Improving Students’ Ability in Writing Recount Text by Using the Characters in the Films

The students of EFL Classroom sometimes find difficulty in writing. The students difficulty in writing caused by the gate b etween the students’ L1 and L2 and the lack of supported information related to the source of idea for writing. Teaching media are to solve the problems especially in writing. This study is aimed at using films, especially the characters, as media in impro ving students’ ability in writing recount. The subject of the study were 30 numbers of 10 th graders of vocational school students. The findings showed that the average of the pre-test and post-test scores were 67.53 and 83.63. The improvement calculation was found 0.496 which was categorized as medium. The calculation of applying the t-test was on rejection area of Ho, showed that the post-test was better than the pre-test. According to the data analysis, the writer concludes that the strategy by using films is applicable since it helps students to solve their problem in writing recount. The media enable the students to actively engage to the learning process and improve their ability in writing for they give them the idea of writing recount.


INTRODUCTION
English is a Foreign Language which is mandated as the compulsory subject to be taught in schools in Indonesia. In English language learning, there are four skills which are to be mastered by students. One of the skills students have to master but still difficult to be assisted is writing skill. Writing is considered as a means of communication through written form. Writing basically is not simply drawing a sequence of orthographic written symbols, but it is in fact a complex process elaborating the aspects of brain, ideas and the writing rules as well. Writing requires a series of process and rules as well. The process of writing requires an entirely different set of competencies (Brown, 2001:335). Writing is not a simple task for the needs of the process of building the idea and constructing a text. As the result, writing is difficult task for students due to the problems they face in writing. The students often get difficulty in building the idea since they do not know what they have to write. The problems are also caused by the students limited ideas, the thought of writing is boring, and writing is a difficult thing because they have to think about the selection of tenses and vocabulary correctly in a sentence (Suhaimi, 2016). Moreover, the students are confused to write based on rhetorical structures of a text, they are unaware of the linguistic and rhetorical structures of a text.
Meanwhle, Indonesian Senior High School require students to learn genre-writing including narrative, procedure, recount, exposition, description, and report (Mauludin, 2020). In fact, recount is one of the text types which should be mastered by the students, especially by Senior High School students. The students are expected to compose a constructed text that can serve a special social purpose in genre-writing (Mauludin, 2020). The social purpose of recount is to reveal events for the purpose of informing or entertaining (Gerot and Wignel, 1994: 194). The distinction of structure of the texts are varied according to their communicative purpose. Gerot and Wignell (1994:196) explain that the generic structure of recount are: (1) Orientation: provides the setting and introduces participants, (2) Events: tell what happened in what sequence, and (3) Re-orientation: optional -closure of events. However, the learning activities of writing recount texts tend to be uninteresting and monotonous due to lack of students' interaction (Saepuloh, 2020).
As written language is different from spoken language, strategies to teach and assess writing are also proposed. (Derewianka & Jones, cited in Saepuloh, 2020). Teachers need to find out how to teach writing more effectively by using appropriate teaching media in avoiding the failure in teaching and learning process. The teachers are supported to find out and explore new technique to be applied in the classroom to help students improve their writing and find that writing is a fun activity to do (Marpaung, 2016). Thus, media are important in teaching and learning English since they help the teacher and the students. Teaching media such as audio-visual aids, media that provide both of sound and pictures, are important sources for teaching learning.
Films are audio visual media that can be used in teachinglearning process. Film as a pedagogical tool that has the ability to capture the attention of students in a way that theoretical lessons can never achieve and helps students visualize a hypothetical concept or decontextualize a familiar situation so as to see the things from different point of view (TAN, 2007:56). Films can be really useful and effective teaching tools since they can especially present real life as it is and can motivate students in developing the idea to construct recount texts. Kabooha (2016) found that the integration of movie in English language classes helped the students improve their language skills; and well selected movie materials could enhance students' language learning process and increase their motivation in learning. Furthermore, Kusumaningrum (2015) stated that using English movies can be applied to teach the four language skills; include reading, listening, speaking, and also writing skills. By using English movies, teacher can also teach grammar and introduce new vocabulary to the students.
In contrast, Sari (2015) stated that although movie or film is one of audio-visual media that teachers can use for improving students' English skills, teaching English through English movie also has some disadvantages. Therefore, English teachers should consider some solution and select a good educational English movie (Sari, 2015).
Since the less ability of the students in understanding English movies, the writer choose educational Indonesian movie to be used in the research. The study is aimed at describing the use of films. The sequence of experiences and events faced by the characters on the films are to give students idea to write recount texts and improve students' ability in writing recount texts. The students are to watch the Indonesian movie to have the idea to write based on the characters of the movie. In so doing, it is expected that students enjoy the learning process and enjoy writing recount text.

METHOD
This study was aimed at assessing students' ability in writing recount texts by using films as the teaching media. The subject of the study were 30 students of Muhammadiyah Vocational School. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the research was conducted online by using school academic website and also Google Meeting.
The study applied experimental research method, where research subjects were given a pre-test before being given the treatment. Afterwards, the use of films as the media in teaching writing was carried out. The films chosen were the Indonesian film The main purposes of the research were to use films as the source of idea to write recount text and improve their ability in writing recount texts. To measure the effectiveness of using films as teaching media, a post-test was conducted. At the pre-test, the students were asked to write their own experiences. After being given the treatment, watching 2 titles of Indonesian films, they were asked to write what they watched. They were to pretend as the characters of the film, then write the experiences in the form of recount texts.
The scorings were limited into: 1) Grammar, refers to appropriate tenses; 2) Vocabulary, refers to diction; 3) Mechanics, refers to punctuation and spelling; 4) Fluency, refers to style and ease of communication; and 5) Relevance, refers to the content in relation to the task demanded of the students (Heaton,1974:137). According to the scoring guidance above, the maximum score is 25. students' score were multiplied by 4, so the maximum score was 100.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This study was conducted to explore the use of films as teaching media in writing recount text. The data were obtained through the result of the writing test. To gather the data of this study, there were 2 types of test, they were: pre-test and post-test, conducted in order to get the actual data. The pre-test was given before conducting the treatment. After being given the pre-test, the students were shown films in order to help them build their idea in writing recount. The post-test was conducted after giving 3 times treatment by using films. The pre-test and post-test scores were presented on the following tables: In order to examine the treatment effect on the students' writing improvement by using films as media, the following formulas were applied <g> = post test average score -pre test average score 100% pre test average score <g> = 83,63 -67,33333 3246,7% = 0,496 Improvement category High = g > 0,7 or in percentage g>70 Medium = 0,3 < g < 0,7 or in percentage 30 < g <70. Low = g < 0,3 or in percentage g< 30 Based on the the above calculation, the improvement of the students' ability in writing recount text by using films was categorized as medium.
In order to identify the significant difference between the experimental and control groups, the means of the two groups should be compared. The following are the data of the means difference test.

Hypothesis Test
The following is the hypothesis test: Because t count is in the rejection area of Ho, it can be concluded that the post-test is better than the pre-test.

Ho accepted area
Based on the data above, the result of average pre-test and the post-test were 67.53 and 83.63 . From this result, it was found that after giving treatment by providing students films and asking them to pretend as if they were the characters of the films, there was an upgrading in the average of the students' score into 16.1 points. Based on the scores, it could be seen that the score of the post test is higher than the pre-test. The calculation of the improvement also showed that there's a medium improvement of the students' score. It was also found that there is a relationship between X and Y, which is 10.34. After analyzing the data, it can be concluded that there is a significant difference between the students' writing before and after treatment using films.
Several previous studies were also conducted to explore the use of films to teach writing. The study of the use of film as media to teach writing conducted by Rachmawati (2017) revealed that the experimental group given films showed significant improvement. And in addition, Ardayati (2018) also found that it was significantly effective to use film as media to teach writing. Furthermore, Aditiya (2018) stated that the implementation of learning writing through film were able to improve students' mean score. In line with the previous studies above, the results of this study proved that the use of film was a good alternative to improve the English writing recount skills of the 10 th graders of Muhammadiyah Vocational School.

CONCLUSION
Based on the findings, the result of average pre-test and the post-test were 67.53 and 83.63. There was an upgrading in the average of the students' score into 16.1 points. It proved that the score of the posttest was higher than the pre-test. Thus, it can be concluded that teaching learning process by using films as media is effective to help students write recount text. The findings showed that films can be used as the media providing the information needed by the students to write recount text. By bringing various settings and also experiences faced by the characters on the films, the instructional process also becomes more attractive and interesting. It impacts on the students' learning activities. Students' enthusiasism will influence their achievement. The motion pictures of films may help students get the ideas for writing in developing those ideas. Thus, they are more creative in using proper words and construct written recount text based on the films they watch. However, to explore the use of films as teaching media, especially to improve students' ability in writing, further researches are need to be conducted in the future