Harintama, Mukminatien, Irawati–The Effectiveness of Using Digital..... 215 215 215 215 215 215 Artikel diterima 09/07/2015; disetujui 02/08/2015 Jurnal Pendidikan Humaniora Vol. 3 No. 3, Hal 215-219, September 2015 Tersedia Online di http://journal.um.ac.id/index.php/jph pISSN: 2338-8110/eISSN: 2442-3890 The Effectiveness Of Using Digital Photographs On Teaching Writing Narrative Text For English For Specific Purposes Fitrana Harintama 1) , Nur Mukminatien 2) , Enny Irawati 2) 1) English Language Center–UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang 2) Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris–Universitas Negeri Malang Jl. Gajayana 10, Malang. E-mail: justliyaa@gmail.com Abstract: The paper reports a study which aims at exploring the effectiveness of digital photographs in helping students to achieve higher writing performance. This research uses quasi experimental de- sign. The participants were two groups of Arabic Literature department of Maulana Malik Ibrahim State Islamic University, Malang which were drawn using random sampling technique. The findings indicate that the posttest result of experimental and control groups are significantly different. The findings suggest that the implementation of digital photographs in the teaching of writing helps the students gain higher scores than the students who are taught using story starters. Key Words: digital photographs, photographs, narrative text, story starters, writing Abstrak: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menemukan efektivitas foto digital dalam membantu siswa untuk mencapai kinerja menulis yang lebih tinggi. Penelitian ini menggunakan desain eksperimen ku- asi. Subjek dalam penlitian ini adalah dua kelompok yang berasal dari Prodi Sastra Arab Universitas Islam Negeri Malang Maulana Malik Ibrahim yang diambil menggunakan teknik random sampling. Temuan menunjukkan bahwa hasil posttest dari kelompok eksperimen dan kontrol berbeda secara signifikan. Temuan menunjukkan bahwa pelaksanaan foto digital dalam pengajaran menulis membantu siswa memperoleh skor yang lebih tinggi daripada siswa yang diajar menggunakan cerita permulaan. Kata kunci: foto digital, foto, narasi teks, cerita permulaan, menulis Writing holds a key role to develop the students’ thoughts and ideas. Writing could be a powerful instru- ment of thinking because it provides students with a way of gaining control over their thoughts. This is be- cause when the students try to write their ideas, they also start to think about how to deliver their ideas to the readers (Gere, 1985:3). Teachers know that writing begins with good thinking, which is why writing also could be called as a creative process. Students must be given time to write according to the writing processes needed as supported by Gere who said that in order to know the ability of the stu- dents in writing; teachers must get them to write (Gere, 1985:16). But it is not as easy as it seems be- cause writing is the most complicated skill compared to other four skills, even for native speakers. The first basic problem of writing is to find and explore the right ideas. Generating ideas is crucial to the success of any writing. The second difficulty is the lack of motivation for the students to write related to the strategy implemented by the lecturers. The third reason why writing becomes hard is because of the lack of time to write since the writing stages are needed before the students complete the text. The last one is the difficulty to find appropriate media in writing which can engage the students’ participation in learning. One of the most advantageous media is photo- graph. Photographs do not require decoding because they convey information literally, which means every single photo can be interpreted in many ways into words because every student has visual literacy abil- ity; the ability to understand, interpret and evaluate visual images. Photograph also can share the direct- ness and emotive power of spoken language and the permanence of text. It gives viewers the opportunity to examine the information in their own perspective (Rose et.al, 2002:61).