Utilizing Facebook To Improve Students’ Skill in Writing Descriptive Text (An Action Research at Grade 7 Students of SMP Negeri 1 Surakarta in the Academic Year of 2011/ 2012)

Oleh :
Irene Mutiara - K2208021 - Fak. KIP

This research aims to describe whether and to what extent the use of Facebook improves the students’ skill in writing descriptive text and to analyze what happens with the classroom situation when Facebook is used to teach writing skill. The method used in this research was a classroom action research. The research was conducted in two cycles at the VII C grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Surakarta at the academic year of 2011/2012, from February 11th 2012 to March 3rd 2012. The research data were collected using observation, interviews, field notes, questionnaire, and tests (pre-test and post-tests). The qualitative data were analyzed through some steps proposed by Burns, they are: assembling the data, coding the data, comparing the data, building interpretations, and reporting the outcomes. Meanwhile, the quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. The research findings show that the use of Facebook could improve students’ writing skill of descriptive text and classroom climate. The improvement of students’ writing skill includes: (1) students found ideas and more supporting details to their writing; (2) students wrote almost 4 paragraphs with more than 30 sentences on it; (3) students used more varied vocabularies; (4) students made less mistake in spelling and punctuation; (5) students could write cohesive and coherent descriptive text. Meanwhile, the improvement of classroom climate includes: (1) the students were much easier to control. They were noisy in several conditions, but it was not distract the whole activity; (2) the students used computer dictionary to help them writing; (3) the students found more inspiration to write in their Facebook page; (4) the students didn’t mind to publish their writing and even they like the commenting session. In addition, the final result of the tests showed that their scores were also improving. The mean score increases from 72.61 (pretest) to 79.32 (test in cycle 1) and 83.82 (post-test) which was above the minimum standard of the school (Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimuml/KKM): 81.00. Related to the improvement in the classroom situation, the research findings showed that: (1) the students had greater interest on the lesson; (2) they paid full attention during the class; (3) the students enjoy the lesson; (4) they asked the writer to teach using Facebook longer. It can be concluded that Facebook are able to improve the students’ writing skill and the classroom climate. Considering the inspiring result of this study, it is suggested that other teachers can utilize Facebook to overcome the students’ problems in learning writing and be able to develop other media.