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The materials were accessible on teacher blog, so the students might access when they came online. Finishing the note taking, the students had a task to revise
another blog post. They had to revise the use of tenses, punctuation, preposition, and spelling on the post Research Diary, 10112010. The students should
discuss the text in group and report their finding. At the end of the lesson, all groups had found and revised all of the mistakes on the post.
c. Observing the action
1 The first meeting
The crowded situation indicated students’ high enthusiasm toward the lesson. They were so eager to have an internet connection in the classroom during
the lesson and free usage of their laptop. Previously, they never had any task to use the laptop in English class. The students were asked to make groups. They
might decide the members of the groups. It was a good idea to let them choose the member themselves, but there were only 5 male students who did want to join the
other groups. However, the groups were fixed as noted in the diary: Dengan adanya pilihan, siswa menjadi bertambah ribut. Akhirnya saya
putuskan untuk tetap membentuk kelompok yang terdiri dari 4 anggota dan ada seorang siswa laki-laki yang bersedia mengalah untuk masuk ke dalam
kelompok lain Research Diary, 06102010.
The internet connection was firstly utilized for a lesson in this class, but there was a problem with the server. As a result, the learning process could not be
effectively conducted. “Technical problem of the web might happen anytime, especially when the server was lost,” Research Diary, 06102010, so that there
should be another plan to cope with this situation, otherwise the posting on blog would take longer time.
The class situation could not be well controlled yet, the students was in the stage of blog introduction and the problem occurred on the internet connection
made the students dejected. Besides, the students’ euphoria had an effect to the learning focus which was creating an account. There were 3 groups which could
not finish the registration in this meeting.
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Nisa A. Azam
“Kelompok 3, 4, dan 5 kurang berhasil dalam membuat akun blog karena terlalu lama mengakses situs lainnya, sedangkan persiapan grup tidak bisa
dikoordinasi dengan baik. Sambil menunggu pergerakan akses yang cukup lambat, saya meminta mereka untuk menulis dulu materi posting
pertamanya pada program Miscrosoft Word.” Research Diary, 06102010.
As a consequence, they had to continue it in after school. They accessed the other websites when the connection was low so that they did not work maximally.
2 The second meeting
It was found that the students did not like to have any printed work in this subject. They did not do the task given in the last meeting. Once again, the
problem on internet connection affected the class condition that made the students dejected to access the blog in group. The presence of their English teacher in the
class was very helpful in controlling the students and monitoring the process as noted in Research Diary that “during the activity, Mr. PG accessed students’ blogs
online with his laptop; he also helped me to monitor the students” 13102010. Some students got difficulty in using the features on blog since it was
something new for them. Besides, the blog was set up in English instead of Indonesian. The improvement on students’ effectiveness was indicated when they
kept on the blogging and accessed the other websites after finishing the task. It was noted that:
Pada pertemuan sebelumnya, siswa masih tidak bisa meninggalkan facebook. Sembari mengakses blogger.com, siswa juga mengakses situs lain
terlalu banyak sehingga pekerjaan mereka banyak yang tertunda. Pada pelajaran kali ini, siswa mau menunggu tugas selesai sebelum mengakses
situs lainnya Research Diary, 13102010.
Some of them liked to stay in the classroom and did the task seriously during the recess. There was something unchanged yet, that “the students still gave short
answers when I asked them, although it seemed that they were so interested in what they were doing” Research Diary, 13102010. It showed that that the
better strategies in communicating with the students were needed.
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3 The third meeting
Unlike the previous, the students brought the pictures as assigned in the last meeting. They should bring 1 picture each person, but some groups had a
folder and they had not decided which pictures to pick. It made the group to “have longer time in deciding which pictures to do the task on that day,” Research
Diary, 20102010. The students were not sure that the picture they bring would help them to
developed a good paragraph, they said “Miss, ini gimana ngurutinnya. Kan fotonya beda-beda, Miss?” Research Diary, 20102010. Consequently,
although some of them worked effectively, some were still not. They were too busy about the picture editing instead of the paragraph writing.
Because of the condition—that the students couldn’t not completely focus on the task, they asked for dispensation, they asked whether they could
write only 3 instead of 5 sentences. Then, “I allowed them for the first target— students’ willingness—had been fulfilled, other than indicators which were listed
on the lesson plan,” Research Diary, 20102010. The focus was writing in past tense, and some of them not only wrote
simple sentences but also compound sentences. It was mentioned in Research Diary that “I read some sentences written by the students, they were good enough
in using various sentence types. The use of passive voice and compound sentences were vary in such degree,” 20102010.
The writing process took a quite long time since the students had no idea how to start the paragraph, then “I helped them by asking some questions” to
generate the ideas Research Diary, 20102010. In addition, the class condition did not allow the whole monitoring in a sight. When the students working outside
the class wanted to consult the result, they had to wait for the teacher coming from the class. There was 2 groups working in the classroom and the other 3 groups
worked outside the classroom. Thus, the presence of the teacher was so important as noted in the Research Diary:
Selama kegiatan berlangsung, pak PG membantu saya mengawasi siswa dan memberikan bantuan kepada siapa saja yang bertanya. Saya melihat,
beliau juga memberikan saran dan koreksi kepada beberapa siswa secara
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Nisa A. Azam
langsung. Siswa tampak terbantu dengan adanya konsultan saat mengerjakan tugas. 20102010.
Having some students use the translator, it showed that: Beberapa siswa di kelompok ini Siswa A dan B cukup kreatif untuk
memanfaatkan teknologi sebagai penunjang kegiatan belajarnya. Hanya saja mereka menjadi terlalu bergantung pada translator dan kurang
berusaha menulis kalimatnya sendiri Research Diary, 20102010.
Additionally, the students had the interest on this lesson. At the end of the lesson, “they thought that I would not teach them next week. Even, someone
asked, ‘Yaah Miss, berarti besok udah nggak ngajar di sini lagi?’” Research Diary, 20102010.
4 The fourth meeting
Since the very moment before the class started in that morning, the students showed a great enthusiasm in their greeting. They also paid full attention
when the teacher gave a review of previous works and the model of the new material. They did the exercises carefully and could finish it within a short time. It
shows that their understanding of the material had improved having enough model, though some of the posts were still mispunctuated Research Diary,
3112010. Soon after got the worksheet, the students started to write any draft on it.
Some of them made notes on their own papers, then rewrote the complete story on the worksheet. They had various techniques in their writing that differed one to
another. It was also found one student noted all the key words she needed and some important sentences which were then became the main ideas of the story.
Another student asked “Miss, kalau ceritanya lebih dari 3 paragraf nggak papa?” Research Diary, 3112010. It indicates that she had a great interest on
writing, although the time was limited. It seemed that she enjoyed her writing. She considered this as a chance for sharing her experience.
There was one student seemed so serious in doing the writing. She consulted her work to the dictionary. But, she was too shy and did not want to
show her work until it had been submitted as noted in the Research Diary :
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Saya menemukan seorang siswa yang sedikit berbeda. Ketika saya mendekat, dia malu untuk menunjukkan pekerjaannya. Kemudian saya
amati dari jauh, dia jarang bertanya pada temannya tetapi bisa menyelesaikan tugasnya hanya dengan bantuan kamus 3112010.
The class situation was conducive although the seat arrangement was not properly set. All students did the writing in the classroom. Some of them sat in a
group and some other students sat individually. It was noted something different from the previous meeting, “the students tended to translate word per word instead
of the complete sentence using a translator,” Research Diary, 3112010. Most of the students had common mistakes in their writing which were noted in Research
Diary 3112010:
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The sentence construction: I felt so happy I was very happy we felt very titred we were very excited
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The use of ‘this’ instead of’that’
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Students wrote ‘at there’ which should be ‘…there’
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Misspelled the word: ‘and than’ instead of ‘and then’
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The use of preposition of time and place
5 The fifth meeting
The fifth meeting was not in a good condition. This meeting should spend 2x45 minutes, but it started a bit late than it was supposed because the
students had to finish the sweeping first. Moreover, there were 2 students absent in the English class to have another activity held by the school organization.
The students had still wrong assumption about the use of to be and past participle. It was found in their previous works that they wrote passive voice
instead of past tense, for example: -
But Mr. Joko was ordered me to play with my other girl friend,... Worksheet 2B
- Yesterday, I was played footsal with my friends, ... Worksheet 10B
However, they had a better understanding about the use of prepositions. They could actively participate as described below:
Mereka menyampaikan pemahaman mereka tentang penggunaan preposisi hampir bersamaan ketika saya menyebutkan kegunannya pada kalimat.
Seorang siswa bahkan ada yang menjawab dengna suara cukup lantang saat saya menyebutkan penggunaan preposisi tempat “at”. Siswa tersebut
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menyebutkan salah satu penggunaannya pada kalimat yang menunjukkan suatu jalan dan didahului dengan nomor rumah Research Diary,
10112010.
They could keep their attention on the explanation and work efficiently though it was not finished because of the limited time. The students paid full
attention to the lesson besides their good ability to understand the explanation. They even could immediately correct the misspelled word during the explanation.
Taken from the Research Diary 10112010, the students paid full attention, even when there was a slip on writing ‘hari’ became ‘hary’, they immediately corrected
it, “Miss, ‘hari’-nya nggak pake ‘y’, Miss. Itu pake ‘i’.” At the end of the lesson, for the work was unfinished, finally “students’ work were not published, yet I had
observed that most of them had ideas to make the text better,” Research Diary, 10112010.
d. Reflecting the result of the observation
