d. The practice of peer feedback allows students to receive more individual
comments as well as giving reviewers the opportunity to practice and develop different language skills
2. Disadvantages
a. Some students believe teacher feedback is more qualified
b. Most peer responses focused on product rather than the processes of writing, and
many students in L2 contexts focused on sentence- level errors local errors rather than on the content and ideas
J. Conceptual Thinking
According to the writer, writing is an activity for expressing someone‟s personal thought towards something, someone, and so on. Moreover, writing is a skill
that quite challenging for language learners to master because they need to know some information about the organization of idea, the appropriate language use, the
grammar, etc. EFL learners need a media that they can use for practicing, reviewing, and discussing their writing with the teachers or the other students without anxiety
and shyness. Therefore, a Facebook may be a new media that they can take advantages of to learn English and increase their writing skill.
The most successful social networking site is Facebook.
33
This Web site has hundreds of millions of users and it is an enticing way for students to form an online
community. One of the problems, however, is the possibility of privacy infringement as students get more confident in their English writing skills and become more open
to talk about their private lives online. Not only that, but also students can practice their English writing skills everywhere. It may be necessary for teachers and students
to discuss some ground rules for using Facebook before starting to use it. Besides,
33
Robert Chatrand
, “
Social Networking for Language Learners: Creating Meaningful Output with Web 2.0 Tools”, Knowledge Management E-Learning: An International Journal 4, No.
12012, p. 99.
students can do peer assessment in thei r friends‟ writing and it can be seen by the
whole students that join on the FB group. It is, however, an excellent way to communicate as the content that is posted to the site may motivate learners to share
ideas and thoughts that would be very difficult to duplicate in a classroom setting.
K. Relevant Previous Study
The findings of “Effects of Using Facebook as a Medium for Discussions of English Grammar and Writing of Low-
Intermediate EFL Students” by Suthiwartnarueput and Wasanasomsithi in Electronic Journal of Foreign Language
Teaching showed a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the pre-test and the post-test t = 6.65, p = 0.00. Most common topics of discussion
involved sentence structures, followed by word meanings, parts of speech and then relative clauses. It was found that English grammar was worth promoting for
discussions on Facebook because there were correlations between the gain scores in the grammar and writing parts at the significant levels r = 0.399 in the pre-test and r
= 0.859 in the post-test.
34
The students also had positive attitudes toward using Facebook as a means of learning grammar and writing. As an alternative learning
tool, Facebook provided them a convenient and attractive means to engage in discussions with the teacher and other users who had better grammatical knowledge.
In addition, “Students‟ Attitudes towards using Social Networking in Foreign
Language Clas ses: A Facebook Example” by Eren aims to investigate students‟
attitudes towards use of social networking sites, Facebook in particular, in language classroom.
35
This study was carried out at a university in Gaziantep, Turkey with 48 undergraduate students who were enrolled in one year compulsory English
preparatory class. The research design included a 5 point Likert-type questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. It was found out that students have a very positive
attitude towards the use of Facebook activity as a supplement to language classroom,
34
Suthiwartnarueput and Wasanasomsithi, op.cit., p. 194.
35
Eren, op.cit., p. 288.
but traditional classroom based language learning still remains a backbone for language education.
Furthermore, “The Effectiveness of Facebook Groups on Teaching and
Improving Writing: Students‟ Perceptions by Yunus and Salehi indicated that this study attempted to investigate the
students‟ perceptions on the effectiveness of Facebook FB groups for teaching and improving writing.
36
The authors saw a need to carry out this study as it provides a platform to discover pedagogical implications
that would benefit the Y-generation in terms of improving their writing skills in a Malaysian ESL context. The respondents of this research comprised 43 third year
students completing their bachelor‟s degree in TESL, in the Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia UKM. The students‟ perceptions were measured
through a questionnaire comprising 10 close-ended items and 3 open-ended ones. Respondents were required to participate in a Facebook group created by the
researchers. The Facebook group, called „Write Out Loud‟ was hosted by Facebook here: http:www.facebook.comhome.php?sk=group_193133474042344ap=1. The
findings showed that „Facebook groups‟ is an effective tool in improving the students‟ writing skills, especially in the brainstorming of ideas before the actual
writing. The results of this study may be beneficial to ESL educators in incorporating ICT into their teaching repertoire.
In contrast, “The Effectiveness of Using ICT Information Communication
and Technology on Studen ts‟ English Achievement” by Mardi a skripsi at UIN
Jakarta showed that the result of this research using ICT is more difficult than using non-ICT.
37
So, the students‟ English scores taught by using non ICT are better than those who were taught by using ICT. In other words, the null hypothesis is accepted
or there is no significance influence of using ICT in teaching English. This research used a Quasi-Experimental study which applied pre-test and post-test in both
36
Yunus and Salehi, op. cit., p. 87.
37
Teni Mardi, “The Effectiveness of Using ICT Information Communication and Technology on Students‟ English Achievement”, Skripsi, Jakarta: UIN Syarif Hidayatullah, 2011,
not published.
