FLASHCARD AS A MEDIA TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL IN DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH

The main purpose of this research is to know the improvement of students’ writing skill in descriptive paragraph through flashcard media. This research was conducted at SMP “Empat Lima” Karanggeneng. This research is a classroom action research which consisted of two cycles. This study was carried out on February until May 2020. The subjects were the seventh grade students of SMP “Empat Lima” Karanggeneng, Lamongan. The data were collected by holding the test, interviewing, observing and distributing the questionnaire. The instruments that have been used are writing paragraph rubric, interview guideline, observational note and questionnaire sheet. The data that were used in this research are qualitative dan quantitative. This study used democratic validity, outcome validity, catalytical validity, process validity and dialogic validity as the validation. Then, the reliability of this study were time and investigator triangulation. There were several steps in this research implememntation, they are identifying the problems, planning, acting, observing and reflecting. The results showed that the use flashcard media in writing has been able to improve students’ writing skill. According to the qualitative data, the students were enjoy and enthusiastic with the implementation of flahcard media in writing lesson. The They also felt easier to make a descriptive paragraph through this media. According to the quantitative data, the students’ main score was improved in the each cycle.


INTRODUCTION
An essential thing that must be mastered by everyone is language. By using language, humans can interact with the others through communication. It relates with Keraf (1997:1) opinion that language is a means of communication between members of the community in the form of a symbol of sound produced by the speech organ (Rabiah, 2012, p. 6).
English is one of languages which most spoken in the world because English is an international language. Brumfit (2001) states that "English is an international language that it is the most widespread medium of international communication" (Arumawati, 2018, p. 2).
In Indonesia, English is considered very important to be mastered by people. This is proven by making English as one of the main subjects in junior high school until university.
There are four major skills that must be mastered in English, they are E-Link Journal Vol. 7 No. 2 (2020) p-ISSN: 2085-1383e-ISSN: 2621-4156 listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Those skills are related to each other and cannot be independent. Therefore, learners need to master all of them. This is following by The Regulation Minister of National Education number 23 of 2006 which is about the competency standard of graduate for primary and secondary levels in English. One of skills which have to be mastered is writing.
Writing is one of the productive skills that must be mastered by English learners because it is so important to express and develop our knowledge. Some experts define writing variously.
According to Gould, DiYanni, and Smith (1989) writing is a creative act, the act of writing is creative because its requires to interpret or make sense of something: an experience, a text and an event (Tomtowi, 2019, p. 164). On the other hand, Brown defines that writing is a thinking process.
In addition, he says that writing can be planned and given with an unlimited number of revisions before its release. He also states that writing is a two-step process, the first process is figuring out the meaning and the second process is putting the meaning into language. Writing represents what people think. It is because the writing process reflects things, which stay in the mind (Brown, 2001, p. 336).
Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that writing skill is a productive process in language that must be mastered by language learner and has some process to done it, the processes are planning, acting and revising.
Based on the definition above, it is known that writing consists of some  (Apriliani, 2016).
Based on the three previous studies above, it can be seen that those researchers have the similarities in this research. Those three studies focused on teaching English by using flash card media but they just implemented it on teaching vocabulary and speaking. In this study, the researcher try to implement the flashcard media in teaching writing in order to improve the students writing skill.

RESEARCH METHOD
This research is a classroom action research because the research focuses on a particular problem and a particular group of students in a certain classroom, it is a type of action research.
In this case, the researcher used collaborative action research model that suggested by Kemmis and Taggart, which consists of four steps namely: planning, acting, observing, and reflecting (Burns, 2009, p. 9). this is called "collaborative" because the researcher collaborated with his collaborator in conducting this research .  The formula by (Sudijono, 2014, p.  According to Burns (1999) (Mudiyatun, 2015, p. 3).

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
In implementing this research, there were some factual data which have found in several activities. It will be described below: During the acting phase, the researcher also conducted the observation. Vol. 7 No. 2 (2020) p-ISSN: 2085-1383e-ISSN: 2621-4156 In this case, the observer was the English teacher. Based on that observation there were some positive and negative findings. After the observation, the researcher held test in order to measure the students writing skills after the treatment.

E-Link Journal
The data showed that the students score has increased but the result was unqualified with the success criterion of classroom action research. The average score was 72.12, there were 29 students(74.35%) has passed the KKM and the students score have increased 43.43% compared to pre-test score.
The last, the researcher conducted the reflecting phase based on the data that have found in acting and observing phase. Based on the data above, it concluded that the action of cycle 1 was not success enough. Because the students score was under the criteria and there were some negative findings that can be evaluate. So, the researcher and his collaborator decided to continue the cycle in order to make a better improvement of the students' writing skill and this classroom action research could be succeed.

Cycle 2
Based on the reflection in the cycle 1, The researcher and his collaborators concluded some revisions from the cycle 1 into cycle 2, they are: (1) The teacher must give explanation as simple as possible, (2) The teacher must more firmly in teaching, (3) The teacher must more be covered the class, (4) The teacher must adding some material that were needed. After decided the problems, the researcher and his collaborator planned the next cycle by establishing a lesson plan, planning the media and preparing the material. After the plan was done, E-Link Journal Vol. 7 No. 2 (2020) p-ISSN: 2085-1383e-ISSN: 2621-4156 surprisingly, the school activities were closed and replaced by studying at home because of coronavirus pandemic. So, they remodel the lesson plan into online class form.
Then, the researcher conducted the acting phase. The action of the cycle 2 was done on April 28 th , 29 th and May 5 th and 6 th 2020. The implementation was done online through social media group and the learning material formed of summaries sheet and videos.
On the other hand, the researcher also conducted some observations during the implementation in each meeting.
Although at the first meeting there were some problems because the learning was done online, the observer has found that there were some improvments in students understanding. It was also proven with the improvement of students score on cycle 2 test. The data showed that the avarage score of students was 79,94, the percentage of students who passed KKM was 92,30 %(36 students) and the students score have increased 58.99% compared to pre-test score.
Based on the observations, the students score has passed the criterion of success action research. So, the researcher and his collaborators decided to stop the research in reflecting phase.

The Implementation of Using Flashcard in Teaching Writing
The implementation of fashcard media in teaching writing descriptive paragraph was running well. There were some adventages during and after the implementation of flashcard. They are: (1) The students were more active, (2) The students' motivation improved, (3) The students more interested in learning writing, (4) The students' score improved.

Skill by Using Flashcard
Based on the result of the test above, the student' scores have increased in each cycle. It means that the students In simply, the improvment of students' writing skills can be seen in the following chart.   Based on that data, it showed that the students agreed if flashcard was an effective media for them in learn wriiting descriptive paragraph. This is also proven with one of students opinion that flashcard media was appropriate for him.
[MH] This media is appropriate with me sir, I am so interest with it because there is a picture in there. (Interview, 07/05/2020)

CONCLUSION
Learning a descriptive paragraph through flashcard can improve students' writing skill. It has proven with the average score of students which has improved. In accordance, the students' score who passed the minimum mastery of criteria (KKM) has also increased in each cycle. Then, the number of students who passed KKM is more than 80% in the last cycle. So, this study can be classified as successful action research. In addition, Almost of students gave positive responses to the use of flashcard in writing a descriptive paragraph, this proves that the implementation of flashcard is appropriate for them. Vol. 7 No. 2 (2020) p-ISSN: 2085-1383e-ISSN: 2621-4156