their thinking then they struggle to develop everything that we have watched. In learning process, the students may select the films they wish to view during the following activities but the film that is chosen should have a regulation that is needed by them. The film that is considered is suitable for them is the film that has an education value in order to make the student can apply it. Beside that, they can also develop the life value or culture on this film. Before watching the film, we have to choose a film based on the Criteria that can help us in English learning, for example, the level of English. It means that the film that is chosen is easier in English student understanding where we can understand about 80%, we can guess or learn the other 20% and the type of film and the content; some academics believe it is easier to learn when we are having fun. After watching, the student should make a summary with their own language. They will write everything that they remembered after they had watched the film. In English learning process, the film of course has a lot of advantages and disadvantages. The advantages of using film in teaching and learning process are the 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, the second is 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. Third, 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. The last is 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. Beside of the advantages, obviously, the film has also some disadvantages. They are the students need more time to understand the movie, the writer must repeat the movie until three times, it means that the students need more time in writing class by using a movie and Teaching by using a movie needs more facilities like television, VCD player or disc drive computer, and unfortunately not all schools have those facilities. Because of some weakness in using film as a media in English learning, the teacher is suggested to prepare the right time for watching a movie, and also the teacher must think about the duration, because the students need longer times to watch and understand the movie, and the teacher must prepare the facilities for watching a movie, some facilities are television sets, VCD player, and the class room. The teacher must think that all of the students can watch the movie easily.















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

A.Hubbard, Francis.1988. How Writing Works. Newyork: St. Martin’s Press, Inc
Kay Stein, marry • 2010. Instructional Explanation In the Disciplines. Newyork: Springer Science and Business media
Behrens, Laurence and J.Rosen Leonard.1985. Writing and Reading Across Curiculum. Boston Toronto: Little,Bron and Company.
Cody, Sherwin. 2006. The art of writing and speaking the English language word study and composition and rhetoric. Newyork: The Old Greek Press
Kay Stein, marry • 2010. Instructional Explanation In the Disciplines. Newyork: Springer Science and Business media
R. Ebbit, Wilma and R. Ebbit, David. 1978. Writer’s guide and index to English. London: Scott, foresman and company