Listening, speaking, reading and writing are four language skills in English. Students need to master all of the four skills, so that they can be considered capable to use English actively or passively. Writing is one of the English language skills that also need to be taught maximally by the teachers to their students besides listening, speaking and reading.
Writing is an important part of language that supports learning in various ways. According to Raimes (1983:3) : Writing helps our students learn. How? First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary that have been teaching our students. Second, when our students write, they also have a chance adventurous with the language, to go beyond what they have just learned to say, to take a risk. When they write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and the constant use of eye, hand, and brain is a unique way to reinforce learning.
The result of writing is generally called text. Based on the curriculum 2013 of vocational school, there are some texts that have to be mastered by the first grade of vocational school students. These texts are recount text, narrative text and descriptive text. Teachers of vocational school often find students difficult to write English spontaneously or easily in writing classes. Students of vocational school have difficulty arranging sentences. Whereas, the students should be able to write in many kind of text as mention above.
According to curriculum 2013, descriptive text is one of text that have to be taught in the first grade of vocational school students. It is stated in the core competence (KI) and basic competence (KD) 3.4 of the 2013 curriculum "menganalisis fungsi sosial, struktur  teks, dan unsur kebahasaan pada teks deskriptif sederhana tentang orang, tempat wisata, dan bangunan bersejarah terkenal, sesuai dengan konteks penggunaannya.", ("Analyzing social functions, text structures, and linguistic elements from simple descriptive texts about famous people, sights and historical buildings, in the context of their use."). It means that students should be able to write descriptive text.
Descriptive Text is a text which says what a person or a thing is like. Its purpose is to describe and reveal a particular person, place, or thing. In a broad sense, description, as explained by Kane (2000: 352), description is about sensory experience---how something looks, sounds, tastes. Mostly it is about visual experience, but description also deals with other kinds of perception.
Some students have difficulties in writing descriptive text. The difficulties  occurred because of the internal and external factors. The internal factors that can affect students' writing are motivation, cognitive ability and talent. The students had lazy to practice writing and they had difficult to express idea. The grammatical problem, the organization of writing, the content of the text, vocabulary and spelling either are internal factor either. Meanwhile, the external factors that can affect students' writing are curriculum, material, strategy and technique. The writer believes that the use of some pictures as media is one of ways in creating the fun and enjoyable learning. Wright (1989:2) states that Pictures are very important in helping students to retell experiences or understand something since they can represent place, object, people, etc.
Pictures help the students understand a more general context, which may be made of pictures, the teacher's actions, the student's action, sound effect and words. This overall context of new language will have meaning to the students. Wright (1989:16) also states that pictures have been used for centuries to help students understand various aspects of foreign language. The pictures have motivated the students, made the subjects they are dealing with clearer, illustrated the general idea and forms an object or action particular to a culture.
There are many kind of pictures that can be used as teaching media. Picture Series is one kind of picture that also can be a teaching media in helping students to write a descriptive text. Picture series can be an alternative for teacher to be used as media in teaching learning process. The writer tries to use the picture series as media in descriptive text to improve student's writing ability. Through the picture series students can select the words that are chosen to arrange a sentence. Picture series also can assist students in preparing events in a descriptive text. It means that writing ability, descriptive text and picture series can be teaching elements that support among each other in learning process.
LITERARY REVIEW
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Writing
