Enhancing the Tenth-Grade Students’ Writing Skill of Descriptive Text by Using Instagram-Based Writing Exercises

Abstract

This classroom action research was intended to enhance the X IPS 2 students' writing skills of descriptive text by using Instagram-based writing exercises. Based on the interview conducted with the English teacher, X IPS 2 was chosen as the participant of this research because this class had the lowest score in writing skills. Based on the interviews, we suspected the traditional media (worksheets) the teacher used was less interesting so that the students did not participate more in the teaching and learning process. Thus, they missed some exercises aimed to help them improve their writing skill. Instagram was chosen to assist students in enhancing their writing skill since it became a popular social media especially for teenagers. Besides, it also provides some interesting features. They can post a picture on Instagram and use the caption feature to practice their writing. Through Instagram, students can practice their writing and enhance their writing skills everytime and everywhere. Moreover, hashtag feature helped them to find some good writings of other Instagram users so that they can learn to write a better writing. This research was done in one cycle. It consisted of three meetings where the first and second meetings were used for the implementation of the action. Then, the last meeting was used for the writing test. There were criteria of success determined in this research. It was at least 75% of the students achieved the standard minimum score and at least 75% of the students actively participated in the teaching and learning process. The result showed that the percentage of the students’ writing achievement test improved from 34.2% in pre-action to 81.5% in post-action. The use of Instagram really affected the improvement of the students’ writing achievement. This significant improvement was done since Instagram has strength in making an enjoyable learning activity where the students found new learning environment. They were actively participated during teaching and learning activities. They also listened to the explanation about descriptive text on Instagram very well. It helped them easily understand the material so that they were able to write a good descriptive text. Furthermore, the result of the students’active participation improved from 73.6% in meeting 1 and 89.4% in meeting 2. Thus, it can be concluded that Cycle 1 was successful in enhancing the students’writing achievement and students’ active participation because the percentage of both criteria for success was more than 75%. The action was stopped because the results of the writing test and the observation achieved the minimum scored required. Based on the results above, it can be concluded that the use of Instagram could enhance the tenth-grade students’ writing achievement and their active participation. Therefore, it is suggested for the English teachers to use Instagram as an alternative media in teaching writing to involve students to actively participate in the lesson. Besides, it is expected that the result of this research can give further information for future researchers who want to conduct similar research with different language skills, such as to enhance the students’ reading comprehension achievement. Furthermore, future researchers are suggested to conduct similar research with different levels of students, different schools, and also different types of text.