Education Research for Final Project

ABSTRACT

FEBRIANTO, AZIZA RESTU: The Comparison of Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text between Natural School and Regular School, research in SMP Negeri 22 Semarang and SMP Alam Arridho Semarang.Thesis. Strata 1 Program, English Department of Languages and Arts Faculty, Semarang State University. First Advisor: Widhiyanto, Spd, Mpd. Second Advisor: Drs. La Ode Musyarudin.

Keywords: Students’ Achievement, Writing, Descriptive Text, Natural School, and Regular School.

This study entitled ‘The Comparison of Students’ Achievement in Writing Descriptive Text between Nature School and Regular School.’ This study focuses on the comparison of the aspect of writing skill to find significant difference of the students’ achievement in writing descriptive text from different schools. In this study, the researcher took the samples of the students’ descriptive writings from SMP Alam Arridho Semarang as a Natural School and SMP Negeri 22 Semarang as a Regular School, then analyzed them by using Brown’s theory and the Genre features.

The objectives of this study are: (1) to find the significant difference found in the descriptive texts between the students of SMP Alam Arridho Semarang as a Natural School and the students of SMP Negeri 22 Semarang as a Regular School, (2) to find and show what kind of difference arises is. Related to the objectives above, the researcher found that the prominent differences are: (1) the students who have been studying in the Natural School get more freedom to explore their ideas in writing descriptive text. They are also more creative in writing Descriptive text. The factor that makes them become more creative is that writing is actually their habit. They are accustomed to being asked to write some certain objects in other subjects beside English. Hence, their writing is more developed and complete. (2) the descriptive writings of the students of SMP Alam Arridho Semarag are mostly better in the aspects of organization, content, Punctuation, spelling, mechanics, and style or quality of expression though the students from both schools almost have the same ability in using grammar. However, the students of SMP 22 Semarang have made better writing in the aspects of the communicative purpose of the text.

Hopefully, the results of this study can be useful for English teachers as a guideline to compose Lesson plan and to consider several methods used in the natural school as an Alternative school in teaching. The method which is rarely implemented in the Regular school is thematic method in which the teachers use Realia such as outdoor media and Excursion. This method is really important to be considered by the other teachers. Besides, other further researchers may use it as a reference to conduct other research on the same field. They may also conduct such a related research to find the effectiveness of Alternative Schools in Education.

7 Tips To Improve Your English Skills

1. Read, read, read. 

Not only blogs. Read books, magazines, brochures, reports and what else you feel appropriate for your niche. You should read not just to learn new topics and about discoveries of your favorite discipline, but even to improve your understanding of grammar, sentence structure and technical jargon. I suggest underlining terms, verbs and idiomatic sentences you encounter for the first time, so you can look them up in your dictionary or grammar reference later.

2. Build a personalized dictionary from your reading. 

All you need is a notepad and a pen. Write down idiomatic expressions, niche jargon, irregular verbs and writing style notes to revise later. My experience teaches that a personalized dictionary, which you write during your reading sessions, is much more effective as a learning aid than a printed or online dictionary you consult passively.

3. Engage in forum and chat conversations. 

This is crucial. You can't hope to perfect your English writing skills until you learn to think in English. Forums and chat rooms can make the difference: you are forced into a dynamic environment, which requires speedy action on your part. Once you hone your English thinking, along with your writing, you can work on improving your pronunciation -- to be able to conduct interviews.

4. Start a personal blog. 

Readers take niche blogs pretty seriously: bad grammar and spelling are seen as unprofessional and they are by all means a turn-off. On the contrary, a personal blog makes a perfect home to write about your favorite niche, while you work to perfect your skills: you can share personal opinions and experience, use newly learned jargon fear-free. No one is going to regard you as incompetent because of your English flaws on your personal blog.

5. Edit and rewrite... with the help of a dictionary! 

I encourage you to keep a dictionary at hand for the editing/rewriting stage. A thesaurus is another good companion to keep handy, too. Editing and rewriting require competencies and vocabulary most non-natives haven't mastered well yet, so make sure you have good reference material on your desk.

6. Ask a native English speaker to review your work. 

The best criticism you can get is a native English speaker's. Figuring out how to use certain slang, verbs and idiomatic expressions can be a tricky job for a non-native speaker. An English speaker can help you correct grammar, spelling, tone and style. So much in so little time!

7. Keep a humble attitude towards constructive criticism. 

Learning involves being ready to discuss your own work. You can't learn new things when you remain rigid on your position. Also, be humble and thankful to people who spend their time to review your work and give you constructive feedback; their advice can be the turning point in your writing career.

Let’s learn new vocabulary through reading…….

Buffet Revival

The rise of the buffet restaurant

When was the last time you went to a buffet restaurant? According to a recent survey, they are becoming more and more popular. But why?

Part of the reason is that they are cheap. And with the recession, most people want to save a bit of money. Some buffets have some incredible offers, “All you can eat for £10” says the Fryburn Inn in Wokesmaster, England. “Unlimited portions for just £7.99!” exclaims Tayburns. And, “Eat as much as you like for just £5!” boasts Kormas of London with its Indian-food buffet.

Buffets also offer quantity. “I always have the buffet breakfast on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander. I can sit there till lunchtime stuffing myself, drinking coffee and watching dolphins. After that, I don’t eat again for 8 hours!” explained Mark Jones, who often travels to Spain by boat. “I always a buffet lunch on Fridays,” explained Daniel Carrington, a city worker. “It’s great fun as there’s just so much food to choose from. And there are no limits!”

Buffets offer variety, too. The Dragon King Buffet in Manchester offers dinners more than 101 dishes. There are meat and fish dishes, cold and hot choices, and sweet and savoury items to choose from. “I loveit because you mix and match,” explained Ellis Harper. “I often put sweet food with meat. My girlfriend thinks it’s disgusting, but I love it.” And another fan said, “I think it’s a brilliant way to make combinations. I often combine salad with pasta, sandwiches, potatoes and lots of meat.”

But not everyone likes buffets. “I hate all the pushing and shoving,” said Sam Paulson. “The food is terrible,” said Harriet Jones. “It’s often cold, and people breathe over it, touch it and do all sorts of horrible things with it.”

“I hate it because it’s all so rushed,” explained Maddison Smithers. “People are trying to eat as much food as they can in as short a time as possible. I don’t find it an enjoyable experience at all. I like to sit down for my meal and eat it calmly and quietly; but at buffets, my husband just stuffs himself – it isn’t pleasant at all. He’s got no control.”

So, what do you think of buffet restaurants? 

Glossary:

a buffet restaurant: a type of restaurant with food placed in a public area. Diner serves themselves.

a survey: a series of questions asked in order to get people’s opinions on things.

a recession: a period of poor economic activity.

to save: if you keep your money, you keep it and don’t spend your money

to boast: if someone “boasts” about something, they say how great/ good/ wonderful it is

a ferry: a boat for taking passengers/ vehicles from one side of a river/ area of water to another – often found in a city by the coast or with a river.

to stuff yourself: to eat a lot of food – so much that you feel very full

a diner: a person who is eating in a restaurant

a dish: a plate of food

savoury: not weet

to mix and match: to create a combination by having a bit of one thing and a bit of another

to shove: to push aggressively

to breathe over: if someone breathes over food, they push air out of their mouth and onto the food

rushed: if something is “rushed,” it happens in a quick, non-calm way

enjoyable: pleasant and nice

a meal: a period of time when you sit down to eat: breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc 

Workshop and Expo on Education

Making Writing Engaging and Accessible to Students

(Elementary to Advanced Levels)

with ELF Erica Balazs and ELF Fabio Coelho 

from Regional English Language Office (RELO)

Embassy of the United States Jakarta

in collaboration with Universitas Negeri Semarang (UNNES)

Session 1

Writing Interesting Long Sentences

(Simple Sentence – Compound Sentences – Complex Sentences)

It seems that students are unable to write long, informative and interesting sentences properly. This is a very quick introduction to some techniques to show students how to use various types of words to improve their sentences. Here we are introducing only adjectives, prepositions showing location, and conjunctions to form compound sentences (formed from 2 independent clauses), but there is much more you can introduce adverbs, prepositions that show time, conjunctions to form complex sentences (formed from 1 independent clause and 1 or more dependent clauses), verb tenses to describe time, and ..

These activities are best done in small groups, with students doing individual work when writing, but working in groups from brainstorming, and perhaps, peer review.

1. Complete the sentences from the words below.

                                                                                                  Blouse

                                                                Sleeping

                                          Hit

                                                                                                                                         Ice cream

                London

The cat is _________________.

The man loves to eat _____________________.

She didn’t buy the ______________________.

________________ is a city.

The girl ____________________ three home runs.

2. Brainstorm some adjectives.

Black                  ______________           _______________        _____________

Dirty                   ______________           _______________        _____________

Big                      ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

3. Now, use the adjectives to make longer sentences.

The cat is sleeping

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping.

4.   Brainstorm some prepositions.

On                      ______________           _______________        _____________

Near                   ______________           _______________        _____________

After                   ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

5.   Now, use the prepositions to make longer, more interesting sentences.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping on the expensive, white leather sofa.

6.   Brainstorm some conjunctions.

So                      ______________           _______________        _____________

Until                    ______________           _______________        _____________

And                    ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

_______             ______________           _______________        _____________

7.     Use the conjunctions to make even longer sentences.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping on the expensive, white leather sofa.

The dirty, big, black cat is sleeping on the expensive, white leather sofa, and the rich, old woman is crying.

8.    Now, write your own 20 word sentences.

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IELTS Short course

IELTS Short course with Mr. Ernest Lada from US

Aziza Restu Febrianto - IELTS Simulation

Writing task 2

Band Score 6.5

 My original handwriting 

Revised version

In many countries such as China, Japan, Brazil, and Indonesia, fixed punishments for people who committed crimes are a really important way to deter crime.  The government hopes that by giving certain fixed punishments to criminals, it can prevent crime.  However, some people have a different view on how to punish criminals.  The reason why criminals commit a particular depends on their motives.  They are considered an important factor in the sentencing process for the sake of protecting a person’s legal rights.

Those who think giving fixed punishments to criminals point out that many crimes harm the victims.  If there is no way to stop crime, people lives will be threatened, which leads to chaos.  In their view, the only way to stop crime is to create a deterrent, and fixed punishments are one solution to this problem.  Once criminals are strictly punished, they will think twice before doing such crimes again.  Not to mention, law enforcement considers this particular method as a great lesson or warning.

On the other hand, people who are concerned about legal rights think there are other ways to fight crime.  Instead of giving fixed punishments such as the death penalty or life in prison for certain serious crimes, the court should actually consider the motives and reasons or even the mental state of the criminal.  It is really important to review the many aspects of each criminal case when giving a court verdict.

In conclusion, I think giving fixed punishments is the best solution for stopping crime and maintaining law and order in society because it makes people obey the laws.   

271 words

My Writing Task 1 Practices

by Aziza Restu Febrianto

February 2015

The table illustrates some date gained by a university bookshop in February 2000.

The data shows three different kinds of books bought by non-book club members in a month. It can be clearly seen from the data that magazines were the most popular books among non-book club members. In contrast, the book club members apparently did not quite like them. There were only 33 books bought by the members.

Compared to Magazines, non-fiction books were the most popular among the book club members. 942 books were sold. As shown in the data, among the non-book members, group of people who like it best were college students (194).

On the other hand, fiction was the least preference among the both different people. The number of the book sold was 151, and only those from college staff and students liked it. College staff (44) and college students (31).

It is clear that these three different books were quite popular among people in university with 3134 books sold.

(165 words)

February 2015

The graph illustrates the data on the rate of children watching TV and listening to radio every day and night reported in 1994.

According to the data, it can easily be seen that radio became so popular in the morning. The number of students listening to radio increased dramatically from 6.00 am to about 8.15 am. However, as is shown in the figures, the percentage of children listening to radio declined gradually after 8.15 from 25% to less than 11%. And it also shows that radio became little popular from afternoon to evening for children.

On the other hand, we can see from the graph that children liked watching TV from afternoon to evening. The data shows that the percentage of children above 4 years old rose significantly after 4 pm and reached a peak at over 45%. However, TV became unpopular after 8.00 pm for children, and the percentage dramatically decreased until 2 am. This was probably because children of age above 4 had a rest and slept early after having a lot of activities all day long before.

(180 words)

April 18, 2015

The pie chart and the figure illustrate the Coca Cola products distribution and share prices from 1996 to 2000 in five different countries.

The pie chart shows that the total products distribution across the five different continents in four years was 17.1 bn with the highest rate intake in the North America (30.7 bn). The second place was Latin America with 25.7 bn, and the three remaining continents were Europe (20.5 bn), Asia (16.4 bn) and Africa and Middle East (7.0 bn) of the total products distribution.

The figure shows the data of Coca Cola share prices from 1996 to 2000. It can be seen from the data that the peak of price was reached in 1998 with the price around 75 dollars. In the beginning of 1996, Coca cola firstly started the price around 32 dollars, and it significantly increased almost 70 dollars in a year. Even though the price slightly declined a bit in several months, the company could successfully push the price and significantly reached 70 dollars before the peak in 1998. However, it shows that the company was not able to maintain the price and it finally dropped gradually from 1998 to 2000. It was shown in the figure that there was an effort to increase the price from 49 dollars to over 56 dollars before 2001.

(220 words)

Just keep writing! ...:) 

Writing Practice 1

Reading as part of writing

One of the techniques of writing successfully in academic environment is to be able to integrate the important points of what you have read into your own writing. To do this, you must have a clear picture of what you have read, and this in itself entails active and focused reading. With academic reading, it is necessary to maintain a constant grip on what the author is saying. Yet many academic texts are densely written in unfamiliar ways, which make them much more difficult to manage than, for example a novel or a magazine article.

Although sometimes there may be reasons why you need to skim-read an article or book, this is likely to be only to get the gist of what is being said, as a way of deciding whether it is appropriate reading material or not. In general, skim-reading is not a particularly useful strategy for a student, but you may well be used to doing this in other contexts, for example, skimming through a newspaper article or surfing the web. Instead of skim-reading, you will be developing ways of concentrating on large chunks of quite dense text and making sense of them.

Even though you may only be reading for short burst of time, it is likely that you will have to concentrate far more intensely on academic reading material than, for example, when reading for pleasure. You don’t necessarily have to work in the library, but you will need to decide what type of location and atmosphere suits you best, and establish conditions that are conducive to effective study.

The initial stumbling block that most students face is choosing their reading. The first thing to do is to consult the reading list you have been given for books and articles that seem relevant to your particular assignment. Doing a library search, by keywords or subjects, is also useful if the references on your reading list are already on loan from the library. Your tutor should also be able to advise you as to which are the most relevant publications or websites.