Abstract:
Language becomes not only a sort of means of communication, but also as a
means of reflection to the user of the language. Nowadays, it is important to
improve our English language skill, because English is one of the second language
which has become one of important subject at junior high schoool. One of the
language skill is writing. In junior high school, one of the material is writing of
descriptive text. In writing, descriptive text not only about the idea which we will
bewritten in the part of text, but also grammar. Meanwhile, in junior high school,
grammar is the material which is thought to be very difficult to understand. The
effort made to solve this problem is by using interesting media. Using chain cards
as a media can be learned by students easily and interestingly.
The aim of this research is to find out whether it is effective of to teach
simple present tense using chain cards to improve students‟ ability in writing
descriptive text. In this research, the researcher took 62 students of the eighth-grade
of SMP N 32 Purworejo in the academic year 2011/2012 as the sample. The
researcher used VII B which consists of 31 students and VII E which consists of 31
students. The researcher conducted pre-test and post-test. The researcher taught
simple present tense using chain cards as a treatment. Statistically, the researcher
analyzed the data by using t-test separated variance.
The result of this research shows that it is effective to teach simple present
tense using chain cards to improve students‟ ability in writing descriptive text, since
it was found that the result of t-value is 2. 99. Based on the 0.05 significant level,
the value of t-table is 1.671, the computation shows that t-value is higher that ttable
that is 2. 99>1.671. The research findings indicate that the students are
interested in learning simple present tense using chain cards.
