The students’ ability of writing report based on field study result in conservation area

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
Writing is a language activity that involves the process of gathering information, managing information, and putting it in a series of sentences (Nurgiyantoro, 2010). Good writing skills are obtained through reading, managing information, and associating it in the mind and pouring it down in a sequence (Mansur, 2009). Many factors influence it, the ability to write is considered as a skill that requires time and regular exercise. Alwasilah (2008) revealed that students, teachers, and lecturers grasping writing is a skill that is difficult to learn and teach to others. Efforts to improve writing skills need to be done to meet the needs of the modern times.
The industrial revolution 4.0 provides a change in the paradigm in the world of education (Hafil, 2018). The skills that need to be mastered today are verbal and non-verbal communication skills. This situation shows that the ability to write is one of the soft skills needed to support the needs in following the development of the industrial era 4.0 (Lase, 2019). Competitive writing skills contribute to being involved in global society. Writing ability improvement is done through learning activities organized by educational institutions.
The results of the research report revealed that the writing ability of students is still low. The factor that caused this was the lack of scientific writing activity on organized learning, although scientific writing is a form of compulsory product for academics such as final year project, thesis, and dissertation. In addition, this situation shows the importance of empowering the ability to write through learning in the course.
Empowerment of writing skills has been done through the task of writing articles in each course. Literature studies that are often done in making articles have not been maximally trained as an ability of students. Based on interviews with students at the graduate school of Natural Sciences at Bengkulu University, they still have difficulty in writing scientific reports. Scientific report writing activities require good and correct writing skills to produce scientific products such as good quality articles.
Efforts are made to train students' writing skills, namely writing scientific reports based on outdoor-based learning strategies. Field study activities serve to gather information to facilitate students' scientific reports. Bengkulu has a conservation area that is the Panjang beach Nature Park and Bai Island. Utilization of the surrounding environment can increase learning motivation, performance, and writing skills.
Based on the background that has been described, it is necessary to empower the ability to write reports from Masters students of Natural Sciences in Bengkulu University. The potential of the TWA Panjang beach environment can be used as a source of information to develop students' writing.

METHOD
This research uses outdoor learning strategies developed by utilizing conservation areas. Stages of activities carried out are field orientation, field study activities, and scientific report writing. Orientation and field exploration activities are carried out at TWA Bengkulu City (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Ecosystem type in TWA
The population of this research is the Masters students (S2) in Natural Sciences. The research sample is students who take Conservation Education courses as many as 19 students in the academic year 2019/2020. Students are organized into 4 groups in conducting field study activities and preparing reports.
Data collection techniques used was the scientific report grading rubric that has been prepared by students based on observation activities. The instrument used was a scientific report assessment rubric sheet with aspects of title, introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion, and table of content.
Data analysis used was quantitative-qualitative techniques. The results of the scoring use averages. The categories used are poor, sufficient, good, and very good.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The results of this study present the ability to write scientific reports based on field study activities in the TWA area of Panjang beach, Bengkulu City. The assessment aspects measured in the scientific report are title, introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion, and list of references. The ability of students to write scientific reports is presented in Table 1. The findings of the study are presented in the form of graphs, tables, or descriptions. Analysis and interpretations of these results are required before being discussed.
The title aspect of the report gets a score of 3 with a good category. The title of the report from the students has provided variables, informative, and interesting. The introduction aspect gets a score of 2 with the sufficient category. The introduction written by students has not yet led to gaps, efforts, hopes, supported by the latest primary literature study. The aspects of the method section gets a score of 3 with good category. The correct method is displaying the breakdown of the design, data, and data analysis techniques. The aspect of the results gets a score of 3 with a good category. The results displayed are interesting and communicative. The aspect of discussion gets a score of 2 with a sufficient category. A good discussion is comparing the findings with the literature review. The conclusion aspect gets a score of 3 with a good category. The conclusion written by students should answer the research objectives based on the results and discussion. The referrence aspect gets a score of 3 with a good category. The references are directly related to the research.