IMPROVING STUDENTS ABILITY IN WRITING A DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH

THROUGH NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FILM

Hamid Darmadi
Universitas Tanjungpura Pontianak

Nowadays, some of the teachers were teaching English to the students by using
media. They believe that media help them to describe and appropriate with the students
need. Technically, the students like to do something in visual way than only written-based.
This is what had happened in some vocational school students. According to Smaldino,
Russhel and Heinich (2005: 57) A media format is the physical form in which a message is
incorpated and displayed. Their curiosity and anxiety about how this media comprehend
their knowledge work for their level of understanding were found.
It is argued that the students were able to write while they had difficulties in
developing their ideas to describe something in a paragraph. They also lack in grammatical
structures, less vocabularies and often to put inappropriate mechanics. As Oshima and Hogue
(1997: 2) state that writing is a progressive activity. In this research, writing activity must
concern about the writing process as outlining, drafting, editing, revising and publishing. The
fact that the students were not well prepared in the mean of short time learning process
should be considered. The writer will consider the gap to be solved. In writing a paragraph,
the teacher needs to consider the media and the facility which are appropriate. According to
the writers experience, teaching English to the vocational high school students was a
challenge. The students need such motivation to make writing more fun. They only focus for
their major subject as their main purpose. The media such as film is well-known for the
students as a facility to help them to understand something from audio and visual ways. It is
because film had a lot of advantages. Smaldiho, Russhel and Heinich (2005: 288) said that
the advantages of using video are motion, processes, risk-free observation, dramatization,
skill learning, affective learning, problem solving, cultural understanding and establishing
commonality.
In this case, National Geographic Film was chosen by the writer to motivate the
students need of writing in such way. It is proposed to solve the students difficulties in
writing a descriptive paragraph because the film is a documentary film. Pat Auderheide

(2007) defines that a documentary film as a movie that does its best to represent real life. It is
appropriate for descriptive paragraph. How does National Geographic Film can improve the
students ability in writing a paragraph will be questioned. This paper tried to offer the film
as the solution to improve the students ability in writing a descriptive paragraph.
Methods: the study took place at a vocational school located in the city of Pontianak,
Indonesia. In this school, English were introduced as a foreign language and considered as
one of three national examined subjects. It is taught to all students from year 10 to 12.