The Effect of Literature as Authentic Materials for Writing Essays in A Blended Learning Setting

The current situation of teaching and learning process has undergone a drastic change during the COVID-19 outbreak. The conventional classroom meeting is no longer available because of the pandemic. As a result, the classroom interaction is blended with the online learning model until the end of the semester. In a blended learning setting, teachers are forced to be innovative to reach the instructional objectives. As most learning is done online, the use of authentic materials is considered relevant to the current situation. Many authentic materials are available online. Yet, there is no sufficient information on whether the authentic materials can improve college students' ability in writing essays in a blended learning setting. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of literary genre as authentic materials on students' writing performance. As such, this research uses an experimental design. The target population of the study was all fourth-year students of the English Education Study Program, Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology, University of PGRI Wiranegara, Pasuruan, East Java, Indonesia. Samples were employed using a systematic random design. The treatment was conducted in 14 meetings between March and June 2020. The main instruments used to collect data were pre-test and post-test. The students' writing was rated by two ratings using the Jacobs ESL-Composition Profile. The result of the one-sample t-test computation using the IBM SPSS 25 showed that there is a significant difference in the students' writing performance before and after the treatment (α = 0.00 < 0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of authentic materials in literary genre can improve the student's ability in writing essays. Keywords: authentic materials, literature, essay, effec