STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON THE USE OF COMIC STRIPS IN CREATIVE WRITING

This study aims to reveal students’ perception on the use of comic strips in creative writing at English Education Department, Universitas Negeri Manado. The study is a quantitative research and the descriptive method is applied. The questionnaire that consists of 14 items is used as an instrument to collect the data. The questionnaire employs Likert scale. Total random sampling is used to determine the sample. The sample is 42-seventh students English Education Department which consist of 27 students from class A and 15 students from class E. The students who have been chosen as the sample has already finished the class creative writing and has used comic strips as media. The collected data are quantitative and have analysed by percentage formula. The finding shows that most of the respondents have positive responses about the use of comic strips in creative writing. Based on the findings, it could be concluded that the media comic strips are considered useful to the students. English lecturers are suggested to receive students’ responses towards the use of comic strips in creative teaching.


INTRODUCTION
The EF EPI-s (Education First English Proficiency Index) 2019 reveals that Indonesia is one of the countries with low level of English proficiency (61 st position from 100 countries). In Asia, Indonesia gets the 13 rd position from 25 countries. Neighboring countries such as Singapore is classified as country with a very high level of English proficiency (5 th position from 100 countries), and Malaysia (26 th position from 100 countries). From the information above, it could be considered that the English learning mechanism in our educational field needs to be improved. The students should consider that learning English as a first foreign language is really important. English is the language that uses by many people around the world as enforced by Maru (2016) that English constitutes a lingua franca for current scientific forums and business correspondence and contacts. The students should have a mind-set about learning English not just for passing an examination or because it is students' major in university, but learning English as a provision to enter work life. There are four skills in English that should be mastered by the students. Those are Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing.
Writing is one of the most important parts in our daily activities. Liando (2020) states that writing is one of vital skills in higher education life. It may determine academic achievement and mark language proficiency. In academic life, writing skill is used by students to write essays, papers, articles, thesis, research etc. In university, especially English students, they have to finish every level of writing class that could help them to improve their writing skill every semester.
However, college students still have difficulties in writing. According Liando (2019), many students face some problems cause difficulties in writing, they are lack of vocabularies and knowledge about genre or type, and they spend much time to think what they should write because they have no idea how to write it. Fareed et al. (2016) state that low ability and writing anxiety of students are pressured by some factors. They are untrained writing instructors, ineffective teaching methods of writing, lack of reading and writing practice, low motivation and limited ideas.
One of the writing classes that English students (English Education Department) have met is creative writing. This class gives an interesting vibe because there is a word for "Creative". It could be considered that the class does not focus on writing only but combines with creativity.
Some students have ideas to write but find difficulties in expressing those into something creative. Some students know how to write but they have less knowledge of interesting media to put their ideas. The effects of those gaps are the students have anxiety at writing and they keep assuming that writing is a difficult skill to learn.
To overcome the gap, the lecturer should have references about media that could help the students enjoy their learning process. The lecturer should provide an innovative media while teaching that helps students to be more interesting in class.
The learning media has been used in creative writing is comic strips. Comic strips are sequence of short stories that consist of pictures and text. The main focus in implementing this media is the grammar exploration of sentence and word specifications.
This media is suitable to overcome what students have struggled in writing because from the comic strips, they could express their ideas in narrative text in form of the conversation and short sentences.
In this study, the researchers have done a study about students' perception on the use of comic strips in their creative writing. The students have already passed creative writing class and they have applied comic strips as a media in the class.

Perception
Huffman and Vernoy (1997) say that perception refers to the process selecting, organizing and interpreting sensory data which help people to define their world and influence their behavior. According to Warga (1983, p. 207), perception begins with a stimulus which creates sensation. Liando (2016) states Perception leads to decision-making and action taking. It could be concluded that perception has relation with individual senses (sight, listener, touch, taste, and smell) and influences people' actions.

Creative Writing
Maley (2012) considers creative writing as an aesthetically motivated, highly disciplined and a personal activity that deals less in facts than in the imaginative representation of emotions, events, characters and experiences. Thinking about personal growth, creative writing provides the students with a means to become more comfortable with sharing their own thoughts, to get to know oneself better, to explore their own strengths (and areas we may need to improve), how to get in touch with feelings, as well as to improve self-confidence and self-esteem.
The inclusion of creative writing in the language teaching practices is justified due to several reasons. First, Creative writing aids language development at the level of grammar, vocabulary, and discourse. Second, Creative writing fostered 'playfulness', which encourages learners to play creatively with the language, to explore the language and discover things not only about the language but about themselves (Cook, 2000).

Media in Learning Process
Media is needed to make learning to write interesting. According to Gerlach and Elly (1980, p. 245), to select the appropriate media, the teacher must consider the characteristics of the students, which directly relate to the learning process such as verbal abilities, visual and auditory perception skills. Other factors which also ought to be considered in media collection come from our instructional system model, that is, the organization of groups, the time available and the space in which the media will be used.

Comic Strips
According to Gavigan and Tomasevich (2011), comic strips are short form comics which generally consist of three to eight panels. Unlike comic books, comic strips are short. Comic strips only consist of a few panels because they are meant to be read in seconds or a few minutes.
According to Yomtov (2014), basically, comic strips have the same essential elements as a comic book page. Those elements are panel, lettering, word balloon, thought balloon, caption, sound effects, borders, and gutters. Ranker in Drolet (2010) defines the use of comic strips as reading material for ESL students and found that they help English language learners with both reading and writing.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research is a quantitative descriptive research. According to Creswell (2014), quantitative research is a process of collecting data, analysing, interpreting, and writing the result of the study. According to Fraenkel and Wallen (1993), descriptive method is a method uses to explain, analyze and classify something through various techniques, survey, interview, questionnaire, observation and text. The population of this research is 42 students in 7 th semester from class A and E at English Education Department. They have studied creative writing using comic strips in the 4 th Semester.
This research uses total sampling. Total sampling is a sampling technique where the number of sample are same as the population. According to Sugiyono (2007), if the total population are less than 100, The entire population should be used as the research sample. Total of sample is 42 students.
In this research, the researchers use questionnaire as instrument. A questionnaire is a systematic complication of questions that are submitted to a sampling of the population from which information is desired. The questionnaire is about the students' perception on the use of comic strips in creative writing at English Education Department, Universitas Negeri Manado.
In this research, the researchers are only using close-ended research. The questionnaire uses Likert scale type. Likert scale is a scale which is used to allow the individual to express how much they agree and disagree with a particular statement. The questionnaire has been made in Google form. The researchers distribute the questionnaire to the 7 th semester students at English Education Department in the academic year 2020/2021 as representative of the research. The link has been delivered to the students personally by using WhatsApps.
After the students answer the questionnaire, the data are analysed by formula form Surachmand 1987. The researchers calculate the percentage of each number of statements of the questionnaire. After finishing the data calculation of the questionnaire, the researchers describe and put conclusion of each statement. it could be seen that 7.1 % of students strongly agree with the statement, 92.9 % of the students agree and none of them either strongly disagree or disagree with the statement. It shows that students respond positively about comic strips is an effective media to increase their creative writing.

RESULT AND DISUSSION
Statement 2. Comic strips are an interesting media use in the creative writing class. It shows 28.6% of the students strongly agree with the statement, 71.4% of the students agree and 0% of them either strongly disagree or disagree with the statement. The result conveys that comic strips are interesting media use in creative writing class.
Statement 3. Comic strips can help me start writing. it is noticed that 4.7% and 83.3% of the respondents strongly agree and agree with the statement, while 9.5% disagree and 2,5% strongly disagree with the statement. This result indicates that more than 50% of students agree if comic strips can help them start writing. 4.7% of the students strongly agree with the statement. 78.6% of students agree with the statement and 16.7% of students disagree but none of them strongly disagree with the statement. This result conveys that Comic strips enhance the students' ability to think critically. Statement 7. Comic strips enhance my ability to understand and evaluate my creative writing. it is noticed that 4.8% of the students strongly agree with the statement, 85.7% of students agree with the statement and 9.5% of the students disagree statement and none of them strongly disagree with the statement. From the data above, it could be seen that by using comic strips, the students enhance their ability to understand and evaluate their creative writing.
Statement 8. Comic strips help me through thinking, creating and writing. it could be seen that 16.7% of the respondents strongly agree with the statement, 83.3% of the respondents positively agree with the statement, and 0% of them either strongly disagree or disagree. It means that comic strips help them through thinking, creating and writing.
Statement 9. I feel motivated to use comic strips in creative writing. It shows that 9.5% of the students strongly agree with the statement, 90.5% of the students agree and none of them either strongly disagree or disagree. The result indicates that all the students feel motivated to use comic strips in creative writing.
Statement 10. I feel comfortable sharing my idea on comic strips. it is clear that 7.1% and 81% of the students strongly agree and agree with the statement. 5 students disagree with the statement that makes 11.9%. The result indicates that more than 70% students feel comfortable sharing their idea on comic strips.
Statement 11. Comic strip incites me as a student with low interest in writing. It is clear that the majority of the respondents are agreed with this statement. It also shows that 11.9% strongly agree, 71.4% agree, and 16.7% disagree. In additional, none of the respondent strongly disagree. It could be said that all students agree that comic strips incite them as students with low interest in writing.
Statement 12. I feel too shy sharing my ideas in making comic strips. It shows that 4.8% of the students strongly agree, 38.1% of the students agree, 57.1% of the students disagree and none of them strongly disagree. It could be seen that more than 50% of the students do not feel too shy sharing their ideas in making comic strips.
Statement 13. Comic strips do not allow me to express my thought more clearly and openly. It shows that none of them strongly agree with the statement and 4.8% of the students agree with the statement. On other hand, this result shows larger number of students who disagree (88.1%) and strongly disagree (7.1%) with the statement. In other words, the number of students who agree with this statement are smaller than those who disagree with this statement. Statement 14. I am not confident enough to delivery my opinion in making comic strips. it is clear that none of them strongly agree, 23,8% agree, 71,4% disagree and 4.8% of them strongly disagree. It could be seen that more than 70% of the students is confident to delivery their opinion in making comic strips.
The result of the data analysis are important things to be noticed.
Firstly, the students' responses to 4 questions above is stunning. 100% of the students are in one voice agreeing that comic strips are an effective and interesting media use in creative writing, help them through thinking, creating and writing and they feel motivated using comic strips. It tells us how the useful comic strips in their creative writing. Secondly, 11 of 14 positive statements are given and the responses are super positive as well. The responses in percentage form towards these item; effective media, interesting media, be more careful in using correct spelling, be able practice grammatical rule, enhance ability to think, enhance ability to understand and evaluate the creative writing, help through creating and writing, felt motivated, feel comfortable sharing idea, and incite their low interest in writing is above 80%.
Lastly, the research provides 3 negative statements in the questionnaire. The result shows that most of them do not agreed with that those statements. In other words, most of them do not agree that they feel too shy sharing their idea, comic strips do not allow them express their thought more clearly and openly, and they are not confident enough to delivery their opinion in making comic strips. Even in statement number 12, almost 50% of them feel too shy sharing their idea in making comic strips, but almost of them still feel confident enough to delivery their opinion in making comic strips. It could be seen how comic strips help them not only used as media in creative writing class but also make them be confident, openly and clearly sharing their idea in the class.

CONCLUSIONS
The result of the data analysis and the discussion mention in previous chapter lead the researchers to conclude that most of the respondents have such a good perception on the use of comic strips in their creative writing in the way what the effect of comic strips in their writing skill and also what they feel although there are small number of students who do not perceive the same experience as most of them have. From this findings, it could be concluded that students have such a positive perception on the use of comic strips in their creative writing and comic strips are considered as a useful media in creative writing.