Developing Comic Material for Teaching Writing in Narrative Text at the Eighth Grade Students of SMP Negeri 3 Kota Serang

Abstract The research aimed to (1) identify eighth-grade students’ learning needs of writing narrative text at SMP Negeri 3 Kota Serang, and (2) develop appropriate materials for eighth-grade students of SMP Negeri 3 Kota Serang. The subjects of this Research and Development study were students and teacher of SMP Negeri 3 Kota Serang. The research procedure was simplified and modified the steps from Borg and Gall (1983:775) and Jolly and Bolitho (cited in Tomlinson, 1998): conduct the needs analysis, write the course grid, develop the first draft, evaluate by expert judgments, revise, evaluate the second draft, and implement of the material. The data collection instruments were the needs analysis questionnaire, interview, and expert judgment questionnaire, which analyzed through percentage, mean followed by descriptive analysis's conversion and qualitative data analysis. The researchers found that both teacher and students wanted specific writing activities in the form of three units of printed comic material through design the layout and storyboard, sketch the characters, and draw and write the activity. The result of the first evaluation by two expert judgments showed the material was in range “fair”, “good” and “very good” while the second was in range “very good”. The product offer creativity and interactivity for English teacher and another developer in the future.


INTRODUCTION
One of the requirements for students in learning English in Indonesia is writing narrative text.However, writing is the hardest skill to be applied for both students and teachers.It is because teacher needs more effort and additional material to make students good in writing.On the other hand, students have difficulties when writing a text, especially in expressing and organizing ideas of story by using appropriate words and sentence style, grammatical errors, spelling and punctuation mistakes.Moreover, there are a lot of resources for learning writing but the level of topic and exercises are mostly not suitable for students.Thus, students feel unconcerned to learn English while the teacher needs to find and collect various materials from various textbook and resources in order to make students excited to learn based on their learning need.
Teachers need to find materials which is suitable for the curriculum, which is based on the standard competence and the basic competences (Herlina 2012:148).During Pre-service teacher program in SMP Negeri 3 Kota Serang, researcher found that the English teacher had problem in collecting the proper resources for teaching learning process.Conversely, students still have difficulty in writing narrative text because they were given various examples of written text but did not know how to write a narrative text.English lesson were spent by translating the text instead of guided students to write a text.The students were also not given the interesting material to learn writing in English.
Comic is one of the materials which make students interested to learn writing narrative text because it consist of understandable information in structural pictures.Students prefer to use visual material rather than longtext and teacher helps students to organize idea in panel comic.Therefore, researcher decided to develop comic material for teaching writing narrative text.

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION Teaching Writing
Teaching writing means that teacher gives knowledge of the use of language in writing and guides students to communicate in written form for specific use.Monaghan (2007: 4) stated "teaching writing would include writing strategies, defined as methods of imparting necessary knowledge of the conventions of written discourse and the basics of grammar and syntax through various pedagogical methods.Ultimately, teaching writing means guiding students toward achieving their highest potential in communicating in words."Teaching writing is the processes where students are guided to convey their idea to certain purpose of communication, learn how to form groups of word into sentence and organize it into specific text that suitable with their communication purpose.
Teaching writing in Indonesia is one of the main focuses of teaching English in Indonesia, where the teacher must be able to make students master all aspect of English.Teacher should be able to make students achieve the writing competence based on the one of curriculum in Indonesia: KTSP.Students are not only mastering writing in school, but also should be able to apply it in daily use.

Narrative Text
The aim of narrative text is to tell an imaginary story in order to entertain and give moral value for reader.Narrative text contain language feature such as the use of words to sequence the event, adverb and adjective to describe something and past action verb to focus on what character has experienced whether physically or mentally.The generic structure of narrative text consist of orientation, which is the opening of the story contain introduction of setting, characters and time of the story, complication which characters experienced problem and resolution which is the resolved problem that end happily or not.According to Barwick (1998) narratives can be divided into traditional fiction and modern fiction.
Traditional fiction consists of folktales, fairy tales, fables, moral tales, myths and legends, while modern fiction consists of modern fantasy and contemporary realistic fiction.

Developing Comic Material
Material is used by teacher as source for teaching-learning process, and by students as additional information or experience in language learning.Developing material is necessary because it can fulfill students' need, standard competence and basic competence in curriculum.
According to Tomlinson (2001:66) quoted in Tomlinson (2014:1) the definition of material development is as follow: "material development is both of field of study and a practical undertaking; as a field it studies the principles and procedures of the design, implementation, and evaluation of language teaching and materials; as undertaking it involves the production, evaluation, and adaptation of language teaching materials, by teacher for their own classroom and by materials writers for sale or distribution." Comic material engages students for learning because students will be more creative in the use of language in written text.Meanwhile, teacher can use comic material to motivate students and provide resources and feedback to guide students.In order to develop comic material teacher can provide comic template consist of 3 blank panels for orientation, and 3-5 panels for complication and resolution, to be filled with drawing and sentences.Independently, students can be asked to answer or brainstorm story or language feature of narrative text in form of comic.Collaboratively, students can create their own story, retell the story or create story based on the assigned topic, to be written in comic and revise in form of text or vice versa.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This study focused on developing a product that can be used effectively for an educational program.Researchers decided to use R & D (Research and Development) which was simplified and modified from Borg and Gall (1983:775) quoted in Wahyuwidiawati (2015:28-29) and Jolly and Bolitho (in Tomlinson, 1998) in Haryanti (2016: 28-29).The modification of those theories is presented as following.in narrative text, before developing the comic material.Another instrument was questionnaire for expert judgment, which conducted after researcher made and revised the product in order to evaluate or revise the comic material made by the researcher whether the product is appropriate or not.
The questionnaire which applied to each unit of comic material, was adapted from Haryanti (2016) based on Instrument Penilaian Buku Bahasa Inggris SMP by BSNP, and Nanda (2016).
The data of students' need analysis was calculated through percentages where frequency of response divide number of respondent multiplied by 100%.Then the data of interview from the recording was transcribed into a textual form.Next, questionnaire of expert validation will be analyzed through Likert scale which will be coded in 4 level (strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree), then the result will be calculated by using mean where adding a list of scores and dividing the number of scores.In order to know the standard of product, researcher used data conversion table from Suharto (2005) (quoted in Haryanti, 2016:38) as follow:

Result of Need Analysis
The result of students' need analysis showed that in term of general information of students, 71.79% of students' goal of learning English is to gain knowledge about language function such as grammar, expression idiom, etc.There were 48.71% of students stated that activities is quite easy to do.Comic rarely used in the classroom is stated by 41.02% of students and read by students by 30.76%.
In term of lack and difficulties, researchers took three highest responses where students had problem in creating structural sentence accurately by 41.02%, choose suitable and accurate word to write by 38.46%, and arrange the sentence accurately by 33.33% of students.There were 53.84 % who stated the usual solution was open a book, dictionary, or other source.
In term of input, the material could be hoped to improve ability to write in English which stated by 46.15% students, master the English vocabulary that has been learned which stated by 25.64%, improve understanding of various types of texts in English which stated by 30.76%, and able to write with the correct grammar which stated by 25.64%.There were 51.28% of students wanted activities to write the same text as the example of a given text model with the correct grammar and paragraph arrangement, 61.53% students wanted to write text based on images, tables, or graphics, and complete the paragraph or sentence in the passenger with appropriate sentence or word by 35.89% students.There were also 38.46% students stated good learning material contain lots of examples of sentences or texts.Most 58.97% students preferred the topic daily life in surrounded environment as topic in the material.
In term of setting, 61.53% students preferred to work in group of three to five people, meanwhile 64.10% students preferred to study in classroom.
In term of goal in writing English, researchers took three highest responses of students' goal in writing English: improve the ability to create text or organize text were chosen by 48.71%, write a text with correct grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary were chosen by 38.46%, and improve knowledge about the use of grammar were chosen by 41.02%.In term of student's and teacher's role 56.41% of students preferred to listen teacher's explanation and 25.64% of students preferred to encourage and guide students to use creativity when doing exercise.
In term of type of narrative text students want, researcher took three highest responses: Legends by 43.58%, Fairy Tale by 41.02%, and Folktale by 25.64%.In term of comic material for language learning, there were 61.53% students preferred horizontal panels, colorful by 69.23% and use Times new roman by 51.28%.In term of type of comic material, 64.10% students preferred in form of Print (Book).

Result of Teacher's Interview
The result of teacher interview showed that students still have problem in free writing or sentence writing, and when students have difficulty the solution are asking students' peer, group discussion, or homework.As for the teacher herself, the obstacle during the teaching learning process are students still lack of vocabulary skill and sentence structure in English.Another obstacle was finding a balanced teaching material because each student has different English proficiency.Teacher also stated that she never use comic in the classroom; she usually use pictures, storybook, projector or video.
Teacher stated that a good material contain a lot of example and pictures and less text.Writing activities students usually do in the classroom are writing based on the example, picture, or students' experience and the most favourite are fill in the gap and writing based on picture.In addition, the topic that would be taught in narrative text is about fable, legend, folktale and fairy tale with moral value focused on daily activities such as teamwork, patience, a smart kid which is not stupid, not being deceived, and not being persuaded.

Writing the Course Grid
Course Grid was created after researcher conducting the need analysis for teacher and students.The course grid consists of core and basic competences, unit titles, topic, input texts, definition and generic structures of a text, language features, and activities which is related to the planned material.The activities and material in the course grid is based on the result of students' need analysis and teacher's interview, and the existing syllabus from the teacher.
The course grid consists of three units.The topic of each unit was based on the three highest percentages in questionnaire about type of narrative text: Legend, .Meanwhile, the model was developed based on Haryanti (2016) model: pre-writing, drafting, responding, and editing.The researcher developed pre-writing section where it has activities focused on grammar and vocabulary.At the end of each unit, there are reflection, summary and dictionary.The researchers use story from Banten such as The Legend of Sibatu and The Legend of Banten, Alo and Ala, Grandma The Soul Thief, Prabu and Farmer, and Kemuning.Researchers also use story that familiar to students: Sangkuriang, Cindelaras, Malin Kundang.

Model Draft 1
The creation of the material used Adobe Photoshop CS3 for manipulate digital images, and support drawing tablet technology to create digital artwork from scratch.The process of model creation consisted of designing the layout and storyboarding, created the characters for each story in the material, and wrote the activities while creating the comic which can be seen in the following picture:

Model Draft 2
After the first draft was evaluated, there were several revisions that researcher should fix based on the suggestion from experts.In general, all tasks in each unit changed into activity and researcher must fix the color of the material and grammatical error in instruction and tips section.Moreover, the first expert suggested increasing activity for students before reading a story, experts suggested to give vocabulary list.The activity in each unit should be different too.On the other hand, the second experts suggested to changed "Dictionary" section to "Glossary" in all units and fixed the references.The researcher also revised the course grid because there were a lot of activities that should be revised and most of appropriateness' scores for the material were in "fair" category.
Therefore, researchers decided to add more activities such as matching picture with its title in Unit 1, asking students' knowledge of fairy tale in Unit 2, discussing about pictures in Unit 3, true/false statement in Unit 2, re-telling, and re-write using vocabularies provided in the activity.The researchers also put guide for revise the story.

The Appropriateness of the Second Model
After researcher revise the first draft, the evaluation was conducted on 2 May 2017 by first expert, Dr. Syafrizal M.Pd and 3 May 2017 by second expert, Dr. John Pahamzah, S.Pd., M.Hum.The result of evaluation showed that most of aspect of appropriateness in unit 1, 2 and 3 from first expert and second expert were in "very good" category.

Final Model
The final model is comic material for teaching narrative text at eight grade students of SMP Negeri 3 Kota Serang.Before producing in large scale, final model was developed because there were several grammatical errors, ambiguous sentences and wrong number question.In final model, course grid and key answer were also inserted.However, in the implementation of this study, the complete model was used by teacher while the model for students was not included the course grid and key answer.

Implementation of Final Product
The implementation of product was conducted in three days on 10, 17, 18 May 2017.Before implementing the material, researcher introduced the model to the English teacher of the eighth grade.The teacher's name is Maswanih, S.Pd.The researcher allowed the teacher to choose one unit to be implemented because the English teacher knew better the condition of the classroom.The teacher chose unit 2 to be implemented in the class 8A because it seems suitable with the condition in the classroom.

Discussion
The finding of need analysis showed that the general information of students was in line with Nanda's finding that most of the students wanted to learn language function such as grammar, expression, idiom, etc. it was also in line with Rahmat's (2015) finding most of the students felt quite easy to write a text but the teacher stated that most of the students still needed guidance in writing.The use of comic during teaching-learning process is rare and teacher never use comic; nevertheless, the teacher use pictures, storybook, projector or video.This is in line with Callahan's (2009) and Lawrence (2009) that the reason why educator understand the function of comic is rarely used is they can read it but they cannot write comics.
The developed material would be hoped to cover students' difficulties in learning English: the lack of vocabulary skill, the difficulty to create structural sentence accurately, difficult to choose suitable and accurate word to write, and the difficulty to arrange the sentence accurately, and improve ability to write in English, improve the understanding of various types of texts in English, and able to write with the correct grammar.The developed material also contains activities that students like and teacher's habit.In addition, the exercises and instructions in the developed material are mostly group discussion in group of three to five people and during the teaching-learning process, students wanted to listen to teacher's explanation and let teacher to encourage and to guide students using creativity in exercise.The similar findings can also be found in Haryanti's (2016), Rahmat's (2015), Nanda's (2016), Fath (2014), Yohana's (2015) findings that the material contain most of these result of need analysis.However, according to the students and teacher a good material contains lots of examples of sentences or texts and pictures which contrast with Nanda's (2016) finding that a good material contained a lot of explanation but in line with one of the experts statement in Hamer (2016) that a good materials contain interesting texts, and comprehensible inputs accompanied by pictures as illustrations since they are interesting and may help the students to understand the information.
The process of developing layout of the comic material used Photoshop Cs3.The process of creating the comic consists of prepared the panel of comic, wrote the narration and dialogue in comic, drew the sketch, gave the line art, and coloring.Legend, Fairy Tale, and Folktale are the most popular theme, thus each of them become the main topic in each unit of comic material.
The result of this study was comic material for teaching writing in narrative text in form of book contain layout horizontal panel, colorful, and the font is Times New Roman.This is in line with Tomlinson (2014:2) stated, "materials include anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a language.They can be linguistic, visual, auditory or kinesthetic, and they can be presented in print.
The first draft was evaluated by two expert judgments.The result of the first expert were mostly in category "good" and "fair", while the second were mostly in category "very good".The second draft was created because there were so many suggestions on the first draft.After revised the first draft, the comic material was evaluated again by expert judgments where the result were all in "very good" category.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Students and teacher had problem related with teaching learning process of writing and writing material.Both of students and teacher wanted certain teaching and learning needs that were compiled in the final model of comic material for teaching writing in narrative text at eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 3 Kota Serang through the process of creating comic: prepared the panel of comic, wrote the narration and dialogue in comic, drew the sketch, gave the line art, and coloring.After the second draft evaluated with result in range "very good", the material was implemented in the classroom.Therefore, it is suggested that the English teacher who teach in grade 8 can use this material for teaching writing narrative text and should be more communicative with students or explain more about the material.Meanwhile for another developer who wants to develop writing material, the activities in the material should be vary and interesting.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The procedure of the research

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.The process of creating comic: prepared the panel of comic, wrote the narration and dialogue in comic, drew the sketch, gave the line art, and coloring.

Table 4 .
Result of the first evaluation

Table 5 .
Result of the second evaluation