The effects of multimedia to assist the teaching of descriptive paragraph writing at SMP 37 Semarang / Nur Khamim

ABSTRACTKhamim, Nur. 2009. The Effects of Multimedia to Assist the Teaching of Descriptive Paragraph Writing at SMPN 37 Semarang. Thesis. Graduate Program in English Language Education, State University of Malang. Advisors: (1) Dr. Yazid Basthomi, M.A., (2) Drs. Fahrurrazy, M.A., Ph.D.Key words: multimedia, non-multimedia, effect, achievement, attitudeThis study was an investigation on the effects of media – multimedia and non-multimedia – on the writing ability of descriptive paragraph by seventh grade students of SMPN 37 Semarang in the 2008/2009 academic year. This study employed a quasi-experimental design. Eighty students selected from two hundreds and thirty eight students from two classes took part in this study. They were divided into two groups of control and experimental group based on their original classes. A pretest was given prior the treatment to know the initial mastery of writing ability to ensure the equality between groups. A posttest was administered after the experimentation to measure the effect of treatment. The other three instruments in this study were questionnaire, observation checklist, and observation field to predict students’ attitude (positive and negative) and motivation toward the implementation of the main treatment (multimedia).In order to compare the mean scores, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed with the pre-test scores as the covariate. The analysis results indicated that multimedia had a significant effect on the writing score achievement, that was the students who exposed to the main treatment of multimedia gain higher scores on the overall scores and the aspects of adequacy and relevance of content, compositional organization, adequacy of vocabulary for purpose, and grammar as compared to the control variable of non-multimedia. In other words, the implementation of multimedia in writing class is more effective than non-multimedia to increase achievement.Concerning students’ attitude toward the implementation of multimedia in writing class, an analysis on the students’ answer in response to the questionnaire found that most of the students tended to have positive value to it. In the questionnaire which included five factors on the relationship between multimedia and English learning in the classroom – interesting manners, media effect on understanding learning content, media effect on learning atmosphere, factors influenced learning, and the application in real setting – almost all of the participants were strongly positive. Furthermore, the observations by collaborator found that the experimental group was more motivated than the control group which was indicated by the higher scale of active participation in the learning process.The pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are presented in the final paper. A practical contribution of this study suggested that the use of multimedia in writing class may be favourable to English teaching and learning. Furthermore, this study also suggested several directions for future study related to the research design, the study coverage and homogeneity phenomenon of the experimental group after the treatment which was found in this study.