learning writing are for pursuing advanced subject matter degree in a second language environment as well as for personal improvement educational and or
job enhancement and or interest. Consequently, they will need to write across all three levels of cognitive processing, which are writing to inform, writing to
organize information, and writing for knowledge transforming. Within such writing needs
, students‟ success in mastering the basic skills of sentence and passage writing really determines their further learning of writing skill for more
advanced academic purposes. In addition, Harmer 2007 suggests some characteristics of adult learners;
in that, they can engage with abstract concept, have many life experiences to draw on,
“have expectations about the learning process and already have their own set patterns of learning
”, tend to be more disciplined than other age groups, have rich range of experiences to engage with various learning activities, and
“have a clear understanding of why they are learning and what they want to get out of it
” p.84. Such characteristics expectedly enable the students to engage in various learning
environments, including a CALL environment, such a web-based class, for learning writing.
6. Review of Related Studies
There are a number of studies on web-based writing. In this section, I discuss three studies which are considerably related or have similar area to my
study. I also review two previous research studying
ELTGallery
. The first research was conducted by Chuo 2007, in which the writer
investigated the effects of the WebQuest Writing Instruction WQWI program on
Taiwanese EFL learners‟ writing performance, apprehension and perception of web-resource integrated language learning. Two English classes consisting of 54
junior college students in each were randomly selected as the research participants. Applying an experimental research, one class receiving traditional
classroom writing instruction served as the control group and the other receiving the WQWI program as the experimental group. The findings indicated that the
students in the WQWI class improved their writing performance significantly more than the traditional class students. Further, the WQWI class happened to
experience significant reduction in writing apprehension; no significant difference in apprehension reduction between the two groups was found, though. Moreover,
students had a positive perception of the WQWI program, seeing more advantages than disadvantages of language learning through web resources. The results
indicated that by using the WebQuest model, the integration of web resources into EFL writing instruction was proven effective to improve students‟ writing
performance and offered a positive learning experience to them. This study, however, did not touch upon other Web components, such as either asynchronous
or synchronous interactions among students and between students and the teacher as well as collaborations and discussions among students.
The second research was done by Tsou 2008, studying the effect of a web-based writing program, namely
“My Access”, to the students‟ writing. There were 49 university students of three English writing classes from the southern part
of Taiwan participated in the study. Using ANCOVA, quantitative data in the form of students‟ posttest score were analyzed. As for the qualitative data, student
questionnaire and teacher interviews were gathered and analyzed. The results
showed that the students who used the web-based writing program outperformed those who were in the regular writing group in most variables, especially in
“content”, “development”, and “organization”. Focusing on the writing product, however, this study did not show the interaction and collaboration among
students. Moreover, it was revealed that problems also emerged when using a web-based program as the only instructional media.
The third study was conducted by Shafiee, Koosha, and Afghari 2013. They investigated the effect of conventional, web-based, and hybrid teaching of
pre- writing strategies on ELF learners‟ writing performance. The participants
were four classes of 26 Iranian university students, majoring in English. As the study was an experimental research, the classes received different teaching
delivery modes of pre-writing strategies, i.e. conventional traditional face-to-face in-class learning, web-based full online learning, and hybrid face-to-face class
sessions combined with additional online material teaching, in addition to one class as the control group with no pre-writing material. Using pretest, five
sessions of treatment, and then posttest, the final results showed that the three experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group, which then
indicated the effectiveness of teaching pre-writing strategies. Among all the other groups, however, the hybrid group, receiving a number of class sessions
complemented with additional material online for students‟ independent learning, achieved the best. The hybrid course is the typical of web-based learning as also
applied in Sentence Writing class. Focusing on the teaching delivery and learners‟ written productions, nonetheless, this study also did not explain further about the
actual use of the web-based instruction by the students.
Two previous studies about
ELTGallery
were conducted by Kurniawati 2012 and Dameria 2013. Kurniawati 2012 investigated the effectiveness of
web- based Paragraph Writing class by comparing the students‟ achievement
between the web-based Paragraph Writing class and the regular writing class and also finding out the factors contributing the effectiveness of the web-based
Paragraph Writing class. Based on the experimental research design, the results show that the 2-tailed significance of .003 which indicates that the achievement
on a web-based Paragraph Writing class is better than the regular class. Using the survey design, moreover, the study reveals the high factors fostering the
effectiveness of the web-based Paragraph Writing class are the group work, topic, flexible access, flexible submission and revision, personal page, the use of
computer for writing, rich resources, and plagiarism, as well as the peer comments and corrections. The study, however, did not provide more detailed information
on the use of web and its implication on students‟ learning as well as not yet touch the implementation of the new grammar practice feature.
The second study by Dameria 2013 investigated the implementation of Sentence Writing class, specifically about the learner autonomy of the students
and the effects of the autonomous learning within the class to the student writing achievement. Using the survey research design, the results show the factors of the
web- based Sentence Writing class affecting the learner autonomy are students‟
opinionunderstanding of the web to achieve the goal, knowledge of the goals of materials, knowledge of learning activities, learning process, learning problems,
time management, knowledge of learning progress, learning atmosphere, challenges and motivation, writing progress, and expectations. In addition, the
open-ended questionnaire discovers such supportive environment helps the students improve their grammatical skill and be more responsible with their own
learning. The correlation test, however, reveals that there is no significant correlation between learner autonomy and writing achievement in the web-based
Sentence Writing class with the r value .226 and the sig. 2-tailed value .229. This study, moreover, suggests that learner autonomy is only one of the factors
affecting the student achievement. This also confirms that it thus takes more than learner autonomy aspect to create optimal CALL situations.
B. Theoretical Framework
Based on the theoretical review in the previous section, a theoretical framework of the study is formed. A theoretical framework is important to serve
as the main guidance for a research Creswell, 2003. It contains the concepts and concepts relations which have been clarified in the theoretical review to answer
the research questions theoretically. They are specifically explained as follows. In order to produce L2 writing well, both the higher and lower skills
Richards Renandya 2002 or the micro and macro skills Brown 2004 are needed. Respectively, in teaching L2 writing, both skills must be addressed so that
students‟ composition is not only linguistically well-developed, but also can function well in L2 communication contexts. Concerning sentence writing level,
the micro skills are the ones largely emphasized. In that, sentences should be syntactically well-structured, grammatically acceptable, and have correct
mechanics, i.e. using correct punctuation and capital letters before they are put together to form a well-developed paragraph. In passage writing level, more
aspects are considered than mere the surface level. Clarity and communicative
