1. CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
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1.1 Background of the Study
Brown (2004:218) states that today the ability to write has become an
indispensable skill in our global literate community. Writing is one of the most
important English skills. In addition, many students of the class have a problem in
writing. In writing, the students are demanded to be able to express various
nuance of meaning by using good rhetorical developments in written form of
descriptive, report, recount, narrative and procedure text which contain a certain
paragraph. They had no sufficient ideas to continue writing. They seemed to get
stuck. Some students could not finish their writing at the end of the time set. Most
of them write their sentences incorrectly, such as incorrect grammar, spelling,
punctuation and word choices.
Swick (2009: vii) explains that writing in any language is a difficult skill
to acquire. Therefore, the students should approach writing in English carefully.
In order to write well, they want to first have an understanding of grammatical
structures, vocabulary, and tense usage, moreover, the students practice those
concepts until they can use them with relative ease. Then they are ready to
practice writing original material.
In order to increase the students’ writing ability, the teacher has to be
cleaver in select the approaches, techniques, or even Medias of teaching. In this
case, the teacher is challenged to be more creative and innovative in designing the
process of teaching and learning in order to achieve the major purpose that
required based on curriculum, which obliges students to produce writing based on

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the level of study. The problem is sometimes the students find many difficulties in
writing paragraph in English. These problems are also found in other grade but
especially in eighth grade students of SMP N 3 Bangli in academic year
2013/2014. The students are not be able to write paragraph, especially in writing a
descriptive paragraph because they do not understand about the way how to write
good descriptive paragraph, what are generic structures of descriptive paragraph
and what tenses that is used in descriptive paragraph. This problem found from
the preliminary research that was done by doing direct observation, interviewing
the English teacher of the eighth grade students and giving the students in the
eighth grades written test about descriptive paragraph.
Therefore, regarding to the phenomenon above and the problem faced by
the students in this research will be shared some information of the way to solve
this problem. This study implements a new method of teaching and learning
process in writing descriptive paragraph. This research will find out the efficiently
way to overcome that problem, therefore, the students need to give an interesting
instrument to make them more interested and motivated in increasing their writing
skill. It needs a useful instrument. There are many techniques that can be used to
teach writing descriptive paragraph. Among them, a technique called PPP
(Presentation, Practice, and Production). PPP is a technique which has three steps
in teaching learning activity namely; presentation, practice, and production. In
presentation step, the teacher presents teaching material with explaining the
generic structures, language feature and form of descriptive paragraph. Then, the
students practice the material given based on the teacher instructions. Finally, in
production step, the students try to make their own descriptive paragraph. The

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teacher could use this technique to involve the students in teaching learning
activities more actively and efficiently.
Based on the background of the study above, writing is one of the four
language skill that should be mastered by the students in learning English. In this
present study will be conducted a research with implementation of PPP technique
in writing a descriptive paragraph. This technique is hoped to be an appropriate
technique in order to solve the problems encountered by the eighth grade students
of SMP N 3 Bangli in academic year 2012/2013.
1.2 Research Problem
Based on the statement in background of the study, writing is considered
as fundamental skill of English. In improving English writing skill the teacher
should apply appropriate method in English writing class. The researcher wants
to improve the students’ skill in English writing through PPP technique and
provides such empirical support as evidences. The problem of the study is
presented in the following question “to what extent can writing skill of the eighth
grade students of SMPN 3 Bangli in academic year 2013/2014 be improved by
implementing PPP technique?”
1.3 Objective of the Study
Many different approaches and methods to teach writing are currently
being applied to improve the students’ achievement. Every study of course has a
special purpose to answer the research question. Based on statement of research
question above, the objective of this research is to improve the students’ writing
skill of the eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Bangli through PPP technique. The

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researcher expects that PPP technique helps the subject under study to improve
their English writing.
1.4 Limitation of the Study
In this present classroom action study, the researcher wants to figure
out whether or not English writing skill of the eighth grade students of SMPN 3
Bangli can be improved through PPP technique. The limitation of this
present study makes easier to analyze the collected data. The researcher intends
to limit the English writing skill in writing a descriptive paragraph.
1.5 Significance of the Study
This present study is expected give some contributions to the students,
teachers and also to the researchers. These contributions are expected to give
solution to the students and teachers to communicate their idea, emotion, and so
on in the teaching learning process. The significances of this study are as follows:
a. Theoretically
This study is expected to inspire other researcher to do advanced
research about the correct method that is used to motivate the students in
mastering English writing descriptive paragraph in teaching learning
process. It also provides an alternative source and guidance for the next
study to obtain better result. And also as a reference for other researchers
who are interested in carrying out the similar research. To the students,
this research is expected that the students will be more focus in mastering
English writing descriptive paragraph in teaching learning process. To the

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teacher, this research is expected that the teacher knows about the correct
method that used in mastering English writing descriptive paragraph.
b. Practically
To the students, this study is expected that the students will be
more motivated to increase their motivation, desire, and interest in
learning writing and improve their English writing skill in mastering
descriptive paragraph. The researcher also hopes that this research give
contributions to the students in improving their writing achievement
especially in writing descriptive paragraph. To the teachers, this study is
expected to give information on teaching and learning process
especially to the teacher in teaching descriptive paragraph to encourage
the students to make and perform their ability in English writing. To the
school, this study is expected to give a contribution for the school to
improve the quality of English teaching process.
1.6 Definition of the Key Terms
The researcher needs to give some definitions about the terms used in this
present study to avoid misunderstanding of the terms.
1. Writing
Writing is one of the language skills that have to be mastered by the
students to explore their ideas and feelings and make them concrete and
comprehensible. Writing is an ability to make a form of words that in general
it may have a higher truth value than the fact that it has set it down. Writing is
a way to produce language that comes from our thought. By writing, we can

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share our idea, feeling or anything that exists in our mind Taylor (2009:4)
Writing Skill is the ability of the eighth grade students of SMPN 3 Bangli in
academic year 2013/2014 in mastering English writing skill in writing
descriptive paragraph.
2. Descriptive Paragraph
According to Kane (2000:352) description is about sensory
experience how something looks, sounds, tastes. Mostly it is about visual
experience, but description also deals with other kinds of perception. In
general, descriptive paragraph is a text which says what a person or a thing is
like. Its purpose is to describe and reveal a particular person, place, or thing.
3. PPP Technique
PPP technique is a technique which has three steps in teaching
learning activities. The steps are presentation, practice, and production. In
presentation, the teacher presents teaching material; in practice, the students
practice the material given based on the teacher instructions and in
production; the students try to make their own descriptive paragraph.
4. SMPN 3 Bangli
SMPN 3 Bangli is one of junior high school which is located at jalan
Diponegoro, Taman Bali Village, Bangli district, and Bangli regency. It is
favourite junior high school so many students are interested to study in this
school.