The Effectiveness of the Use of Newspaper and Magazine in Improving Students’ Writing Skills

This study aimed to investigate (1) whether the use of newspaper is more effective than that of magazine in improving students’ writing skill, (2) whether the use of newspaper is more effective than that of textbook in improving students’ writing skill, (3) whether the use of magazine is more effective than that of textbook in improving students’ writing skill, and (4) the most effective media of all: newspaper, magazine, and conventional medium in improving students’ writing skill. This study is classified as a quasi-experimental study using Pretest-Posttest Control Group Design. The subjects were 84 grade students (3 classes). Class X-9 was the first experimental group, taught using newspaper; Class X-7 was the second experimental group, taught using magazine; and Class X-8 was the control group which was not given the treatment. In the beginning of the study, all the subjects were given as essay test to measure their initial writing ability. After four times meetings of treatments, they were given a post-test to find out whether there was a significant difference in their writing ability. The data of the pre-test and post-test of three groups were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. After the data were tested and found to be homogeneous and normal, the hypotheses were tested by using Anova and Scheffe test. The research findings reveal that (1) the use of newspaper is more effective than that of magazine in improving the students’ writing skills as indicated by the value of sig (0.036) which is lower than 0.05; (2) using newspaper as a medium is more effective than textbook in improving the students’ writing skills as indicated by the value of sig (0.00) which is lower than 0.005; (3) the use of magazine is more effective than that of textbook in improving the students’ writing skills as indicated by the value of sig (0.027) which is lower than 0.05; and (4) newspapers become the most effective medium in comparison to other two media in improving the students’ writing skills as indicated by the value of sig of the control group (0.00) and the value of the second experimental group (0.036) which are lower than 0.05