Using Facebook to Improve Students' Achievement in Writing a Descriptive Text at State Senior High School 1 at Karangan, Trenggalek, east Java.

ABSTRACT  Nurliana, Yerita. 2010. Using Facebook to Improve Students’ Achievement in Writing a Descriptive Text at State Senior High School 1 at Karangan, Trenggalek, East Java. Thesis, English Department, Faculty of Letters,  State University of Malang. Advisor: Prof. Bambang Yudi Cahyono, M.Pd, M.A., Ph.D.  Key words: writing, Facebook, descriptive, classroom action research    Writing plays an important role in human life since it enables us to communicate with others especially those who are not present. An ability to write in English language is important for English language learners, more particularly in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Through writing, English language learners are able to convey messages to the readers across places and time using a written form of EFL.  The result of the preliminary study showed that students still performsed poorly in writing a descriptive text and they were lacked interest in writing. They were lacked practice and the teacher provided less time for teaching writing compared to the other language skills. To solve this problems, Facebook as a medium to publish students‟ writing was proposed to be integrated in teaching writing. Facebook was chosen because it was very popular among students so it can encourage students to write, and a previuos study found that the use Facebook in writing class, without leaving the writing process, brings positive impacts to the teaching of writing. It also improves students‟ ability in writing. The objective of this study was to improve students‟ achievement in writing descriptive texts by increasing their motivation to write through the use of Facebook, and increase their ability in writing through the writing process.   This study used collaborative classroom action research. The researcher, with the assistance of the classroom English teacher, designed the lesson plans and set the criteria of success. The classroom English teacher acted as the observer during the teaching and learning process. The research was conducted in two cycles. Each cycle consisted of three meetings, two face-to-face meetings and one online session, and covered planning an action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting on the observation. The subjects were 33 students of X-A in SMA Negeri 1 Karangan in 2009/2010 academic year. The instruments used to collect the data were interview guides, questionnaires, observation checklists, field notes, and the students‟ writing prompt.   During the implementation of the action, the researcher explained about a descriptive text and its generic structure. Then, it was followed by modeling how to make an outline and write the draft based on the ideas from the outline. Also, the students were assigned to produce a descriptive text through the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. In Cycle 2, the researcher taught the students how to generate their ideas by making a semantic web because the data gained from Cycle 1 showed that students‟ ability in organizing ideas gained the least improvement, thus the researcher decided to use semantic web as a help to organize the ideas.   The result of the research showed that the integration of Facebook in the teaching of writing without leaving writing process successfully improved the students‟ aachievement in writing a descriptive text. The scores of the students‟ writing products improved significantly from preliminary study to Cycle 1 and from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. The students‟ mean score improved from 55.1 in the preliminary study to 73.07 in Cycle 1. Moreover, the students‟ mean score reached 80 in Cycle 2.   Based on the result of this study, it is suggested that English teachers utilize Facebook as a medium to publish students‟ composition in teaching writing. The English teachers are also recommended to integrate Facebook in teaching other kinds of text types. In addition, further researchers are suggested to explore the integration of Facebook and other social sites (Twitter, Skype, MySpace, etc) in the teaching of writing.&nbsp