Using Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to Improve the students Ability

Writing is one of skill in English that is important to master. Everybody can speak, even though they do not pay attention to the grammar. It is based on the fact that speaking skill is a skill which everyone gets naturally. However there is no guarantee that everybody can write. It related to the fact that there are many people can speak fluently but they face problem when they are asked to transform their speech in writing form.

Writing is an activity where the people explore their idea using some rules that have been determined. According to Budiharjo in Arifuddin (2014) when writing, the student must keep in mind their purposes, think about the relevant facts they will need to select and think about how to recognize those facts in a coherent function. It should be clear what the students want to deliver to the readers by considering the readers, and the most important thing how the fact organized to make a meaningful essay for the readers.

It is undeniable that writing is the most complicated and hard among the other three skills; listening, speaking, and reading. It is not a surprise then that most of the students still take writing as the most difficult skill in language teaching especially in English writing.

This phenomenon is also occurred in Academic situation. From some informal and unstructured interviews of students in Intensification Foreign Language Pogram of UIN Alauddin Makassar, it was found that the students there still did not have adequate knowledge how to write well. They just wrote one or two words. Whereas the director of program expects that the students of the first and second semester, for all departments in UIN Alauddin Makassar to achieve certain level in speaking and writing skill. Unluckily only a few students deal with the expectation. They can speak fluently, but they cannot explore their idea in written form.

Based on the observation, the researcher take conclusion that there are many problems that make the students low in writing skill. First, they did not have adequate knowledge about how to write well, second they had lack of vocabularies, third they did not understand about kinds of text. Therefore, they did not know how to began the writing appropriately. Dealing with those problems, the researcher chose Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) Approach to improve students’ writing ability. The researcher wants to know whether ZPD Approach can improve students’ writing ability or not. Vygotsky theory (cited in Rusman, 2011: 244) states that Zone of Proximal Development can be applied in learning groups or in pairs. Students are generally easier and fun to learn in group or pair. In addition, social interaction with other friends spurs the formation of new ideas and enriches students' intellectual development.

Vygotsky theory (cited in Rusman, 2011: 245) argued that the students can explore student’s ability when studying or working on tasks that have not been studied, but the tasks can be completed on their own knowledge. It is intended that tasks or subjects are in the Zone of Proximal Development of the students. Referring to the previous explanations, the researcher is interested in carrying out the research entitled: “Using Zone of proximal Development (ZPD) Approach to Improve Students’ Writing Ability at the Journalistic Students in Intensification Foreign Language Program (PIBA) of UIN Alauddin Makassar”. For complete proposal,You can download here

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