IMPROVING STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL THROUGH TWITTER

By

Yudi Juniardi and Ria Utami

Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa University

Abstract

Technologies are at the core of the transformations taking place in society throughout history: all past significant technological developments triggered important social change. This condition influences both students and teachers to use technology for learning process. However, the mastery of technology is still not balance for some students. Some students master well in operating high-technology media for learning process. On the other side, some students do not understand how to empower the technology for their learning process. Therefore, the researchers think that it is urgent to do the research about the relation between writing on Twitter and writing for English lesson. The researchers will try to focus on the students’ writing skill development through writing on Twitter. Based on the explanation above, the researchers decided to conduct the research entitled Improving Students’ Writing Skill through Twitter. There are two problem of this research : (1) How is writing on Twitter applied to improve students’ writing skill? (2)Does writing on Twitter significantly improve students’ writing skill? Therefore This study is conducted to discover: (1) The implementation of using Twitter for improving students’ writing skill; (2) The improvement of students’ writing skill through writing on Twitter. This research remarked that Twitter can be implemented as a media in teaching writing and it can improve students writing skills.

Key word: Writing skill. Media, Technology, Twitter

I. Introduction

Many schools in Indonesia use English as main language to deliver the material. Those schools adapt the system that is called as Sekolah Berbasis Internasional (SBI), or in English is known as International Based School. The system determines the standard for the students’ ability in English. The students must have basic ability in English before they enter the school. However, there are some cases where the students are found that they are still lack in one or some skills in English.

Besides the ability of English, SBI schools emphasize on usage of technology in classroom. Both the teachers and the students must aware about technology, such as computer, internet, or other gadgets that support the learning activity. Olson (1994) believed that technologies are at the core of the transformations taking place in society throughout history: all past significant technological developments triggered important social change. This condition influences both students and teachers to use technology for learning process. However, the mastery of technology is still not balance for some students. Some students master well in operating high-technology media for learning process. On the other side, some students do not understand how to empower the technology for their learning process.

As an example, the researchers ever found the similar case with the students of SMPN 1 Kota Serang. The students were very excited to use Twitter on their daily communication with their friends. They shared their idea about anything on Twitter very often. Sometimes they used English for tweet-ing. However, the researchers analyzed that some of their writing in English lesson homework or quiz was not too good. More than half of students in classroom had to get remedial for writing quiz. Therefore, the researchers thinks that it is urgent to do the research about the relation between writing on Twitter and writing for English lesson. The researchers will try to focus on the students’ writing skill development through writing on Twitter. Based on the explanation above, the researchers decided to conduct the research entitled Improving Students’ Writing Skill through Twitter.

The researchers formulate the problem as follow: first, how is writing on Twitter applied to improve students’ writing skill? And last, does writing on Twitter significantly improve students’ writing skill?

The method of the research is qualitative by applying classroom action research. This research was conducted on April 2nd until 10th 2013 in SMPN 1 Kota Serang, toward 27 students of grade 8A. This research was divided into two cycles, with twice treatments for each cycle. The purpose of this research was to find out the improvement of students’ writing through writing on Twitter. There were two questions that must be

answered in this research, and the researchers used some data technique to discover the answer, they were conducting pretest, posttest, observation, and documentation.

2. Literature review

Definition of Writing

As one of the important skill in language learning, writing is considered as a hard skill to be mastered, since it is included as the productive skill. That assumption is supported by Myers (2005: 2) who said that writing is a way to produce language you do naturally when you speak. Writing is speaking to others on paper or on a computer screen and writing is also an action or process of discovering and organizing your ideas, putting them on a paper and reshaping and revising them. From that definition, it can be concluded that to master in writing, people need to master in other skills. Furthermore, it is explained that there are some processes to create good writing. Those considerations can be the reasons why mastering writing skill is very difficult.

According to Peters quoted by Couture’s (1986: 169) writing is curiously solitary form of communication, addressed to an absent and often unknown reader. It can be remarked for the case of writing on Twitter, which the students usually share their idea to many people without knowing who will read their writing.

Importance of Writing

Sebranek (2001) stated that there are several reasons that make writing an important part of our life. Those reasons are explained as follow:

To become a better thinker and learner To share your experiences To improve your performance in school To get you ready for the next step To shape a meaningful life

From those proposed points, it can be remarked that more people write, wider their knowledge because they are stimulated to create an idea to be written or share what they have got in their daily activity by keeping communication with other people. Besides, if we relate the important of writing generally with the writing activity on Twitter, it can be found that writing on Twitter is such kind an activity that make people to think more, since they need to respond or plan what they want to share. So, it can be assumed that writing on Twitter is also quite important.

Types of Writing

When people said that learning writing is hard, it might because they were not in the right level to study about it. We must consider the level of someone’s proficiency with the types of writing process that they should have. Brown (2004: 220) divided writing based on its types, which is also related to the level of proficiency. The types of writing that was made by Brown is explained below.

Table 1. Writing types by Brown (2004: 220)

Types of Writing Characteristics

Imitative Basic skill: spelling of words, punctuation, writing of brief sentence. Meaning is not a primary concern.

Intensive/Controlled Production of vocabulary and grammar structures “up to the length of a sentence” within a context. Meaning becomes somehow important.

Responsive Higher discourse level, up to the length of paragraphs. Learners are able to produce narrations, descriptions, reports, summaries, etc.

Extensive At the peak of a learner’s performance. Learners/users should be ablel to produce essays, term papers, research project report, or even theses.

Since Brown (2004: 220) did not categorize the types of writing based on the age, it can be predicted that junior high school students must be in intensive level. It is seen from some writing activities that are usually conducted in classroom, such as arranging jumbled sentences, or answering simple questions. So, the researcher decides to focus on giving the material about intensive writing for this research. However, the learning process should be able to drag the students for not only mastering the intensive writing level, but also for gaining the ability to next level of writing, it is responsive writing.

Notion of Sentence

According to Oshima (1983: 121), a sentence is a group of words that you use to communicate your idea in writing or speech. It is a complete, independent unit of thought and consists of two main parts: a subject and predicate. Meanwhile, Loos et al. (2004: 1), stated that a sentence is a grammatical unit that is composed of one or more clauses. It points that sentence is a grammatical units includes, at minimum, a predicate and an explicit or implied subject and express a preposition. Furthermore, Meyers et al. (2005: 155) defined that sentence makes a complete statement or asks a question. Statements here consist of two parts: the subject and the predicate, and questions reverse the order of the subject and the verb. Often the verb is split, with the helping verb preceding the subject and remainder of the verb following the subject. Many questions begin with question words such as who, where, what, or why. The researcher found that students’ writing skill can be analyzed through asking them some simple or complex sentences through Twitter.

Kinds of Sentence

According to Oshima and Hogue (1983: 122), basically, there are four kinds of sentences in English, as follows:

Simple Sentence

Simple sentence is an independent clause. Beside that, according to Hogue (1996: 18), a simple sentence is a sentence that has one subject-verb combination. And also, Leech et al. (2003: 473) stated that a simple sentence is a sentence that has just one (main) clause. Therefore, a simple sentence is a sentence that consists of subject and verb which has meaning without coordinating conjunctions and sentence connectors.

Compound Sentence

Compound sentence is two or more independent clauses joined together in any one of the three ways: by coordinating (and, but, so, nor, or, yet, and for), by a sentence connector (nevertheless, otherwise, accordingly, consequently, thus, therefore, besides, moreover, also, in addition, then, meanwhile, likewise, however, in contrast), and by semicolon (;)

Complex Sentence

Complex sentence is the combination of an independent clause and a dependent clause.

Compound – Complex Sentence

Compound – complex sentence is a combination of two or more independent clauses and one more dependent clauses.

From the explanation above, the researcher finds that there will be any possibilities to ask the students to write various sentences on Twitter. More vary they can arrange the sentence, higher writing skill they show.

Teaching Writing for Junior High School Students Junior high school students can express themselves about topics that are important to them. These can

include their families, special events in the community, topics in social studies, and many more. There are some tips that can be used to gain the students’ interest toward writing.1. Invite the students to write freely, without worrying about correctness. Students who are just learning to

write can build language structures and expression, even if they use imaginary spellings and strange punctuation.

2. Invite the students to dictate stories to a "scribe," who could be the teacher, a volunteer from the community, or an older student. (Remind the learner to be patient and speak slowly.) The young storytellers can then illustrate their stories. This exercise builds a bridge between speaking and writing.

3. Ask the students to write about their own lives and experiences. Whether it's a holiday, or their experience with their grandparents, or any other experience outside the classroom, young writers write best when they write about something they know well.

4. Encourage writers to keep journals or diaries. Writing is one way of structuring thought. Journal writing is important because it's not public. It can represent, for the writer, a chance to write in the most free way.

5. Give writers the chance to revise. Professional writers may spend up to 85 percent of their time revising their first drafts. In classroom writing assignments, it's vitally important to encourage students to write freely, in their own words, and to try to cover all their thoughts on a topic.

6. Publish writing to make it meaningful. Learners' writing can be "published" on the walls of the classroom. It can also be shared with learners in other classes, with families and the community, and with others.

The tips above show that teaching writing for junior high school students must be able to less the anxiety by using some interesting ways, and must be started from the easy topics that are related to their daily activities.

Technology for Education

According to Khvilon (2011: 4), some of the experts believed that using some variation of media can interest the students to study excitedly and fun. The development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be used as one of the facilities for education. Information and communication technology, or ICT, is defined as the combination of informatics technology with other, related technologies, specifically communication technology. Many countries now regard understanding ICT and mastering the basic skills and concepts of ICT as part of the core of education, alongside reading, writing and numeracy. Many schools in Indonesia nowadays try to implement the mastery on ICT to be a part of process of education, such as media to give or to submit the assignments, or as one of supporting facilities that ease the learning process, such as using power point or videos. To empower the ICT, both students and teachers must know how to operate the technology. However, in the real situation, the students understand more rapid about the technology than the teachers do.

Some technologies that are rapidly adapted by the students are social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. However, as the time goes by, Facebook is almost left out, and is replaced by Twitter. Many students write everything so often on Twitter. If the students intensively write on Twitter, it can be assumed that they are interested with the Twitter itself. There must be something on Twitter that makes the students interested writing on it. It can be caused by the layout, the features, or the topic that exist on Twitter, such as some trending topic. This condition is actually can be potentially used as one of the learning method. It can gain the excitement of students to write, especially in English subject for writing skill.

The Use of Social Networks on Language LearningThe use of SNS (Social Networks) has been growing over the last few years. According to Selwyn

(2007), SNS have potential for formal and informal learning. Pedagogically, there have been many attempts by instructors (and even by students) to bring learning activities into the online social world, thereby forming communities of practice in which shared interests is the basis of their being. Those statements have been proved by the fact in some schools in Indonesia. There are students and teachers, and even the school itself have an account on some SNS, such as Facebook and Twitter. They have possibility to have communication and sharing information through those SNS, includes learning process. The school or group of student sometimes makes a Facebook group or Twitter account using the name of their community. All those activities make the communication easy. Another opinion to support the situation above is from Curtisa et al (2010) that said when studies of SNS concluded that these sites have the ability to increase social interaction within corporations, as well as between individuals and institutes, provide a channel for direct communication with individuals of interest, and assist in helping with finding information and broadening one's knowledge and ties.

According to Mason & Rennie (2008), popularity of SNS in formal as well as informal educational settings and beyond them is constantly growing, thereby providing influential tools for building e-learning communities (e.g., of instructors, learners, system designers, decision makers, etc.), in addition to potentially transformational technologies for higher education. If the technology rapidly gains, it means that the students and the teacher must be able to follow its growing. ICT education and training must be a focus as important as the other subject in classroom, which is learned formally, or outside the classroom informally. It can make the students and the teachers ready for the possibility of higher e-learning process.

Research conducted in 2008 with current Deakin University undergraduate students found that they were interested in using social software within their learning environment but that little was currently used within the

current teaching and learning system environment (Leitch & Warren, 2008b). Some research into the use of Facebook by educators found that students believed utilizing Facebook would produce “higher levels of motivation and affective learning and a more positive classroom environment” (Mazer et al, 2007). It also can be seen when many students of SMPN 1 Kota Serang spend their time to write down on Twitter. It is assumed that Twitter is quite addictive and interests the students to involved on some interaction inside it.

Definition of Twitter

According to Barush and Hershkovitz (2011: 3), the majority of Internet users seem to be using the Internet in a rather passive-like mode, as content consumers, while only a minority functions as contributors. A minority of the latter actually supplies content, ideas and opinions on a regular basis, in concurrence with the social aspects of the Web nowadays, stating that the Web is actually a creation of the people living and acting within its boundaries. Those conditions obviously happen on Twitter, where there are three kinds of account, they are personal, mass, and anonymous account. Personal account is only made for sharing individual information, such as someone’s daily activity, which people do not have special purpose when they write down the Tweet. Mass account is usually made for special purpose, such as advertising, gathering the members of certain community, or sharing the news. On the other side, anonymous account is made for sharing any random ideas, such as quotes, jokes, riddles, and etc. Personal accounts is counted as the majority users because they usually become a ‘consumer’ or known as follower of mass or anonymous account. While mass and anonymous accounts are counted as minority users because they tend to provide the information for the personal account than receive the information from any other accounts.

Features of Twitter

Twitter provides many features on it to ease its users’ communication. Barush and Hershkovitz (2011: 4) gave the detail of the features on Twitter as well: In Facebook pages, the main platform for discussions is the page “wall”, in which the account holder – and upon the page's privacy definitions, also its “likers” – can post messages, each of which may be responded to by posting comments. Main messages as well as their comments may receive “like” votes. In addition, any liker can add to a page photos, albums (sets of photos), hyperlinks of any kind, favorite pages (of Facebook pages only), videos, and events. In Twitter, the platform is simpler: the basic message or text unit is limited to 140 characters and posted to the activity area of the account. Every account within the network has other accounts it is “following” and accounts which are its “followers”. Within each message, referred to as “Tweet”, the user can insert symbols activating unique mechanisms: “Hash tags” (#) enable adding additional context and meta-data to tweets, and also forming a “grouping” of all tweets sharing the same hash tag title; “Reply” and “Mention” are tweets that contain the symbol “@” immediately followed by a Twitter username(s) (i.e. account name), enabling the mentioned user(s) to see these tweets in their account view; Retweet (RT) is a convention for sharing a tweet of an account you are “following” with your own “followers”. Links to web pages or photos may be inserted as well.

WikiHow gives the detail about some features of Twitter as explain below.

1. Making a tweet. If you want to let your followers know what you are doing, type it in the 'What's happening' text box and then click on the 'Tweet' button. Note that tweets are limited to 140 characters or less; otherwise, the "Tweet" button will go into a minus. As you type, a countdown is offered to help you keep track of the character count of your tweets. The allowed characters are in gray, then the last 10 go red, and then a red minus symbol appears when you are past the zero (0) indicator.

Picture 1 How to make a tweet

2. Use hashtags. Prefacing a word with a '#' will create a hashtag. A hashtag makes a certain word easily searchable. Some Trending Topics will include hashtags, thus making it easier for users to tap into a Twitter-wide conversation regarding a single matter of interest.

Picture 2 Example of Hastaghs

3. Check the replies or mention from your followers that are directed at you . Click '@Mentions' to see if there are any replies to any of your 'tweets'. When tweeting, using '@' followed by a username (with no spaces) in your tweet will send a mention to the user you choose. For example, '@username' will send a mention to 'username', and the entire tweet will show up in his '@mentions' section.

Picture 3 Example of Retweet

From the explanation above, it seems that it is quite applicable. It is proved by many students often do tweet-ing in high intensity. Sometimes the students only tweet-ing for sharing their experience. They also like to ask their friend by mention-ing them. They also often do retweet-ing some anonymous accounts which share joke or quote tweet. Beside, they actively make a connection with new people by doing following and following back each other account. From that explanation, it can be concluded that using Twitter has been a massive activity on people routine, which there is a possibility to be a media for learning, which is called as e-learning.

Moreover, Cha (2010) specified some features on Twitter that has more influence to communication value. First, users interact by following updates of people who post interesting tweets. Second, users can pass along interesting pieces of information to their followers. This act is popularly known as retweeting and can typically be identified by the use of RT @username or via @username in tweets. Finally, users can respond to

(or comment on) other people’s tweets, which we call mentioning. Mentioning is identified by searching for @username in the tweet content, after excluding retweets. It is analyzed how those features obviously can gain students’s interest to write the respond for the tweet spread on their page. Beside, it can be seen that the students will be more engaged on the communication when they do mentioning with other people.

Writing on Twitter

Writing on Twitter can be considered as intensive writing, since it is just in form of a phrase or a sentence, and sometimes the writing does not always have a explicit meaning, even it can have multiple meanings which people cannot obviously predict.

Leitch and Warren (2011) stated that as a mass communication channel, micro-blogs are not edited by reviewers or editors prior to publication. Unlike a full-fledged online diary or weblog, micro-blog entries are short and swift. Users could post micro blog entries through web browsers, web-based applications, mobile applications, or via emails and SMS text messages. It can be seen that Twitter is actually the same with diary or journal, which gives the users a freedom to express their idea. It can be predicted that there must be an exploration of topic when the language learning conducted on Twitter. However, there will be also a possibility of writing error when the students post their tweet.

Casanave (1993) provides some useful advice for successful journal writing tasks. When selecting readings, professors should choose interesting topics to suit their students, they should have a purpose in mind, and they should also provide general journal writing guidelines. These should include the purpose of the writing, the minimum length (in words), how often journals have to be turned in, and the evaluation criteria. The opinion above can be related to the format of writing on Twitter, which Twitter is similar with journal and also has interesting way for writing, the topics are sometimes provided, which is called as hash tags, the length is limited to help the writer write the main idea compactly.

There are many techniques that can be used to provide feedback. Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994 in Larsen-Freeman, 2003) offer a scale, which goes from more explicit techniques to more implicit ones. At the implicit end of the continuum, students are asked to find their errors and correct them on their own The opinion above can be applied when the teacher conducts learning writing on Twitter where the teacher can give the feedback both explicit and implicit ones. The explicit technique can be such telling the students the wrong part of their writing, while the implicit ones can be such asking the other question indirectly or writing clarification statement indirectly.

In addition, Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994 in Larsen-Freeman, 2003) also suggested that professors should try to create a supportive learning atmosphere in the classroom, which will be conducive to learning. Students have different personalities and learning styles; therefore, professors have to get to know their students and provide feedback selectively. Based on suggestion above, learning on Twitter can support the supportive learning atmosphere and the teacher can also selectively providing the feedback, since Twitter is flexible and takes the students interest easily, so it will also create conducive situation.

Styles of Writing on TwitterAccording to Mollet et al (2011: 4), there are three style of writing on Twitter. They are explained below.

1. Substantive tweets are written in complete sentences, and are always intelligible on their own. This style can appear formal or corporate so is often used by large organizations or news outlets,

2. The conversational style is much more fragmented and relaxed, the opposite to the substantive style, with users sharing stories from a variety of sources, engaging in conversation with others, and making more use of abbreviations. The content is eclectic and covers professional and personal interests, so is popular with individual tweeters from all backgrounds.

3. A middle ground or compromise style is feasible and is widely used in academia. Many think-tank, blogs, magazines, and companies also adopt this style of tweeting, as it takes the best of the substantive and conversational styles. Again, this tweet ends with a shortened URL.

From the explanation above, it can be seen that those three styles can be applied on this research, where the researcher will ask the students to write for both substantive and conversational tweets, and a middle ground tweet can be the additional technique to be used.

Related Research

The researcher tried to show some previous research about learning through Twitter in order to compare and also to support this research. The first research was conducted by Baruch and Hershkovitz (2011). This

research was about examining cases in which Social Networking Sites (SNS) are being utilized for scholarly purposes by higher-education institutes in Israel. The research addressed questions regarding content patterns, activity patterns, and interactivity within Facebook and Twitter accounts of these institutes. Research population comprises of 47 Facebook accounts and 26 Twitter accounts of Israeli universities or colleges and/or sub-divisions within these institutes. In addition to descriptive statistics, all tweets within Twitter accounts were analyzed and classified into categories, based on their content, for better understanding of how they can facilitate informal learning. This study implies that the potential of SNS as means of sharing academic knowledge in higher education institutes in Israel has not been actualized yet, but is indeed being explored by these organizations as well as by the community. It is found that some categories of analysis about content patterns, activity patterns, and activity patterns can also be implemented for this new research. However, the researcher will try to focus on the usage of Twitter by personal accounts owned by junior high school students.

The other research was conducted by Boreau et al (2009) that described how was the usage of Twitter for students of English at the Distant College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. They analyzed the students’ messages and show how the usage of Twitter trained communicative and cultural competence. The result of that research showed the effects of Twitter usage on English communication as perceived by the students that were investigated by two questions. About 70% of students stated that they find it easier to communicate after using Twitter (30% completely agreed, 40% somewhat agreed). About one quarter (24%) had a neutral opinion and 4.88% (= 4 students) disagreed. No student completely disagreed. When asked whether they felt less shy when communicating in English after their Twitter usage, a similar but slightly less positive distribution arouse with 28% completely and 34% somewhat agreeing. 31% were neutral and 6% somewhat disagreed. Again, no student completely disagreed. All in all, these figures show a positive view on the effects of Twitter with respect to communication. It is proved that there is a possibility for language learning to be conducted through Twitter.

If those previous researches are compared with this research, it will be found that there is similar point and different point. The similar point is about the analysis toward the writing on Twitter which will be focused on content and grammar that will be used for daily communication function. While different point for each research is about the account that will be analyzed. The first research analyzed the college/institute’s accounts, while this research will analyze the students’ account.

3. Result and Discussion

a. Result of Post Test in Cycle One

The researchers conducted the posttest through Twitter. The instruction was about writing an activity plan or schedule for next Sunday. The students were suggested to make their writing as detail and long as possible. The researchers assessed students’ grammar and content aspect on their writing. In this test, the highest score was 80 while the lowest one was 60. Since the minimum standard score was 80, so there were only four students passed the posttest. The students’ scores in this test were dominated by 70 with the mean score was 71.22.

Table 1.The Score Improvement in Post Test of Cycle One

MeanScores

Pre-TestPost Test

(Cycle One)Gain Percentage of Improvement

62.59 71.22 8.63 13.79%Based on the tables above, the gain between the mean score in pretest and posttest cycle one was 8.63.

The increasing number of students’ mean score for about 13.79%. It showed the improvement of students’ writing skill from the pre-test in grammar understanding aspect and vocabulary enrichment that was used to develop their writing content. The researchers found five findings after the cycle one conducted in two times. The findings were considered from the students’ point of view and the technical point view. From the students’ point of view, the researchers found that the students enjoyed the learning process by using Twitter as their learning media. They looked to do the exercise excitedly and actively though the class became crowded and noisy. The researchers considered that as positive attitude since the students could finish their work. They also stated that they still wanted to use Twitter for the next meeting.

Besides, the some students showed improvement on their writing by posting more than one tweet on the posttest session. However, there were few students who misunderstood about the instruction. They actually must write their plan on next Sunday by themselves, but they instead had conversation with their friend talking

about their plan on next Sunday. It was concluded that the researchers needed to explain about the instruction further and clearer in the next meeting.

The other aspect found by the researchers was about the technical point of view. As long as the implementation of the treatment in two meetings, there was internet connection problem. This problem affected the learning process. The students had to lose their time to finish the task, and it sometimes annoyed the students’ mood. Based on that case, the researchers considered to find alternative about internet access. It could be about finding the good internet provider or asking the permission to school to use computer laboratory. Besides, the observer noted that the researchers could provide the various material for the next meeting to prevent students’ boredom and to find further benefit from Twitter for teaching learning activity.

In conclusion, the implementation of the research in cycle one showed the good result in improving students’ writing skill. It could encourage the students to explore their writing length, though there were some grammatical error, such as confusion about when to use ‘will’ or ‘to be going to’ for certain condition. Overall the students showed their understanding about the grammar by making the writing topic related with the instruction. The improvement of students’ writing was also shown by the students’ writing mean score in posttest one. The mean score showed the improvement compared with the mean score of pretest.

b. Result of Post Test in Cycle Two

After conducted the treatments of cycle two, the researchers held the post test of cycle two. The students were asked to write a recount text on Twitter in form of biography about Celine Dion. They were allowed to post their writing as long as they could. The researchers would assess their writing based on the content and grammar.

Based on the comparison between the mean score in posttest of cycle one and mean score in cycle two, the gain between those mean scores was 10.63. The students’ mean score increased 14.92%. In this test, the highest writing score was 90 while the lowest one was 70. There were 24 students who successfully passed the standard minimum score. The students’ scores in this test were dominated by 80. Even though the students still made some grammatical error in their writing, they showed the good improvement on their writing skill by making vary discussion about Celine Dion.

Discussion

The researchers divided this part into two major points. The first would be about the overview the research finding after implementing of the research, and the second would be about the result of the research about the usage of Twitter to improve students’ writing skill.

To describe the implementation of the research, the researchers used the data from the observation field notes. This research used Twitter as a media in writing activity. Twitter was used by the researchers to facilitate the students in doing exercise and the test. First, the researchers gave the material both orally and using slide show, and had discussion with the students face to face like the conventional method. Then the researchers gave the exercise and task for the students through Twitter. The researchers wrote the instruction about the exercise and the task on Twitter, and the students did both the exercise and the task on Twitter, too.

Based on the type of the instruction, the students were asked to write short until complex functional text such as message text and recount text. They were able to express their idea as much as possible by writing on Twitter timeline. The students were also able to write interactive writing with their friend through Twitter by using mention and direct message feature. The researchers who acted as the teacher could also give feedback to the students about their writing through Twitter. The researchers also conducted the writing posttest on Twitter. The mechanism of the test was similar with the mechanism in doing exercise or giving the task to the students where the researchers posted the instruction on Twitter and the students did the post test on Twitter in form of the short or complex text.

The result of students’ work in posttest would describe the improvement of students’ writing after using Twitter. Before the research was conducted, the researchers found the problem in students’ writing from the pre observation and the result of the pretest that showed about students’ difficulties in developing the idea and the understanding about grammar use. After the students got the treatment in cycle one, they showed their improvement in writing. The improvement itself was seen by the way the students wrote more than one tweet and they were able to write message to interact with their friends. It showed that they could explore and share their idea better than when they use conventional method in writing class. Further, in the last test the students

got more improvement in their writing skill. Most of the students were able to write a text that had more complex structure. They could post quite long text with various vocabularies to develop the content of their text and they also could use the grammar correctly.

Table 2Writing Improvement in Each Test

MeanScores

Pre-TestPost Test

(Cycle One)Gain

62.59 71.22 8.63

MeanScores

Post Test(Cycle One)

Post Test(Cycle two)

Gain

71.22 81.85 10.63

MeanScores

Pre TestPost Test

(Cycle One)Post Test

(Cycle two)62.59 71.22 81.85

Based on the tables and chart above, the students got improvement of writing skill. Their work in writing was assessed in pretest, posttest of cycle one, and posttest of cycle two. The gain after completion of pretest and posttest cycle one was 8.63, while the gain after completion of posttest cycle one and posttest cycle two was 10.63.

4. Conclusion

The researchers conducted the teaching learning activity using Twitter as a new media to help the students improve their writing skill, since they had difficulties in developing their writing. The researchers got some points of conclusion from the research. Those points were explained in detail as follow: Firstly, Students could use Twitter for their learning activity in writing class well. Their writing skill was improved when they did their writing task on Twitter. The students could develop the content of their writing to be more vary, and could the students could show their understanding toward the grammar use by writing on Twitter. Secondly, Twitter made the situation in learning writing to be more relax and joyful, because they basically liked to use Twitter as their daily communication media and the students felt that using Twitter for their learning media was the new and fresh way to decrease their boredom. As the result, Twitter helped the students to have better English writing skill.

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