THE USE OF INSTAGRAM TO BOOST STUDENTS� WRITING SKILL IN EXPLANATION TEXT

 

Ian Harum Prasasti 1*, Yamika Baihaqi 2 Arif Rohman Hakim 3

STMIK Kalirejo Lampung1, Muhammadiyah University of Metro2, Pasca Sarjana UNISA Kuningan3

Email: [email protected]1 [email protected]2 [email protected]3

Rectangle: Rounded Corners: Abstrak Introduction: Writing is the skill of expressing ideas, feelings, and thoughts arranged in words, sentences, and paragraphs. Writing skills are related to the ability to arrange graphics such as letters, words and certain language sentences used in written communication so that readers can understand messages or information. Objectives purpose of this research is to improve students' writing skills using Instagram in explanatory text. This research is a classroom action research which includes several stages. Namely reconnaissance, planning, action, observation, and reflection. The subjects of this study were 23 second semester students (class A) English Education Study Program, University of Muhammadiyah Metro Methods This research was conducted in two cycles and obtained qualitative and quantitative data. The data collection instruments were observation checklists, interview guidelines, and writing tests. Data in the form of field notes, interview transcripts, observation checklists, and scores. Results The results showed that the use of Instagram in the teaching and learning process significantly improved students' writing skills. Students can develop their ideas to produce explanatory texts. Based on quantitative data, the average score of students' writing skills increased. In the pre-test, the students' mean score was 50.82. Then, after Cycle 1 (post-test 1), the students' mean score from post-test 1 was 62.26. Finally, after Cycle 2 (post-test 2), the average score of students on post-test 2 was 76.08. Conclusion conclusion, the use of Instagram can significantly improve students' writing skills. Keyword: explanation text; Instagram; writing skill.

Diterima: 04-04-2022

Review: 09-04-2022

Publish: 15-04-2022

�Corresponding: Ian Harum Prasasti

E-mail: [email protected]

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INTRODUCTION

Writing is a skill which express idea,feel and thought which are arranged in words, sentences and paragraph. Writing skills deal with the ability to arrange the graphic such as letters,words and sentences of certain language being used in written communication in order the reader can understand the message or information. Writing is basically the process of expressing ideas and thought of the writer using knowledge of structure and vocabulary to combine the writer�s ideas as a means of communication.

The students of English education study program Muhammadiyah University of Metro are must have the ability to master a good writing.The writing subject is focuses some genres such as explanation, narrative, recount, report, spoof, argumentative, explanation and ect. One of text type that writer use in this research is explanation text.

There are some problems found,especially in explanation text. Many students are difficult to writebecause of the lack of media use in teaching learning, therefore the students are bored and inactive in learning writing. The students also lack of vocabularies and understanding about generic structure and language features knowledge.These� problemsmake students low motivation in writing subject.

These are why most of English students get still limited in writing skill.� The researcher has got some data from English lecturer and the data was shown in the table below. There are many ways that can be used to increase their writing, one of them is using media. Media is needed to incresase teaching and learning process in the class. The development of technology contributes to the spread of application, and social media. The media can help the students, and lecturers to support the teaching and learning process. Seeing the problems that occur, one of the important media to teach writing is using instagram.

Instagram is one of application is created by Kevin Systorm and Mike Krieger on October 2010. Nowadays, instagram is very novelty because almost 95% of Indonesian people have instagram.This application is apply� by digital filters and share it with add some caption or story from the photos.

Writing is also known as a combination of processes and products. This means that the writer should imagine, organize, draft, edit, read, and reread (Darmasanti & Sari, 2013). (Harmer, 2007) states that writing is one of the productive skills which are closely bound up with the receptive skill work.Students will increase if they master many words and expressions. (Richards, Richards, & Renandya, 2002) opine that writing is the most difficult skill in learning foreign language.

Social media technologies have been said to offer great promise for language learning, as evidenced in numerous journals, book chapters (Blattner & Fiori, 2009) (Brick, 2013) (Forlano, 2009) (Meskill & Quah, 2012). Because of the social nature of social media, the tools can encourage language socialization and engagement with communicative practice in a meaningful way (Mills, 2011), (Stevenson & Liu, 2010). A wide range of social media tools are now available to lecturers, such as blogs (e.g., WordPress), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), Microblogs (e.g., Twitter), Wikis (e.g., Wikipedia), Video Podcasts, RSS Feeds, virtual worlds (e.g., online games), and Photo sharing sites (e.g., Instagram).

Social media have been also investigated for other affective responses or attitudinal effects and showed some positive effects in increased confidence (Thorne, 2009), increased motivation (Harrison & Thomas, 2009) (Lee, 2010), reduced anxiety (Stevenson & Liu, 2010), decreased shyness, and more positive attitudes towards language learning (Thorne, 2009).

Based on explanation above, Social media technologies have been to offer great promise for language learning, as evidenced in numerous journal articles, A wide range of social media tools are now available to lecturers, such as blogs, facebook, twitter, wikis, instagram. Social media have been and showed some positive effects for student in writing class.

Instagram was launched on October 6, 2010. It is one platforms of social media which its user can share photos, and starting from mid-2013. (Blair & Serafini, 2014) Social Media Instagram is a fun and quick way to share one�s life with his or her friends through a series of pictures, snap a photo with a mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the photo into a memory to keep around forever.

According to (Kelly, 2015) Instagram is currently one of the most popular SNSs (SocialNetwork Sites) in the world with over 300 million active users.The focus of Instagram is for users to post individual images orvideos with a description on their profile, some 70 million imagesand videos are posted daily. Therefore, (Prichard, 2013) Instagram seems toprovide an ideal environment for L2 learners to produceexplanation writing.Users form connections by �following� each other�s profileswhich enables them to view the content posted on these profilesand response in the form of comments or �likes�. A �like� is a tagusers can place on images to indicate they view them favorably. Once a user follows other users, all postings from these users willbe collected and presented on the user�s �News Feed�.

Instagram members also have the ability to message each other privatelyusing �Direct message�. These facilities allow users to engage insynchronous andasynchronous communication, both publicly andprivately. Instagram profiles with default settings can be viewer publicly by anyone who visits the site; there are also privacysettings which can restrict the access to one�s profile to approvedfollowers only.

Based on explanation above, many type of social media such as blog, wikis, facebook, twitter and instagram and each type have some benefit for english language teaching in writing class.

 

RESEARCH METHOD

This research study is classified as classrooms action reserch. Classrooms action research is a method of finding out what works best in your own classroom so that you can improve the teaching-learning process.

Action research is broadly defined as a process through which practitioners study their own practice in order to solve problems in their day-to-day practice Mitchell (2009: 344), It is often accepted as a valuable form of promoting meaningful professional development and lifelong learning Furlong & Sainsbury, (2005:15).

Drawing on the principles of action research, according to Friedman, (2001:159), classroom action reserach aims to develop an adequate understanding of the problems and issues in real settings through continual learning and progressive problem solving; the development of an action, plan and an improvement in the lecturers� instructional practice which is embedded through participatory research (Mitchell, Reilly, & Logue, 2009).

(Carr, 2007) argues that in action research there is a set of methods that can be adoptedn rather than one coherent methodology. Similarly, a collective case study method was adopted for its �ability to examine, in-depth, a case within its �reallife context�, thus providing both description about how lecturers engaged in classroom action research and explanation regarding the nature of the professional development that occurred. A significant aspect of the methodology is the mentorship I provided as the university lecturer/lecturer educator working as a facilitator with six practicinglecturers of English on this classroom action research project, established as a school-university collaborative partnership.

 

RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Before giving the treatment in classroom action research, the researcher did the pre-test in order to measure the students� writing skill in explanation text. The pre-test was conducted on February 13th, 2022. The students were asked to make a explanation text based on the topic which provided.

To get the pre-test result, the researcher calculated the score and the researcher got the data such following

 

Table 1. Frequency Distributor of Pre-test

 

Score Interval

Frequency

Percentage

41-45

6

26,08%

46-50

5

21,73%

51-55

10

43,47%

56-60

2

8,69%

61-65

3

13,04%

66-70

-

-

Total

23

100%

 

Result of Post-test in Cycle

After implementing the instagram to the students, she scored the last task as a post � test in Cycle 1. It was given to know their writing skills after the actions in Cycle 1.

 

Table 2. The Students� Writing Scores after Cycle 1

Score Interval

Frequency

Percentage (%)

50-55

1

4,34%

56-60

11

47,82%

61-65

8

34,78%

66-70

3

13,04%

Total

23

100%

Based on table above, the lowest score was 50 and the highest the score was 70. There was one student who got the lowest score and the highest score. One student got 50 and 55 score. Eight students got 61 up to 65, three students got 66 till 70 scores. The average of the score was 62,26. The class can be said success in learning process if 75% of students passed criterion of success.� which was 70 score.

� ���The formula of percentage was:

�X 100

�X 100

= 13,04%

 

Table 3. The Increasement of Score from Pre-test to Post-test 1

Average

Pre-test

Post-test 1

Progress

50,82%

62,26%

11,44%

 

According to the table 3, it could be seen the improvement of students� score from the pre-test to the post-test 1 was 11,44%. However, the result could not be said success, it caused there were 14 students who got the score under 70 and the percentage not reached 80%. Moreover, the data from the lecturers� interview indicated the students� skill had improved from the pre-test, but the students did not achieve the criteria of success. Therefore, the researcher would continue to the next cycle.

Result of Post-test in Cycle 2

 

Table 4. The Students� Writing Scores in Cycle 2

Score Interval

Frequency

Percentage (%)

66-70

1

4,34%

71-75

13

56,52%

76-80

7

30,43%

81-85

1

4,34%

Total

23

100%

 

Based on the table above, the lowest score was 66-70 and only one student got the lowest score.� students got the score 71 to 75. seven students got scores 76 up to 80. And one students got 81 till 85. The average score in cycle 2 was 76,08 from 23 students. The research could be success if there are 75% of 23 students got the score 70 to up. In order to check the percentage, the writer calculated the score.

The formula of percentage was:

�X 100

�X 100

= 100%

 

Based on calculating above, the result was 100% from 23 students could pass the test. There were 23 students who got score 70 up to. It means that the implementation of cycle 1 could increase students writing ability in explanation text through instagram. Besides that, the revised of cycle 2 was successes in the learning process.

 

DISCUSSION

The research was conducted to find out the improving students� ability in writing one of the text genres that is explanation text through instagram. Instagram was a media that can make students interesting in learning writing.

According to the discussion of finding teaching and learning through instagram, the result was indicated there were improvement on the students� ability in writing explanation text through the media from 13,04% in first cycle gained score 70 or more become 100% achieved the score 70 to 85 in the second cycle. It was found that the implement of instagram was able to encourage the students to focus on explanation text, the students were enthusiasm and fast to keep their attention on writing ability. The result same with Zidny�s research �Improving Students� Writing Skill Using Instagram in Grade X of Science 5 at SMAN 5 Yogyakarta�, and research by purwasari entitle �The Use Of Photographs On Instagram In Teaching Descriptive Text To Improve Students� Writing Skill�, based on previos researches the students could develop text with better vocabulary ideas, sentence structure, punctuation, and capitalization. students also enthusiastically joined the teaching and learning activities and the result of the research shows that the use of instagram and the supporting can improve the students� writing skill significantly.

The upturn happened because from instagram, the students was easier to explore their ideas, it made the students more interested in writing instagram text. On the other hand, the students understood about the material which delivered to them. It means that the instructions process ran well, as great as the result got.

Besides, it also influenced by the students� participation in every meeting in the cycle was improved. There was a rising score in each cycle and significant percentage progress of the students� participation in cycle 1 and cycle 2. It also supported by the lecturer interviews� result, the lecturer said during the writing lesson used Instagram, the students performance was increased higher and higher in each activity in every cycle. The students� enthusiasm in learning writing used instagram their score which became measurement of success in this research.

 

CONCLUSION

The implementing of instagram in the second semester of English Department Universitas Muhammadiyah of in academic year 2021/2022 can be concluded that the Instagram can boost the students writing skill. Moreover, the implement of instagram is able to encourage the students to focus on writing skill of explanation text, the students are enthusiasm and fast to keep their attention on writing ability.

 

REFERENCES

 

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