THE APPLICATION OF CONTEXTUAL TEACHING AND
LEARNING IN TEACHING WRITING TO THE SECOND GRADE STUDENTS OF SMP MUHAMMADIYAH 2
YOGYAKARTA (ADIWIYATA JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL) IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2014/2015: A
CLASSROOM ACTION RESEARCH
ABSTRACT
Nita Fitriana, 29002144, Dr. Rr. Hasti
Robiasih, M.Pd., English Language Education Department, Faculty of Teacher
Training and Education, Sarjanawiyata Tamansiswa University, nitafitriana25@gmail.com
The objectives of
this study were to describe the application of Contextual Teaching and Learning
and to find out the result of applying Contextual Teaching and Learning in
teaching writing to the second grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Yogyakarta
(Adiwiyata Junior High School). This research was a classroom action
research which consisted of two cycles. Each
cycle consisted of four steps; they were planning, acting, observing, and
reflecting. The researcher
used the observation, interview and video recording in completing the research.
The analysis result showed that the researcher could make the meaningful material, encourage
students to be active, focus students’ attention and curiosity by questioning,
demonstrate what she wanted the students to learn, and do reflection by giving
appreciation, motivation, and suggestion. The students also reflected
Contextual Teaching and Learning indications such as relating the lesson with
their Adiwiyata activities, learning collaboratively, becoming self-regulated,
critical thinking, and applying the lesson in their Adiwiyata activities.
Applying Contextual Teaching and Learning in teaching writing could enhance the
students’ writing and make them aware to participate in Adiwiyata activities.
Keywords:
Writing, Contextual
Teaching and Learning, Adiwiyata School
INTRODUCTION
Writing for the second
grade of junior high school is expressing a meaning of functional short text
and very simple essay dealing with daily life context. It means that students
demonstrate some basic skills of finding, choosing, and arranging words, applying
grammar functions and arranging sentences to make a very simple essay or text.
Based on the
researcher’s experience during teaching practice and discussing with some
English teachers, it can be concluded that many students' English are still regarded
low especially in writing. They also
have low motivation in learning English particularly in writing. The monotonous
activity and process make them bored.
The same
condition happens in SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Yogyakarata. Besides having problems in
teaching and learning writing, there is another problem. It is about Adiwiyata
program.
Considering
that the school is one of Adiwiyata schools, the environment
knowledge should be taught. Unfortunately, environment knowledge is not a
subject taught in the class. There is no time to teach environment knowledge to
the students.
Therefore,
the researcher will apply
the Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) in order to solve the problems
above.
THEORETICAL
REVIEW
A.
Writing
According to Hedge (2000:302), writing is more than producing accurate
and complete sentences and phrases. She states that writing is about guiding
students to: “produce whole pieces of communication, to link and develop
information, ideas, or arguments for a particular reader or a group of
readers…”. Meanwhile, Robinson (2001:2) emphasized the ideas that writing skill
is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set
of signs or symbols. Then, the set of signs or symbols is also known as writing
system. In summary, writing ability is the skill to express ideas, thoughts,
and feelings to other people in written symbols to make other people or readers
understand the ideas conveyed.
B.
Teaching Writing
Harmer (2001: 112) stated that teaching writing is used as a
practice tool to help students practice and work with language they have been
studying. A teacher, beside teaching and giving task to write to the students,
he/she should guide and give feed back to the students’ writing. It means that
teacher’s comments and revisions are needed to increase the students’ progress
in writing.
C.
Adiwiyata School
Adiwiyata School is one of
the Ministry of Environment’s programs in order to encourage the creation of
knowledge and awareness of school citizens to conserve the environment
cleanliness. The aim of Adiwiyata School is to realize the responsibility of
school citizens in order to keep and manage environment through good school
management (Badan Lingkungan Hidup Daerah 2011 as stated in blhd.tanjabbarkb.go.id).
The basic principles of Adiwiyata program are participatory
and continuous. In order to achieve the aim, there are four components of
Adiwiyata program; 1) the policy based environment, 2) curriculum-based
environment, 3) environment activities based participatory,4) the management of
safe supporting tool
D. Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL)
Contextual
teaching and learning is a conception of teaching and learning that helps
teachers relate subject matter content to real world situations and motivates
students to make connections between knowledge and its applications to their
lives (Johnson, 2002).
1.
Components of CTL
There are eight components of CTL (Johnson,
2002: 24). They are as follows:
a. Making Meaningful Connections
It increases
knowledge and deepens insight. It enables students to influence their context
to the world they live.
b. Doing Significant Work
It gives students an
immediate, practical reason to learn.
c. Self-regulated learning
It emphasized the
emerging autonomy and responsibility of students to take charge of their own
learning.
d. Collaborating
It enables students
to listen to the voices of others in group. From collaboration, students can correct
and respect each other.
e. Critical and creative thinking
It enables students
to formulate and evaluate their own beliefs and claims.
f. Nurturing the individual
It enables teachers
to know each student. By getting to know each student, the possibility of
realizing a student’s potential and of achieving academic excellence increases
greatly.
g. Reaching high standards
CTL asks students to
reach high standard. Asking too little of students and lowering standards for
them are disregarding their potential and future well-being.
h. Using authentic statements
It
invites students to use their academic knowledge in a real-world context.
It is clear that these
eight components ask students for involving in classroom activity actively.
2.
Strategy of CTL
There are five
strategies of applying CTL that proposed by Crawford. It has the famous
abbreviation that is REACT (Satriani, Emilia, & Gunawan, 2012:12-13).
a.
Relating
It means that the
strategy intends the students to have the ability to relate the prior and new
knowledge to get new understanding.
b. Experiencing
It means the
previous strategy involves the role of students to relate the prior and new
knowledge, while the position of teacher is to help them to find the solution from
the problem by constructing new knowledge with hand on experience.
c. Applying
It means that the
strategy intends the students to use the approach they are engaged in hands on
problem solving activities.
d. Cooperating
It means work
together. The students discuss or share with other friends in group.
e. Transferring
It intends the students to construct the
meaning of something by their own understanding. Related to the word “understanding”,
the students who learn with understanding can also learn to transfer knowledge
RESEARCH
METHOD
A. Type of Research
The type of this research was classroom
action research. It is the study of a social situation with a view to improve
the quality of action within it. The essential impetus for carrying out action
research is to change the system Muslich (2009). The
implementation of this action research consists of two cycles with the
procedures starting from planning, action, observation, and reflection for each
cycle (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1998).
B. Setting and Subject of the Research
The research was conducted at SMP
Muhammadiyah 2 Yogyakarta in academic year 2014/2015. This research was conducted from April to August 2014. This research took place in class VIII H which consisted of 36 students (20 males and 16 females).
C. Data Collection Technique
The data of this research were observation, interview, and
video recording. Classroom observation was used to observe teacher’s and
students’ activities during the lesson. To help the observer focus, the
observation guideline was used. The interview was conducted to know what
exactly the student’s and teacher’s feeling and opinion about the applying CTL
in writing. The interview was recorded and reported in the form of
transcripts. Video recording was
used to help the researcher to remember and help manage the data. In this
research, the researcher used video recording to provide additional data which
is used to answer the questions listed in the formulation of the problem.
D. Data Analysis Technique
The
data analysis was descriptive qualitative. To describe the application of CTL in writing based
Adiwiyata, the
researcher used the result of classroom observation. The writer read the
transcription repeatedly, watched the video carefully, and described how CTL in
writing based Adiwiyata is applied.
To
find out the result of applying CTL,
the researcher described the flow of each cycle, the improvement built after
the revised plan of each cycle. The writer also used the result of the
interview which was intended to reveal what kind of enhancement built in the
students’ writing skill.
RESEARCH
FINDING AND DISCUSSION
A.
Research Finding
1.
The Application of Contextual Teaching and Learning Based Adiwiyata
The teaching and learning process was
conducted in three phases; elaboration, exploration, and confirmation. The teacher
started elaboration phase by splitting the students into groups of 4 and 5.
Each group was asked to find vocabularies related to class duty, as the topic
of the lesson. The teacher then encouraged all groups to make sentences related
to class duty activities. The teacher with all groups discussed about how to
make a sentence in simple present tense form properly. In elaboration phase,
the teacher asked them to arrange their sentences into a text. Then the teacher
divided a descriptive text entitled “Our Class Duty” as the example, and asked
them to discuss about the generic structures of a descriptive text. In
confirmation phase, all groups were asked to arrange jumbled sentences and
answer WH-questions. Each group presented their works. In the presentation,
other groups gave some corrections on one’s group which was presenting.
However,
there were some facts causing the obstacle found in cycle one: 1) there were some students made noise in their groups, 2) some of them asked the
teacher about the instructions, 3) some students were confused to differentiate
some words based on the parts of speech. Therefore, the researcher revised the
plan to make the cycle 2 run well than cycle 1.
In exploration phase, each student was asked to complete a
descriptive text entitled “My Healthy Canteen” with appropriate words. Based on their experience in the cycle 1,
the teacher gave example in each instruction. Then they were asked to identify the generic
structure of the text. The elaboration phase was
started by classifying some words based on the parts of speech done by
students. The words were taken from the
same text entitled “My Healthy Canteen”. All of them could classify words in
appropriate classification. Then they were asked to arrange
jumbled words into good sentences.
The sentences then could be arranged into a descriptive text by them.
In
confirmation phase, the students presented their work
by writing their answers on white board. In this activity, the students seemed
active and enthusiastic. They came forward to write their answers on the white
board without being pointed out by the teacher.
2.
The Result of Applying Contextual Teaching Learning
In order to get the students’ impression
on Contextual Teaching and Learning application, the teacher asked five
students and the English teacher to
share their opinions and feelings during the class. The results of the
interview showed that: the
students felt enthusiastic and they enjoyed their learning, they have a new experience;
relating the lesson with their real life,
they got deeper understanding in finding vocabularies and
making sentences in correct structure
and Contextual Teaching and Learning was suitable for the
eighth grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 2 Yogyakarta class VIII H as an
Adiwiyata Junior High School.
B. DISCUSSION
In
applying cycle 1, the researcher gave a meaningful material for the students such
giving a puzzle to help the students in finding vocabularies. From the
material, the students could collaborate with their friends in finding
vocabularies and making sentences with their own strategies. In cycle 2, the
researcher provided them incomplete text emphasized with Adiwiyata activities.
Therefore the students could relate their experiences in completing the text.
Both in cycle 1 and cycle 2, the researcher gave
chance to students to participate during the class by giving correction and comments on their friends’ answers. Applying
Contextual Teaching and Learning in teaching writing for the Adiwiyata School
students helped the students to overcome their problems: low motivation and competence in learning writing English. The students
became enthusiastic and enjoy the class.
It also helped the school to minimize the allocation time in teaching.
CONCLUSION
The application of
Contextual Teaching and Learning in
teaching writing to the second grade students of SMP Muhammadiyah 2 yogyakarta
(as adiwiyata junior high school) in academic year 2014/2015 run well. The research was conducted in
two cycles in which each cycles consisted of four stages: planning, acting,
observing, and reflecting.
Examining all of the processes that happened
in cycle 1 and cycle 2, it was concluded that the students reflected Contextual
Teaching and Learning indications in their activities such as relating the
subject content with their real life, becoming self-regulated; having autonomy
and responsibility in learning, learning collaboratively, analyzing and solving
problem by critical thinking, and applying their academic knowledge in their
real world context. The researcher succeeded in playing her roles such as making
meaningful material, encouraging students to be actively involved in learning
process, questioning (to check students’ comprehension, measure students’
curiosity, and focus students’ attention), demonstrating the teacher’s opinion
and how the teacher wanted the students to learn, and doing reflection.
Applying
Contextual Teaching and Learning in teaching writing could enhance the
students’ writing and make them more active and enthusiastic in learning. The
indications of Contextual Teaching and Learning gave a positive result towards
the students’ understanding in learning to write a descriptive text.
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Kemmis, S., &Taggart, R.
1998. The Action Research Panner. 3rd
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(2012). Contextual Teaching and Learning
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ONLINE SOURCES:
Administrator. 2011. Pengertian
Adiwiyata. Blhd.tanjabbarkab.go.id. Retrieved on 29 March 2014 <http://blhd.tanjabbarkab.go.id/kategori/rehli/pengertianadiwiyata.html, >
