CHAPTER I

Rationale

The teaching stage of the educational process is critical. The ability of any educational institution to
teach is a prerequisite for its viability. This is where knowledge and skill development and acquisition
begin. The learner's horizons are broadened through instruction, empowering them to meet and
overcome the many challenges that life throws at them. Teachers play an important role in achieving
high-quality learning. Teachers are asked to use all of possible media to help students study easily and
have fun. One of ways of communication is writing and students are asked to master this skill as it is a
tool to assess their knowledge.

Writing skills in constructing sentences is seen as a challenging skill to master, but there are several
things that can be done to get around this problem. Based on some of the problems encountered,
picture strategies were chosen as one of the most effective strategies for addressing the students'
problem in sentence construction during the teaching and learning of writing. Writing is one of the
productive skills which have to be taught to students in schools based on standard curriculum. The tasks
which teachers usually give for English subjects are mostly in written form, for example making dialog,
paragraphs, answering essay tests, etc., writing ability is important. Readers of English text also expect a
clear topic sentence and a unified paragraph that deals with one idea, so the writers are asked to
achieve unity, to achieve coherence and to achieve concrete details in their texts.

Based on some of the problems encountered, picture strategies were chosen as one of the most
effective strategies for addressing the students' problem in sentence construction during the teaching
and learning of writing.

Picture is one of the media which is usually used and it can be provided easily by teachers. The
examples of pictures are painting, sketch, photo, etc. Picture usually used is a photo because it reminds
and tells students about what happened at that time or they can tell a brief sentence about the picture.
Teachers are asked to use all of possible media to help students study easily and have fun. Picture is one
of useful media to make it fun and easy because it can help them to build their ideas, to make cohesive
and systematic sentence and to use more vocabularies based on the theme given because some of
students are lack of vocabularies, and this is one of the causes students feel difficult to writing. Pictures
also give imagination to build their ideas based on the picture they see. From the writer’s experience,
some students feel difficulty in writing due to some factors (Rita Wong Mee Mee, 2014).

The Philippines' educational system, on the other hand, undergoes a dramatic transformation as a result
of the COVID 19 pandemic. One of these changes is the adoption of a new teaching and learning
strategy by the department of education.
 As the pandemic changes our way of life, more adaptable learning opportunities are more important
than ever. Schools throughout the Philippines have embraced distance education to meet this growing
demand. Students can complete their coursework at their own pace without having to attend class with
this type of distance education. The use of picture series to obtain academic objectives and simply
learning so that they can help students illuminate a particular topic while also providing orderly actions
in creating or performing something. According to Wright (1989:2) pictures contribute to interest and
motivation, a sense of context of the language, and a specific reference point or stimulus.Nash (2004)
pointed out that “writing is a process that calls upon the use of particular strategies at each phase.
Introducing and discussing a broad array of such strategies helps students build a repertoire of tools to
choose from as they approach each writing activity”. Four types of writing process suggested by Nash
(2004) are prewriting, drafting, revising and editing which help students’ to organize and write well in
writing. Furthermore, photographs have been displayed representations of specific realities that aid in
inspiring or order to achieve the study to write. Olshansky (2008) claimed that “Pictures provide a
universal language. They speak equally to native speakers, to those learning English as a second
language, and to those who simply struggle with words in any language. Pictures are our first language.
It offers a language we all intuitive understand”.

Several researchers, including Kurniati (2015) believe that the first factor students have less interest in
writing. They think that the ideas they want to write are difficult to come into their mind and it makes
them bored, so it causes the second factor. They usually feel confused how to start writing. They do not
know which part should be the first thing to be written and what words they should put. The third,
students lack of vocabularies. It happens in almost all of kinds of text – narrative, descriptive, report,
procedure and recount and it may be caused the students’ reading motivation to improve their
vocabulary is insufficient. It is expected that the learners of the OLPC-SMI will benefit from this study as
this will provide information in developing student’s sentence construction. Therefore, this research will
be conducted by the title “Utilization of Pictures Strategy in Developing Students’ Sentence Construction
among Grade 8 students”

According to Rosya Kurniati, 2015, we can find some students still have difficulties in writing in English
and make some errors because of the difference between the two languages, both in structure, spelling
and lexical meaning. Besides, they lack the vocabulary to write although they have their main idea but
they should write about their own experience.

Teachers are asked to use all of possible media to help students study easily and have fun. The first
factor is that students have less interest in writing. They think that the ideas they want to write are
difficult to come into their mind and it makes them bored, so it causes the second factor. They usually
feel confused about how to start writing. They do not know which part should be the first thing to be
written and what words they should put. Third, students lack vocabulary. It happens in almost all kinds
of text – narrative, descriptive, report, procedure and recount and it may be because the students’
reading motivation to improve their vocabulary is insufficient.

This research aimed to determine the effectiveness of pictures in generating ideas for English language
writing in the ESL classroom. Using pictures was proven to be one of the best approaches in teaching
and learning of writing in English Classroom. According to Melor MD Yunus et al (2013), colorful pictures
could arouse and sustain students' interest and attention towards learning English writing. Two
objectives derived from this study were: i. To determine the effectiveness of using pictures in generating
ideas for students' sentence construction in writing skill: ii. To determine construction.

In writing, when students are asked to write about their own experience, they still have difficulty in
writing it. Although it should be easier because they are involved in that moment or experience, the
problems above can limit students’ ability in writing, which is one of important skills in academic
purposes. Based on the problem and explanation above, the focus of this research can be stated to find
that picture as one strategy to develop students' sentence constructions. The proposed study is
anchored in the research agenda specifically under Area 2 of the Basic Education System with a sample
research title "Utilizing Picture Strategy in Developing Students Sentence Construction among Grade 8
students at Our Lady of the Pillar College San Manuel, Inc.

Writing skills in constructing sentences is seen as a challenging skill to master, but there are several
things that can be done to get around this problem. Based on some of the problems encountered,
picture strategies were chosen as one of the most effective strategies for addressing the students'
problem in sentence construction during the teaching and learning of writing. As a result, the
researchers in this study used picture strategy to enhance the writing abilities to construct sentences of
the OLPC SMI Grade 8 students.