Using Facebook to Enhance English Department Students' Skill in Writing English Essay

Introduction

Secondary Level• Learning all language skills based on

Content Standards for the teaching of English (Depdiknas, 2006)

Tertiary Level

• Learning language skills through discrete skill courses & Integrated skill course. i.e. English Intensive Course (IC)

Introduction (Cont.)

Non-English Department

• Learning language skills through the General English (GE) or General Courses (Mata Kuliah Umum) and

through ESP.

Integrating Information and

Communication Technology (ICT) in

ELT

“Teachers should consider using the internet for various language teaching purposes and cross-cultural communication”

Warschauer (1995)

“The use of internet are technologically and academically sound.

Cahyono and Widiati (2007)

Series of Courses in

Teaching WritingWriting I

Paragraph Development

Writing II

Developments of Essays of Various Types

Writing III

Development of Argumentative and Persuasive Essay

Djiwandono (2009) found that sharing reading texts through Facebook improved the students vocabulary learning.

Literature Review

Sahdan (2009) stated that Facebook has attractive applications and interesting features. For example, it has, among others, Wall application , Friend application, and Gift application.

Process-Based Approach

Prewriting (Planning)

Writing (Writing the First Draft)

Revising

Publishing

Writing (Writing the First Draft)

(Sebranek ,Kemper, & Meyer, 1999)

Research Method

Action research occurs through “a dynamic and complementary process, which consist of four essential ‘moments’ of : planning, action, observation and reflection.”

Kemmis and McTaggart (1988, as quoted by Burns, 1999: 32)

• The planning stage of the action began before the Writng II couse was taught as it was designed to improve the students’ skill in writing various types of essays by combining the traditional face-to-face mode of teaching with the innovative Internet-based teching. All students were asked to provide images to their online essays to make them more interesting. Each type of the essays was taught in one unit of instruction.

Planning the Action

1) Creating a special album “Essay Writing” in each of students’ Facebook account

2) Uploading some pictures and putting them in the album

3) Writing a description of the picture in the available space underneath the picture

4) Giving comments/feedback

The Action

Collecting Data and

Observing the Action

1. Assessing students’ online assays using the ESL Composition Profile (Jacobs, et al., 1981)

2. Scoring essays on the basis of 5 components:• content (30%)• organisation (20%)• vocabulary (20%)• language use (25%)• mechanics (5%)

3. Giving the scoring sheets containing total scores and the rater’s remarks to the students

At the end of Semester….

1. Do you think that your writing skills have improved in some way after following the Writing II course?

2. What’s your opinion about publishing your essay on Facebook?

3. Do you have any comments about a certain aspect of the Writing II course?

Questionnaire asking the students’ opinions about the application of Facebook

• Analysing students’ scores of 6 types of essays

• Presenting them in the form of a list of scores and the mean scores for all the topics

• Judging the success of the students’ writing

Good or successful at least 77% (B+ score) of the optimal competence level

Reflection

• Analysing the students’ responses to the questionnaire items.

• The variability of the responses

• The general tendency of response variability based on the cases of occurrence.

Results

Improvement of the Students’ Skill in Writing English Essays

Students’ Opinion on the Instructional Activities

Score of the Students’

Essays

Responses to the

Questionnaire

Improvement of the Students’ Skill in Writing English Essays

Students’ Opinion on the Instructional Activities

All of the students stated that their skill in writing English essays improved in various aspects.

1. Do you think that your writing skills have improved in some way

after following the Writing II course?

• It enables them to read other students’ work.

• It enables them to get comments from other students.

• It encourages them to write a good essay.• It stimulates them to learn ICT and to create

or edit some pictures.

2. What’s your opinion about publishing your essay on Facebook?

Postive comments

It is Joyfull learning

& inspiring

Negative comments

It is monotonous activites

&regularity in

checking students’ drafts

3. Do you have any comments about a certain aspect of the Writing II course?

Traditional Modern

Using

Facebook

Most of the students in the

present study viewed the use

of Facebook positively

(Cahyono and Widiati’s

study, 2007)

Good

impact

Students need to be given project-based-

learning by using the Internet in order to

be able to practice managing their more

independent way of learning (Pathak.

2007).

The use of Facebook enhanced the skill in Writing English essays of the English Department of State University of Malang.

It is important to integrate Internet resources in the teaching of English.

The policy makers are recommended to give supports in terms of of providing Internet-supporting facilities for the students ans teachers.