CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter highlights the discussion of some literatures related to the
variables of the research. They are writing in ELT, recount text, comic strips as
ELT media in teaching writing, the strengths of comic strips, procedure of
teaching recount by using comic strips.

2.1 Writing in ELT

Writing is the process of communicating and expressing
ideas by using symbols such as letter of alphabet, punctuation
and spaces in a readable form, like what have been said by
Nunan (2003: 88), writing is the process of thinking to invent
ideas, thinking about how to express into good writing, and
arranging the ideas into statement and paragraph clearly.
Moreover Hyland (2003:18) states that writing is a way of getting things done. To get
things done such as, describing something, telling a story, requesting an overdraft,
drafting an essay, and so on. One must follow certain social conventions for
organizing messages, and these conventions can be described and taught. But, it

does not only include a range of orthographic symbols, it also

requires certain grammatical rules in organizing fact. When we
write, we also have to think about how to organize them
effectively, Bram (1995) said that writing using strict, standard
grammar encourages us to become careful disciplined and
responsible writers. These three qualities will lead us to make
further progress. Grammar controls what we write, it judges
whether we follow or break the language rules. Thus, writing is
considered to be productive skill that students are demanded to
produce the ability in writing by expressing their ideas, feeling
and thought in great composition.

Writing in English Language Teaching is considered as

challenging task in helping students to become preferable
writers. Harmer (2004: 41) explains that there must be crucial
tasks which teachers have to perform before, during and after
students writing are the following:
1. Demonstrating
Students need to be informed about writing conventions
and genre restriction in specific types of writing. In this
stage, teachers inform the students about what kind of
text which will be learned, and then explain them about
its definition, social function, generic structures and
language features.
2. Motivating and Provoking
This is where the teachers can encourage and provoke
the students in getting ideas with amusing method.
Better teachers will have well prepared planning before
they enter the classroom. They need to organize exactly
what they will do in order to excite students ideas. For
example, teachers prepare some jumbled pictures to be
shown. From the pictures, students can find their ideas.
They can ask teachers for the correct sentences after
they get ideas.
3. Supporting
Teachers

who

have

close

relationships

with

their

students will build qualities of good communication and

positive learning environment. They need to support
students about anything dealing with writing features
and help them overcome difficulties.
4. Responding
This is about how teachers respond to students writing
effectively and efficiently. Teachers judgment is focused

on giving comments or suggestions rather than filling

their works full of correction symbols.
5. Evaluating
In evaluating, teachers judge students work as the final
product. When evaluating, teachers will get each
students

score.

Teachers

usually

give

correction

symbols on students work. It can also be used as

learning opportunity. After students receive back their
scripts that are already filled with correction symbols,
they can learn where they made mistakes and how to
revise them.
Moreover, there are some aspects that have to be considered in writing.
Brown (2003:221) has summarized all those aspects into two main skill, they are the
micro- and macroskills of writing. They are needed to develop the effective writing.
Those skills are described as follows:

Microskills:
(1) Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.
(2) Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
(3) Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order
patterns.
(4) Use acceptable grammatical systems (e.g., tense, agreement,
pluralization), patterns, and rules.
(5) Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
(6) Use cohesive devices in written discourse.
Macroskills:
(1) Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse.
(2) Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts
according to form and purpose.
(3) Convey links and connections between events, and communicative
such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given
information, generalization, and exemplification.

(4) Distinguish between literal and implied meanings of writing.

(5) Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the
written text.
(6) Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately
assessing audience's interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with
fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer
and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing.
Both micro skill and macro skill are used to support the teachers in assigning the
most appropriate criterion to assess students. The micro skill supports cohesion,
the relation between the sentences in a text. It covers the imitation and the
intensiveness of writing performance which is explained deeply about
fundamental sub skills and other sub skills, such as words, punctuation,
vocabulary based on a context etc. Meanwhile, the macro skill supports
coherence, the correlation between the text and the surrounding of the text. It
covers responsive and extensive writing, such as the form and the communicative
purpose of a written text, main idea and supporting idea, the literal and implied
meaning writing, etc. Therefore, based on the micro- and macro skills that have
been determined, the writing activity and process should include them as well as
employ writing strategies needed by the students. It aims to help students in
constructing a text effectively by generating ideas logically and then connect the
sentences into paragraph with the correct fundamental sub skills and grammatical
features.
2.2 Recount Text
A recount retells sequence of events that has happened in
the past, as what has been described by Knapp (2005) that
recount text is written out to make a report about an experience of a series of
related event. A recount is written out to inform an event or to entertain people.
Recount Text is text function as for telling an incident in the past. Recount tells a
series of events and evaluates their significance in some way. It is also to give
audience a descriptions of what occurred and when it occurred. The story recount

has expressions of attitude and feeling, usually made by narrator about the events.
According to Barwick (1999:4), there are four types of recounts with varying
levels of language content according to the audience and purpose. Firstly about a
personal recount which retells an activity that the writer or speaker has
experienced. Language feature of personal recount is using personal pronouns (I
and we). Secondly about a factual recount that records a series events sequentially
and evaluates their significance. It uses third person pronouns (he, she, they) as he
language feature. Thirdly about procedural recount which is written after the
completion of procedure and found in information books, television, films etc.
Lastly about critical recount, it looks at an issue and comments / evaluates
negative / positive aspects.
Futhermore, Barwick (1999:5) also describes about the
generic structures and language features of recount text.
Structure of recount text focuses on three stages, they are
orientation, sequence of events and re-orientation. Orientation
supplies the background information needed to fully understand
the retelling. It establishes the time, setting and who or what is
participating. While, sequence of events are the main important
activities or events that occurred in that story of text. In this part
of the recount it is important that students are given adequate
guidelines and scaffolds to assist with the structure of their
writing. Students should focus on detailing who, what, where and
when. And re-orientation is a conclusion of the story. This often
rounds off the series of events. At this stage when students are
experimenting with different structures of recounts, the reorientation can be used as an introductory paragraph. It
generally refers to some of the information in the orientation
paragraph.
In the Hospital
When I was in hospital last year, I looked

ORIENTATION

forward to visiting times.

I was cheered up by visitors who talked
and joked with me. My teacher knew how

SEQUENCE
OF
EVENTS

boring it was o be alone. She brought me a

game set on one her visits.
Some of my classmates gave me fruit
and flowers when they visited. Alan sent me a
get well card. He could not me because he was

REORIENTATION

also ill.
I am lucky to have caring friends.

(Taken from Effective English, Pacific Primary Programme in The Bridge English
Competence)

Whereas, the language features of recount text are:

a) Proper nouns and pronouns identify people, animals or
things.
b) Adverbs and adverbial phrases sequence events in time
and indicate place.
c) Texts are written in past tense to retell past events.
d) Conjunctions (when, but) to combine clauses and
connectives to sequence events (first, then, finally) are
used.
e) The passive voice is used at times to allow the writer to
leave out the person doing the action.
2.3 Comic Strips as ELT Media
Comic strips are sequences of pictures which have power in
grabbing readers attention to enhance the information or
message. It combines pictures and words which are arranged in
interrelated panels to present brief interesting story that is more
communicative and readable. Smith (2006:3) states that a comic

book is basically a comic strip that runs on for number of pages.

According to Oxford Dictionary, comics are defined as an art form
that features a series of static images in fixed sequence, usually
to tell a story. While, comic strips utilize panels, having a
minimum of one and usually a maximum of three or four. These
strips may centre on the same cast of characters in each strip,
the accompanying stories are often meant to stand on their own
(i.e. they do not require the reader to be aware of previous strips
to understand the current one) (Smith, 2006:3). A comic strip is
defined as a series of pictures inside boxes that tell a story.
Among visual genres, comic strips catch many researchers
attention because they are communicative, popular, accessible,
and readable, and they combine aesthetic perception with
intellectual pursuit (Harvey, 1994; Inge, 1990; OSullivan, 1971;
Swain, 1978; Waller,1991 in Liu, 2004).
Figure 1. Comic Strip

Moreover, as Saraceni (2003:7-10) has described, comics contain the following

components such as panels, gutters, balloons and captions. These can be explained
as follows:
1. Panels: Each page is normally composed of a number of rectangular
frames named panels.
2. Gutter: Each panel is separated from the others by a blank space called the
gutter.

3. Balloons: The use of balloons, in which text is inserted into the panel
which contains the pictures, is one of the principal characteristics of
comics. Other types of printed materials, such as childrens books and
advertising, also combine images and words, but the use of balloons is
unique to comics.
4. The caption: it is the other element of comics that contains
linguistic elements.
Figure 2. Components of Comic

(Taken from: Panels, Gutters and Balloons)

Comic strips are considered as interesting teaching media

can be shared in the classroom that can contribute students
learning process. Teaching media is materials that a teacher
might use to implement instruction and contribute to attract
students attention. Gbamanja (1991) in Adekola (2010) defines
that instructional media is any device with instructional content
or function that is used for teaching purposes, including books,
supplementary reading materials, audio-visual and other sensory
materials, scripts for radio and television instruction, programme
for computer-managed sets of materials for construction and
manipulation. Sudjana and Rivai (2009:2) in Rokhayani and Utari
(2014) describe the value and benefits of teaching media into the
followings: (1) Teaching will attract more attention to foster
students' motivation to learn, (2) Teaching materials will be

clearer meaning that can be understood by the students, and

allow students to master better teaching purposes, (3) Teaching
methods will be more varied, not merely verbal communication
through the narrative of words by the teacher, so students do not
get bored especially when teachers teach to every hour lessons
and (4) Students are doing more activities to learn, because they
not only listen to descriptions of teachers, but also do other
activities such as observe, demonstrate.
The use of comic strips as learning media in writing
learning process is an effective strategy to promote student skill
in creating good writing. Specifically, the use of comics has been
suggested as a model to be used to help students develop their
writing skills. Students enjoy the simple style and amusing
characters, while at the same time get proven practice in their
reading and writing skills (Drolet, 2010). Moreover, one of the
effective ways in testing writing skill is by assigning the students
to write a composition based on ideas they gather from pictures.
Comic strips meet this characteristic since they are series of
pictures in which the students are expected to gain the ideas
easily from the chronological order of the story. The students are
also able to practice grammatical rules through this media by
changing direct speech in the speech balloon into indirect
speech. This kind of assessment is essential in developing the
students writing skill (Brown, 2003:226). Besides, Bledsoe
(2010) in Yunus et. al, (2012) claimed that comic strips is essential
in helping learners to spell correctly or organize thoughts into paragraphs.
2.4 The Strengths of Comic Strips
Comic strips as learning tool can be used to solve the
problems in understanding the material. The use of a sequence
of drawings and text found in a word balloon are able to develop

students imagination and transfer it into good writing. There are

some strengths of comic strips as learning media, such as:
a. Exciting and Motivating
Comic strips have a very exciting potential to help the
teachers in achieving the learning objectives. Attractive graphical
visualization, short dialogues, simple and easy to understand
making everyone from different ages like reading comics. When
the readers are interested on the image and character of the
comic, they want to know more deeply into the contents of the
comic story. This is what is expected of a teacher to the students
to be interested in what will be delivered in the classroom
(Rokhayani et. al, 2004). Moreover, comics are inherently
interesting and the pictures are eye catching. Students are
interested in them and they become motivated. Comics create
opportunities

for

students

and

educators

to

engage

in

meaningful dialogue (Williams (2008) in Smith 2013). It can be

concluded that the use of comic strips as English Language
Teaching will attract more attention to encourage students
motivation to learn.
b. Promoting Visual Intelligence
Visual intelligence plays a great role in helping students to
acquire knowledge and engage their imagination. Students with
high visual intelligence are good at remembering images, faces
and fine details. Comics seem to employ a form of visual
language that is almost universally understood (Sones (1944) in
Yang (2003)). Specifically, Morrison et. al, (2002) in Drolet (2010)
defines that the design of comic books, with their interplay of

visuals and text, allows students to explore and expand their

visual-spatial intelligence.
c. Enhancing Vocabulary Achievement
Comics also can be used to facilitate vocabulary teaching.
As Brown points out, the best internalization of vocabulary
comes from encounters (comprehension and production) with
words within the context of surrounding discourse (Brown 1994,
377). These way students will associate the words with a certain
context, and they can recall and apply it better than just learning
a single word with a corresponding meaning (Csabay, 2006). By
using comics in the classroom, students can investigate the use
of dialogue, concise and dramatic vocabulary, and non verbal
communication (Morrison, et al., 2002). It means, students
writing achievement can improve effectively as well as their
vocabulary achievement. Indeed, a very good writing needs the
powerful vocabulary.
d. A Strategy for Teaching Comprehension
In her study, Comic Strips as a Text Structure for Learning
to Read, McVicker (2007), pointed out that visual representation of
comic provides the reader with a deeper comprehension of the authors intended
message. The use of visual literacy in comic offers a visual for comprehending to
the text.
2.5 Procedure in Teaching Recount Writing by Using
Comic Strips
Brown (2004:335) stated about the lists of typical writing
activities to facilitate students writing achievement, such as: a)
focus on the process of writing that leads to the final written products, b) help
student writers to understand their own composing process, c) help them to build

repertoires of strategies for prewriting, drafting, and rewriting, d) give students

time to write and rewrite, e) let students discover what they want to say as they
write, f) give students feedback throughout the composing process (not just on the
final product) as they attempt to bring their expression closer and closer to
intention, g) include individual conferences between teacher and student during
the process of composition.
According to the previous study, in this research, the
researcher did these processes: (1) gave leading questions about
students previous experience to get students thinking and
ready about recount, (2) explained about recount text, (3) gave
comic strips to the students, and asked them to discuss and
identify the information in the comic strips, (4) gave the story
map which is design by Drolet (2010) and asked them to fill in
the information, (5) asked the students to create recount writing
based on the information in the comic strips.
Figure 3. Story Map
Story Map
Name:
Setting
Where?
When?

Who were the major characters?

Who were the minor characters?

What was the plot or problem?

Date:

Elaborate the sequential

events

Elaborate more events

What was the re-orientation?

(Adapted from Drolet, 2010)

2.6 Research Hypothesis

Based on the review of related literature above, the research hypothesis
was formulated as follows:
1. The use of comic strips can improve the eighth grade students writing
achievement at SMP Negeri 5 Jember.
2. The use of comic strips can improve students active participation on
writing achievement at SMP Negeri 5 Jember.