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question, that is, what constitutes good and bad perception. The readers will have clear description about how one person can be categorized to have good or bad perception.
Then, the researcher will review the characteristics of the students. This discussion is needed to know the students’ characteristics that lead to good perception or bad
perception. In addition, the researcher will also discuss nature of Internet in education, especially the nature of Internet in learning to write. This discussion is needed to know
what the characteristics of the use of Internet in learning to write that lead to good or bad perception. The researcher will also review the characteristics of writing
proficiency, because this study also concern about students’ perceptions on the Internet’s contributions toward their writing proficiency.
A. Theoretical Description
This part presents some theories as the references in this study. As has been stated above, the researcher will discussed four elements which is important to be
reviewed in order to answers the problem formulation. Four elements that are going to be discussed in detail are: Perception, Students’ Characteristics, Internet in Education,
and Writing Proficiency.
1. Perception
Firstly, the researcher is going to discuss about perception. The discussion of perception is needed because this research aims to know what the students’ perceptions
of the use of Internet in writing VI class are. The discussion about perception is also needed to answer the first question that the researcher have made as the guideline to
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answer the problem formulation. The researcher will discuss what constitutes good and bad perception.
Here, the researcher will review the perception theories in order to specify the area that the researcher is going to discuss. In this section, the researcher will discuss
what perception is. The researcher also discusses the factors that influence someone’s perception.
There are several theories about perception. Robbins 2001: 121- 122 says, “Perception can be defined as a process by which individuals organize and interpret
their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment”. This statement is supported by Borger and Seaborne 1982: 126. They state, “Perception is
an awareness of the environment, through which a person processes incoming sensory data in certain way to arrive at useful impression of his surroundings”. Mozkowitz and
Orgel 1969: 158 argue, “Perception is a global response to a stimulus or a set of stimuli”. Kreitner and Kinicki 1992: 126 add, “Perception is a mental and cognitive
process that enables people to interpret and understand the surroundings”. From those definitions, perception is viewed as the responses to a stimulus or to
the surroundings through their mental and cognitive processes. Those responses occur in people’s awareness to the stimuli for people get the incoming data from the stimuli
through their sensory receptors. Then, these responses will be interpreted as meaningful information about the stimuli and so called perceptions.
Robbins 2001:122 adds that, “Perception can also be defined as conscious mental processes of observing, viewing, responding, and understanding, in which
someone gives a meaning on the stimulus he receives”. Perception does not solely involve sensory processes for it is also a mental process. In addition, Hardy and Heyes
