36 Jurnal al–Hikmah vol. 4 no. 2 Oktober 2016 36~46
FACEBOOK GROUP ON TEACHING AND IMPROVING WRITING: STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS
Hanif Maulaniam Sholah hanifmaulaniam@gmail.com
Abstract
Teaching and learning English generally occur in classroom. However, actually it can occur outside classroom like independent learning where students prefer their own way to learn. Recently, in this modern era, technology has spread all over the world and be used by any age of people either worker or learners. For learners, technology is good equipment that can help them to learn. One feature in technology which is generally used by many students is Facebook. They use Facebook more often than learning lesson in classroom. In this case, researcher tried to investigate the use of Facebook in learning English and to know how effective it is. This research was conducted in IAI Al-Qolam which the participants were 30 students. The researcher here was a lecturer who observed and guided students to follow the research program. Participants were lead to participate actively in FB group called as EDG (English Department Group). In this group, researcher as well as Lecturer guided students to discuss any interesting topic by sharing any articles, made some writings or comment their friends writing. Students perceptions were measured by using 13 questionnaires related to the students usage of Facebook group. As a result, students enjoy discussing and learning using FB group. It is shown from their comments written on their FB group wall. The finding shows that Facebook group is an effective tool for students to improve their writing skill. This finding is benefitful for teachers as a guide for using ICT for teaching and learning process.
Keywords: facebook, group, writing, ict.
Background of the study
Technology is the effective way to help people in developing, learning and communicating. It is proven by many technology media used in many learning places not only in school but also in university for example, laptop, LCD, classroom projector and etcetera. Some schools obligate their students to have laptop or computer at their home to make them easy in learning any lesson like technique of operating Computer department or ICT department. Even in some modern countries, teachers do not teach students at classroom. They teach their students online. Students just face their computer at home and enjoy the lesson. It seems that technology plays a big role in education.
For the students of university especially in English department, writing is one of basic skills of learning English, as a target language which should be taught to the students’ university. Brown (2004) classifies writing as writing down or notation, writing in language production, expressive writing or composition and translation. Expressive writing or composition is used to express anything we have in mind to other people to communicate. On the other hand, when we begin to write, we should have something to communicate because a good writing will be based upon a clear thinking and in the broader aspect composition. So, we will be failed if we do not have something to say.
Hanif Maulaniam Sholah, Facebook Group On Teaching … 37 teaching and learning in IAI Al-Qolam of
Malang, descriptive essay should be taught to the students on fourth semester. The students are expected to express their ideas and thought vividly based on what they see, hear, feel, taste, and experience. A descriptive paragraph actually, is considered as the simplest and easiest writing form compared to other writing form.
A descriptive text is a kind of text that functions to describe a particular person, place or object. A procedure text functions to describe how something is accomplished through sequence of actions or steps. A recount text is a kind of text functions to retell event for purpose of informing or entertaining. A narrative text is a kind of text that functions to amuse and entertain. It deals with actual or various experience in different ways. Finally, report text functions to describe the ways thing are with reference to arrange natural, man made, and social phenomena in our environment.
Referring to the teaching four skills and type of writing (genre) taught at the university level as presented above, it is obvious that writing skill has a place in the English teaching program. English teacher cannot avoid teaching this language skill, even, writing is considered as the most difficult and complicated language skill to learn compared to other skill such as, listening, speaking, and reading in teaching and learning process. Therefore, writing needs to get important attention in teaching and learning process. Besides, it needs special effort to make the students write well. They need a long process to learn how to write.
In Indonesia, Facebook might be considered as the most popular social network among people. They predominately have Facebook accounts. They become active users called Facebookers. The Facebookers can create
profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. They could communicate with their friends, share their ideas and pictures. They could also create and join interest groups and fan pages. Facebook also provides the users with virtual learning (e-learning). In other words, it can be used as a teaching aid to improve the students’ ability in expressing their ideas.
For students who are lazy to write and get some idea do not have good motivation to write. They need something enjoyable. Recently, one of students’ hobbies in writing is sharing in Facebook. Almost students enjoy it. They express their idea, comment their friends and share experiences each other. However, they do not realize that when they play in Facebook, they do writing activity.
Although Facebook started out in early 2004 as an only social networking site, Facebook is currently the leading social networking site with more than 500 million active users as of March 2011. Interestingly, 70% of Facebook users are from outside of the US. Indonesia has the highest number of Facebook users in Asia, numbering 18.9 million, while Malaysia follows in the fifth rank with 5.1 million users. (Yunus and Lubis, 2009).
It proves that actually there are so many people who are fond of using Facebook. Moreover, In this modern era, learning language not only occur in a classroom formally, but also occur in informal community. Currently, social networks are used by millions of users, most of whom are students and adolescents for a variety of purposes but with a heavy emphasis on social needs. Some of the examples of social networking sites are MySpace, Friendster, Twitter and Facebook.
38 Jurnal al–Hikmah vol. 4 no. 2 Oktober 2016 36~46 writing skill. They can make a group of
English Facebooker. Every members of this group can write something in English, and the other members check about the grammar, content and all aspects of writing. Of course, it will help and motivate them to improve their writing skill. When they are fond of writing English, they will be a good writer.
In IAI Al-Qolam of Malang, as an Islamic campus, many students are fond of using Facebook. Some of them use Facebook by joining Facebook group because they think that it can help them in mastering English. Unfortunately, other students just use it for chatting and sharing about their life. They do not want to try to write and share something about English in Facebook group. They do not want to use Facebook to improve their writing skill. In this case, the researcher is sure that actually Facebook is the effective way to improve student’s writing ability.
According to Yunus and Salehi (2012: 6) a high number of participants agree that after participating in the FB group, they are more motivated and confident to write. The positive feedbacks from friends are valuable to keep them motivated to write even more. When their comments are ‘liked’ by friends, this will boost their confidence and further encourage them to participate actively in the group because their comments and presence are being appreciated.
Shukor and Noordin (2014: 2) Conducted experimental research which investigated the effects of Facebook collaborative writing groups on ESL undergraduates writing performance. The findings found that participants in Facebook collaborative writing groups displayed slightly higher scores compared to face-to-face collaborative writing groups.
Ping and Maniam (2015: 4) investigated the effectiveness of Facebook group discussion in writing performance
and college students’ perception of using Facebook discussion. This study focused on the college students’ perception of Facebook group discussion and effect of Facebook discussion on their writing performances. The findings from the study showed that there are positive attitudes of college students on Facebook group discussions. On the aspects of Facebook group discussions, all the eight areas stated in the questionnaire got positive feedback from the respondents. In contrary, there is significant effect of Facebook group discussion on students’ writing performances.
This study tried to figure out the effectiveness of using Facebook group on students’ writing ability at English Department IAI Al-Qolam of Malang. It is no exaggeration to state that almost all students of IAI Al-Qolam have Facebook accounts. One of the Facebook groups in IAI Al-Qolam of Malang is English Department Group (EDG). So far the EDG has 30 members through which the members can easily share everything pertaining to the subjects they have learned in the college. It probably enables the students grow intellectually. The students are advised to give their feedback after reading the uploaded status.
In this way researcher found some students comments regarding the effectiveness of using Facebook as one of media for learning. They admited that Facebook helps them communicate and share everything related to their study. This attracts researcher to take look at to what extent Facebook as a teaching aid has contributed to the learning process among the members. For the purpose of helping students understand and appreciate the social network, researcher chose the so-called English Department Group as the subject of the study.
Hanif Maulaniam Sholah, Facebook Group On Teaching … 39 The method of this research is
explained through three parts. They are participants, instruments and construction of items. The participants is explained first since it is the subject of the research. Then, followed by instrument to know how the subject response is measured to achieve finding which come to the conclusion. The third is construction of items to know the process of item constructed.
Participants
This study was carried out in Islamic Institute of Al-Qolam Malang in May 2016. A quantitative and qualitative (mixed method) survey study exploring the students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of FB groups for teaching and improving writing are used to identify the issues which are concern to the students using FB and FB groups for learning. The participants in this study were thirty students of English department where these students are actively using Facebook. The participants were added in a FB group created for this research called “English Department Group”. They were required to participate and be involved in the tasks provided by the researchers including summary writing and reviewing. Participants were also encouraged to take part in contributing ideas and giving opinions actively. All this was done in order to make a conducive learning environment which enable participants to undergo how FB groups can be used to improve writing skills. After they participated in a group for about one month, they were each asked to respond to a 13-items questionnaire related to their response about FB group they have joint.
Instrument and Data Analysis
The instruments used in this research is in form of questionnaires distributed to the students after one month participating in FB group. The 13 questions
in the questionnaire aim to explore participants’ perceptions of how FB groups can be used in improving their writing skills as the result of joining FB groups. The questionnaire which was in form of hard copy was distributed to the participants in a class when they had lecturing. The questionnaire that researchers have constructed consisted of four parts. Part one is about the general information of the students while Part two is about their usage of FB and FB groups. The general information collected are age, gender and students' language proficiency taken from their writing final test in the previous semester. Part two is asking whether each participant has a FB account or not, how often they log on to FB, whether they were familiar with FB groups or not, and if they were part of any other FB groups other than the one created for the purpose of this study.
40 Jurnal al–Hikmah vol. 4 no. 2 Oktober 2016 36~46 quantitative data analysis. The participants
are encoded with P01, P02, P03 and so on. The comments from the participants were cited as they were written or stated by the students in the space provided for each question in Part four.
Construction of Questionnaire Items Section A and section B which have 13 items in the questionnaire were constructed based on the research questions for this study. The research questions are:
1. How does FB group help students in writing process?
2. How could facebook be effectively helpful as a teaching aid
3. To what extent facebook as a teaching aid has contributed to the learning process among the members
The following 13 items are adapted from Melor Md. Yunus and Hadi Salehi.
Section A
In section A, the items are divided into three groups. Those are writing process, challenges and affective domain of participants:
A. Writing Process
1. Small talk on FB group makes my thought more ready to write.
2. I study new vocabularies by reading comments from other friends on FB group.
3. The spelling checker feature on FB helps me to correct spelling errors. 4. Statements or opinions written by
my friends on FB group help me to get some idea and encourage me to write better.
5. After joining and participating on FB group, I feel easier to write any paragraph or essays.
Items 1-3 in this section investigate certain aspects of the writing process, including the organization of ideas, vocabulary building and spelling. The next two items
investigate whether or not FB group provides students with the content knowledge for writing tasks.
B. Challenges
6. I share any articles that I like on the FB group
7. When I use FB group, I feel distracted by other features on FB This section provides the challenges that teacher might face in applying FB group in the teaching of writing.
C. Affective Domain
8. I feel comfortable posting my ideas or opinions on FB group.
9. I feel encouraged by my friends to like and comment any ideas posted by my friends on FB group
10. I prefer discussing issues or topics on FB group instead of in a classroom session.
In this section, the researcher dig up the information whether or not FB group affects students motivation in writing
Section B
In section B, these questions were given to investigate participants view and ideas in further detail:
1. How can FB group help you to write any paragraph or essay?
2. What is the problem in using FB group for writing?
3. After joining and participating in FB group, do you think FB group can increase your motivation and confident to write? If yes, how? If no, why?
Findings and Discussion
Hanif Maulaniam Sholah, Facebook Group On Teaching … 41 of Facebook. The next section is answering
5 first questions in part A about FB group and writing. Then, challenges of using FB groups for writing are explained which is answering item questions number 6 and 7 in section A. the last section is Facebook group and affective domain which is answering questions number 8, 9 and 10 in section A about the effect of Facebook group on their affective domain.
Demographic Data
There are twenty females (70%) and 10 males (30%) participants who participated in the FB group which responded to the questionnaires. All participants are in the age of 19-21 years. The samples are taken from all English department students who participated actively in FB group. In term of their language proficiency the average scores of participants Toefl proficiency taken from their Toefl test as an entrance test of Al-Qolam institute are 400 to 450. Then, their writing test range from 70-80. From the students English proficiency, therefore it can be seen that they have good capability of English mastery with 20 students (70%) of them scores 74, 5 students (15%) scores 80 while the other five students (15%) scores 70.
Usage of Facebook and Facebook Group From the general questions which ask whether participants have Facebook account or not, the result shows that 30 participants have Facebook account. For the frequency of FB usage, 10 out of 30 (32%) participants log on FB frequently with selection of option “1-2” per hours per day. 11 out of 30 (33%) participants select option not more than one hour per day while 9 out of 30 (31%) participants log on FB once in two days. It means that most participants participate in FB frequently. All 30 participants are familiar with FB and they all have already joined EDG and the
other FB group like the group of their classmates, family and tourmates. The data shows that all participants are familiar with the features on FB. They have spent much time for reading their friends comment, posting comment there, updating status or the different features like posting photo, sharing links of website and sharing documents. It can be concluded that all participants are the experienced FB user. They have many experiences in using FB. It means that the data taken from the participants related to the usage of FB and their perspective is valid.
FB group and Writing
In section A, there are five items which is asking the participants perception toward FB on writing improvement. The finding shows that most participants agree with the statement. Only some students who state disagree to some items. The data is shown in table 1 below:
Table 1. Students response on FB group and Writing
No Item Disagree Agree 1 Small talk on
FB group makes my thought more ready
10% 90%
2 I study new
vocabulary 12% 88% 3 Spelling
checker helps me to correct spelling error
8% 92%
4 Get better idea from friends opinion
14% 86%
5 After joining FB, I feel easier to write any paragraph
14% 86%
42 Jurnal al–Hikmah vol. 4 no. 2 Oktober 2016 36~46 state that small talk on FB group makes
thought more ready to write. 88% participants agree that they study new vocabulary by reading comment from other friends on FB group. Besides, 92% students feel that the spelling checker feature on FB helps them to correct spelling errors. 86% participant thinks that statements or opinion written by their friends on FB group helps them to get some idea to have better writing. Then, 86% participants feel easier to write any paragraph or essay after joining and participating on FB group.
Generally, 90% participants agree to the statement which is pointing that FB group helps in their writing process. Related to the first research question which is asking on how FB group helps students in their writing process, from the data above, it is concluded that small talk on FB group makes their thought more ready to write. Besides, they study new vocabularies by reading comment from their friends on FB group. In addition, the spelling checker feature on FB helped them to correct their spelling errors. Furthermore, statements or opinions written by their friends on FB group helped them to get some idea and encourage them to write better. Finally, after joining and participating on FB group, they felt easier to write any paragraph or essays.
Based on researcher observation and investigation, it can be said that teachers role as a facilitator to monitor and guide by giving relevance topic is very important so that the discussion on FB group is related with the topic discussed. By having relevance topic, students are trained well to make a good topic in writing any paragraph or essay. Moreover, by using FB group, students are helped by the features on FB which can correct spelling error. When students type incorrect spelling, after knocking space button, red line will appear. If the grammar is incorrect, it is signed with green line. The
feature facilitate students to correct the incorrect spelling by “clicking right”, there will appear some available words which can replace the incorrect word properly. Compared to the writing using pen and paper, when students are not sure with their word, they have to look up in their dictionary. This takes long time and makes students lazy to do it.
The qualitative data gathered from section B item no 1 is digging up the way Facebook group helps in writing any paragraph or essay. Based on data gathered, it is found that all participants have their own opinion to say on how FB group can help in writing any paragraph or essay. The high frequent of comments are saying that FB group increase vocabulary mastery, as a media that train them to be more ready to write.
One participant responded “Facebook group helps me getting some ideas to write well” (P10). Then another participant stated “Facebook group help me in improving my vocabulary (P15). Some other comments given are:
1. Facebook group helps me to organize ideas well. (P07)
2. Facebook group helps me to write better sentence and paragraph (P08) 3. Facebook group helps me enlarging my
knowledge on how to write good sentence and paragraph (P09)
4. Facebook group helps me writing coherence paragraph and related with the topic (P11)
5. Facebook helps me giving correction if there is any mistake of spelling and grammar. (P20)
Hanif Maulaniam Sholah, Facebook Group On Teaching … 43 Challenges of Using FB groups for
writing.
In the questionnaire, item no 6 and item no 7 in section A are the predictions of challenges that might be faced by participants when they are joining on FB group for writing discussion. The first item is asking whether participants read the articles before they share it on FB or not. The second is whether participants are distracted by the features on FB while they are using FB group for their writing discussion. Table 2 elaborates the percentage of statements from the participants on agree or disagree.
Table2. Students perceptions of challenges of using FB group for writing.
No Disagree Agree
1 Share any article that have been read
8% 92%
2 Distracted by other features on FB
20% 80%
Table 2 shows that 92% participants read the articles before they share it on FB group. It means that when students share many articles, they do many readings. This condition helps students to enlarge their background knowledge which is benefitful for their writing process. The more they read the more they are ready to write. Actually, it is in the contrary with the teachers’ predictions where it was predicted that students might not read the articles they share. The data indicates that FB group helps students as well as teacher for their teaching and learning process. Students will choose the material, read it and share it on FB group which is relevant to the topic. Teachers can monitor the students learning and guide them to be responsible with their own learning.
On the other hand, the challenges that teachers and students might face is the distraction by the features on FB group like games, personal chat and etcetera. From the data on table 2, it is shown that 80% participants feel distracted by features on FB group. This distraction made students spending much time doing activity using features on FB group. They did not focus on their main task on FB group for the purpose of writing. This distraction was difficult to prevent since it depends on students themselves to be more discipline. So, students were easy to be distracted by the features on FB group while working on writing task. Teacher role can be a motivator for their students. When teacher motivate students to be more discipline, it is expected that students can manage their priority to do while using FB.
In section B, item no 2 is asking about the problems in using FB group for the purpose of writing. In this section, each student gave their opinions related to the problems of using FB group. Generally, they shared about the internet connection. Each student had different internet connection. Students who had high speed of internet connection could join the FB group better than those whose internet connection was slow. In addition, the distraction on FB like some viruses made the computer cannot run well. The mentioned problem is difficult to overcome since different students have different access of internet in their own home or outside school. Therefore, teacher must take note and makes sure that students are given more time to comment or give feedback on FB group discussion to overcome bad factor like bad internet connection. Some other participants responded related to the problems of using FB group for the purpose of writing as follow:
44 Jurnal al–Hikmah vol. 4 no. 2 Oktober 2016 36~46 2. When there are too many ideas given, it
is difficult to choose the appropriate idea to write for the relevance discussion (P27)
3. The space to write is limited (P28)
Facebook group and affective domain The last three questions in section A find out the answer of the third research question, to know how FB group influence the affective domain of students in term of writing. Question number 8 investigates whether students feel comfortable posting their ideas or opinions on FB group or not. Item no 9 investigates whether students feel encouraged by their friends to like and comment any ideas posted by their friends on FB group or not. Item no 10 investigates whether students prefer discussing issues or topics on FB group instead of in a classroom session.
The data of students’ responses in form of percentage are shown in table 3
Table 3. students’ perceptions of FB groups effect on their affective domain
No Disagree Agree
8 Feel
comfortable 9% 91% 9 Feel
encouraged 3% 97% 10 Prefer
discussing on FB group
40% 60%
The participants cumulative percentage agreeing to item no 8 and 9 is higher than cumulative percentage agreeing to item no 10. In item 8, 91 % participants agree that they feel comfortable posting ideas or opinions on FB group. 97% participants feel encouraged by their friends to like and comment any ideas posted by their friends on FB group. 60% participants prefer discussing issues or topics on FB group. However, 40% participants prefer discussing issues or topics in classroom.
This data gives a fact that a lot of number of students are slowed down with the discussion on FB group compared to the actual discussion in classroom where teacher can give feedback directly and another students can add on immediately.
In section B, item no 3 investigates whether FB group can increase students motivation and confident to write or not. 25 out of 30 participants responded that by participating on FB group could increase motivation and confident to write. Below are some comments of their justification: 1. Yes, I am motivated to write because my
writing will be read by my friends (P16) 2. Yes, I feel motivated to write after I get
feedback from my friends (P22)
3. Yes, when other “Likes” my comment. (P24)
The data above gives the insight that high number of participants are motivated and confident to write. The feel that their friends were watching them can increase their motivation well to write better. The positive feedbacks from their friends are valuable to keep them confident to write again and again. When their comments were liked by their friends, it boost their confidents, encouraged them to participate actively in a group because their comments were appreciated by others. However, 5 out of 30 participants stated that the participation on FB group did not increase their motivation and confident. They demonstrated that:
1. No, I still feel no improvement (P25) 2. No, I don’t like discussion on this media
(P27)
3. No, writing on FB group just wasting time (P28)
4. No, I only use it for entertainment (P29) 5. No, discussion on FB group have many weakness such as bad internet connection and some distracted features (P21)
Hanif Maulaniam Sholah, Facebook Group On Teaching … 45 group for the purpose of writing. It seems
that they prefer another learning way to improve their writing. P25 feel no improvement although he has used FB group for discussion. It seems that FB group does not suit with his learning way. P27 demonstrated that he prefer another way of learning to using FB group. P28 feel that writing on FB group just waste the time. He prefers spending more time to write in actual paper. It can be at home or at school. P29 considered FB group only as an entertainment. He just feels entertained by using this media. P21 get many weaknesses by joining on FB group such as bad internet connection and any distracted features. He prefers to have discussion on classroom where he is not distracted by any features on FB or internet bad connection.
Conclusion
From the perception of 30 participants about FB group usage, most participants stated that FB group helps students to be more ready to write because they have small talk on FB group before actual writing. In addition, they also responded that spelling checker feature on FB group help them to correct spelling error. Besides, participants also thought that the ideas or opinions commented by their friends on FB group helped them to get some ideas to have better writing. The positive responses were expressed by participants that they feel easier to write any paragraph or essay after participating on FB group. They said that many new vocabularies were learnt through FB group discussion.
On the other hand, teacher guide is badly needed although actually students do independent learning. Here, teacher functions as facilitator which leads students to write the relevance topic. So, the discussion related to the topic is maintained well. Students are also trained
to write a good topic in order to be able to write good paragraph or essay.
However, by joining FB group, students faced some challenges which lead into the problem. The challenge which is predicted by teacher resulted positive progress where students read the materials before they share it on FB group. The more they share, the more they read. It really helped them in improving their background knowledge by reading many articles. The problem which came to the students is the distraction of the features on FB group like game and chat. Here, teacher functions as motivator which warns students how important the usage of FB group for the purpose of writing. Teacher can motivate students to stay focus on FB group discussion. It is expected that students can manage their priority to do while using FB.
Another problem was technical problem which can be solved by students selves such as bad internet connection, and some viruses on computer infected by viruses from Facebook website. For the bad internet connection, teacher can give more time for students to overcome their bad connection problem. So that all students still be able to participate on FB group discussion.
46 Jurnal al–Hikmah vol. 4 no. 2 Oktober 2016 36~46 comment in a long time. They feel wasting
time.
About the confident and motivation, they said that FB group can increase their confident and motivation. Finally, it can be concluded that FB is really helpful for students to improve their writing skill. This media can be used to teach writing since it is good media for teaching writing. However, due to many challenges and problems possibility caused by this media, teacher should take a note the way to solve it. It is recommended that further research could focus more on the challenges of using FB group for teaching writing which look into the perception of teachers. Researcher also suggest to the further researcher to conduct experimental research design to know whether FB group is effective or not to apply.
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