Using Facebook to Enhance English Department Students' Skill in Writing English Essay, proposed by Prof. Bambang Yudi Cahyono

3. 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)

4. Introduction (Cont.)
Non-English Department
• Learning language skills through the
General English (GE) or General
Courses (Mata Kuliah Umum) and
through ESP.

5. 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)

6. Series of Courses in
Teaching Writing
Writing I
Paragraph Development
Writing II
Developments of Essays
of Various Types
Writing III
Development of
Argumentative and
Persuasive Essay

7. 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.

8. Process-Based Approach
Prewriting (Planning)
Writing (Writing the First Draft)
Revising
Publishing
Writing (Writing the First Draft)
(Sebranek ,Kemper, & Meyer, 1999)

10. 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)

11. • 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

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. • 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

17. • 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.

19. 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

20. Improvement of the Students’ Skill in
Writing English Essays

21. 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?

22. • 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?

23. 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?

25. 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).

26. 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.