ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 320 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi The Correlation between the Use of Social Media and Academic Writing Mastery of the English Education Students Rizky T. Sari, Rita Hayati, Lingga A. Suganda University of Sriwijaya, Palembang, Indonesia linggasuganda@fkip.unsri.ac.id Abstract The objectives of this study were to find out: (1) the social media which is the most frequently used by the English Education Study Program students, (2) the correlation between the use of social media and academic writing mastery of the students, and (3) the contribution between the use of social media and academic writing mastery of the students. Thirty five students were chosen as the sample by using purposive sampling method. The data were collected through questionnaire and documentation. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient was used to analyze the obtained data. The result showed that there was a significant correlation between the use of social media and academic writing mastery of students of English education study program (𝜌-value 0.048). The contribution of the use of social media to academic writing mastery of the students was 11.4%. Instagram has become one of the social media which is frequently used by them. Keywords: academic writing; correlation; social media; students Manuscript submitted: 28 August 2019 Manuscript revised: 28 September 2019 Accepted for publication: 15 October 2019 Introduction Writing is one of the language skills taught at school, and it is an essential activity for students. Asrifan (2015) states “Through writing assignments, the students can express their ideas, respond to other‟s ideas, tell stories, and convey information, then they are expected to be able to compose well-organized writing” (p. 244). However, writing is as one of the English skills which is sometimes claimed as difficult and complicated by students. This idea is supported by Musabbihin (2017) who explained that one of the most difficult skills is writing since people have to think creatively and express their feeling in a good way when they begin to write. In university level, especially in English Education Study Program, a common type of writing that students have to write and master is academic writing. Academic writing is a writing style used in formal essays, paper, and analysis paper/essay. The use of formal language and a logical structure that should be supported by evidence are required to form academic writing. Supriyadi stated that academic writing ability is considered to be the most important aspects which must be learned by students, especially Indonesian EFL students since they have to fulfill many academic requirements at lengths such as writing book, observation report, and thesis (as cited in Husin & Nurbayani, 2017, p. 238). In addition, Husin and Nurbayani (2017) state, The Ministry of Education and Culture issued a requirement from which each university student is required to write a final academic report. This report includes an undergraduate thesis as one of the research forms undertaken by an undergraduate ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 321 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi university student in accordance with some certain standards and processes. These standards and processes are the cornerstones for any undergraduate student to fulfill one of the requirements to be a bachelor in a certain field of study (p.238). In order to produce good writing academically, many students still get difficulties on identifying the correct and/or suitable context, vocabulary and grammar needed to form a good academic writing. This statement is supported by Ariyanti and Fitriana (2017) who said that the clarity of meaning, the implementation of grammar and vocabulary usage variations, the writing groove, and the application of writing scientific paper technique are the most common problems that students face in writing. Similarly, Abbas (2017) found that in writing an essay, students faced difficulties in terms of using the correct grammar, choice of word, and writing mechanics such as punctuation and capitalization. However, in this digital technology era, students can improve their writing skill through social media such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and others. They can take so many benefits from social media in order to gain their vocabulary, grammar, and other knowledge. Boyd and Ellison (2007) define social media as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. Briefly, social media can also be defined as an online communication tool which can be used to get and to share information with others. Social media has become a part of people's lives, especially for the millennial. It has been growing rapidly from time to time all over the world. Social media is not only used for gaining information but also used for communicating with other people around the world. In addition, Hasnain (2015) states that because of the development of technology and an increase in internet usage, social media has become a part of our daily lives. Social media can help students and young generation to gain knowledge and improve their academic achievements if they use it in a positive way. There are many kinds of social media found and used nowadays. Dewing (2012) states that social media includes Blogs (Wordpress, Tumblr, and Blogger), Wikis (Wikipedia), Social bookmarking (Digg), Social network sites (Facebook and LinkedIn), Status-update services (Twitter), Virtual world content, and Media-sharing sites (YouTube and Instagram). Those kinds of social media can be helpful for people especially for students to improve their academic achievement if they can use the social media positively, for instance by following an Instagram account and watching YouTube channel that provide education contents. Improving students‟ academic writing mastery can be gained not only from conventional face to face activities in the classroom but also from the integration of social media usage outside the classroom because social media can be accessed easily through smartphone and computer as Blood states that there are online blogs which are available on World Wide Web and thus the English learners may get help form it while sharing information. In fact, there are many ways to learn English such as digital technology tools to learn a language. For example, they can use computers, mobile phone, and internet to help them learn language easily (Khan, Ayaz, & Faheem, 2016, p. 590). However, Karadkar (2015) claims that students are becoming entrapped by playing social media today as seen in various study reports. They spend too much time playing it then they neglect the optimal learning process. Meanwhile, in students‟ lives, the most important things are studying, learning good habits, and expanding knowledge. There are some studies that discussed the negative use of social media for students learning especially writing. According to Patriot and Perkins, social network sites are not encouraging proper grammar usage. For example, Twitter only lets people post tweets of 140 characters. It ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 322 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi means that the users rarely write complete sentences, and usually the results of their writing are in fragments or in a different post. Therefore, the short character affects the ability to write correct sentences. This also causes the poor word choice which forces students to use slang and abbreviations to keep the text short. However, this had led to some students using this form of writing in their formal writing (Harris & Dilts, 2015). On the other hand, Belal (2014) found that group discussion in social media can help students to enhance their writing as well as their speaking. In group discussion the teacher and the students can exchange their ideas and share course-related materials. Similarly, Bouhami (2016) conveyed that EFL learners have different strategies to learn new words and to overcome the difficulties that they face in improving their vocabulary in which the use of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Skype and other websites is claimed to be helpful in improving their vocabulary and learning new words through communicating with their mates or English native speakers. Additionally, Ramdhany (2017) found that the EFL university students have high interest in learning vocabulary through Instagram because they feel are engaged in learning vocabulary. They are interested in learning vocabulary because they like to follow more than one English account on Instagram such as @mydictionary and @englishfun. The students agreed that it can help them to develop vocabulary and know more about English. Furthermore, students of English Education Study Program in Indonesia universities must take writing courses as compulsory subjects during their study. The writing courses usually start from the second to the sixth semester, in which the material gradually become more complicated from just writing simple and complex sentences, to writing single paragraph, to writing an essay, and lastly to writing academic article. Besides, the preliminary additional data related to the population of this study about the daily use of social media by these students show that most of the students use social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp. They usually use social media for entertainment but sometimes they use it for education. For example, some of the students use it for learning English especially in writing skill in the classroom because the lecturer always gives them assignments and instructions through Facebook because she applies Facebook as a media in her teaching academic writing class. From the information above, the writers were interested in doing this study in order to find out (1) the kind of social media which is the most frequently used by the English education study program students, (2) the correlation between the use of social media and academic writing mastery of the students, and (3) the contribution between the use of social media and academic writing mastery of the students. Literature Review Academic writing mastery Writing is a process of sharing information, message, ideas, or thoughts in grammatically correct sentences. According to Valdes (2018), Academic writing is characterized by evidence- based arguments, precise word choice, logical organization, and an impersonal tone. It means that academic writing is very different from personal writing in word choice and logical organization. Academic writing is writing that is based on a process of reading and evaluating formal sources of information. Academic writing is the process of taking the academic writing of other people and also it depends on sources of information that are believable. According to Collins and O‟Brien (2003), Mastery is an instructional strategy in which students are expected to reach a certain level of proficiency. Students study material at their own pace, receiving the assistance they need in order to meet the predetermined level of mastery, which is typically set at 80 percent on an objective test. Besides, mastery can be defined as ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 323 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi showing mastery of a language or skill. Students show that they have learned and understood the language or skill and have no difficulty on using it. Academic writing mastery can be defined as successfulness of individual in English academic writing. The students should understand and master the way to create good writing based on the structure and the aspects of the writing. The structure is a very important thing in order to create a good academic paper or essay. There are three common structures in academic writing such as the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. In order to write well and minimize the chance of being misunderstood or misinterpreted, a writer should consider some aspects of writing. According to Jacobs, there are five aspects of writing namely content, organization, grammar/language use, vocabulary, and mechanics (as cited in Negari, 2011, p.302). Social media Social media is the latest online communication tool which allows users to share information with others. Similarly, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) said Social media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Additionally, Boyd and Ellison (2007) explain, “Social networking sites are web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (p.11). Besides, there are so many kinds of social media which are so popular. There are six different types of social media, namely Collaborative Project (Wikipedia), Blogs and Micro blogs (Twitter, Tumblr), Content Communities (YouTube and Slideshare), Social Networking Sites (Facebook, Instagram), Virtual Game Worlds (World of war craft), and Virtual Social Worlds (Second life)” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p.60). The effects of social media In this technology era, social media is not only used for having fun but also for learning a language. Everyone who uses social media will get many impacts on using it, but it also depends on how they use it whether for entertainment or for education. According to Raut and Patil (2016), social media is usually used by students for many reasons such as for entertainment, for study purpose since social media provides any data you want very easily and quickly in a second. Furthermore, Grace (2014) explains that there are some pros of using social media in the classroom, such as; (1) increasing student collaboration, (2) encouraging more participation, (3) being useful for homework help, (4) sharing resources quickly when using social media in the classroom and (5) helping parents, teachers, and students all keep in touch on the same page. In addition, Emmanuel (n.d) mentioned that students can experience the broadness of knowledge through social media use since there is so many general information about English, for example about grammar and English vocabulary. Besides, social media sites have been recognized as one of the most important resource avenues for education today. By using social media, students can improve their English and expand their vocabulary by searching English material on the internet, by watching some videos on YouTube that related to the English, and by reading English short text or poem in Instagram so that they can increase their English ability. Therefore, it can be concluded that social media will give some positive impacts on students' English skill such as communicating and writing skill. On the other hand, Sakkir, Rahman, and Salija (2016) found that using social media during the teaching and learning process make the students not focus on learning because they are just busy with their Facebook. Besides, using social media in the writing English classroom can ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 324 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi disturb students' concentration because they always want to use electronic social media for other activity. Therefore, the use of social media in the classroom can interfere with concentration and make students do not focus to finish their task. Methods Research design This study applied a correlational design. It was used to measure and to describe the correlation between two variables where the criterion variable was the students‟ academic writing master, and the predictor variable was their use of social media. The data were collected by distributing a questionnaire and using documentation of the students‟ final examination academic writing scores. Research site and participants This study was conducted at English Education Study Program in one of the universities in Indonesia. The total number of the population was 72 sixth semester students. By using purposive sampling technique, 35 students were taken as the sample of this study because they used Facebook in their writing class. They consisted of 7 male and 28 female students. Data collection and analysis Two instruments were used in this study, namely a questionnaire and the documentation of the students‟ final examination scores in their Academic Writing class. The writer used a ready- made questionnaire which has already been used by Emmanuel (n.d). He has checked the validity by giving some copies of the questionnaire to some lecturers in the department of English Language in Tai Solarin University of Education in Ijagun, Nigeria for their comment. Then, it was given to the research supervisor to get approval. Besides, he also tried out the questionnaire to 30 students in Unique Group of School, Ikeja. The questionnaire is considered valid and reliable because it has been validated by the experts in the field of education, and it has been tested with the result of the reliability of 0.83. It consists of two sections. In section A, there were 6 questions, while in section B, there were 20 statements. The questionnaire was rated by Likert-scale key, which had four options: SA meaning strongly agree (rated 4), A meaning agree (rated 3), D meaning Disagree (rated 2), and SD meaning Strongly Disagree (rated 1). However, because the statements number 12 and 19 are negative, so it had different options: SA meaning strongly agree (rated 1), A meaning agree (rated 2), D meaning Disagree (rated 3), and SD meaning Strongly Disagree (rated 4). To collect the data of students‟ academic writing mastery, the writer used the documentation of the students‟ final examination writing scores by copying them from the administration officer of the Study Program. Correlation analysis was used to find out the correlation between two variables. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient on SPSS 23 rd software was used in this study to find out whether or not there was any significant correlation between the two variables. The regression analysis was applied to find out whether or not the use of social media significantly contributed to the students‟ academic writing mastery. Findings The kinds of social media used by the students The data obtained showed that 16 students (46%) used Instagram, so it is found as the most frequently used social media. Five students (14%) chose Facebook, another five students (14%) chose YouTube, seven students (20%) chose Whatsapp, and only two students (6%) chose Twitter. ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 325 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi Figure 1. The percentage of social media that is frequently used by the students Figure 2. The percentage of the kinds of social media operated by the students Figure 2 shows that there were 35 students (100%) who operaed Facebook and 30 students (85%) who operatde Instagram. Then, YouTube was operated by 28 students (80%) while Twitter was used by 12 students (34%) and 17 students (49%) had other social media. Figure 3. The percentage of the number of social media used by the students Figure 3 shows that there were 30 students (83%) who had more than 3 social media, 4 students (14%) only used 3 social media, and 1 student (3%) only operated 2 social media. Besides, there were no students who only use 1 social media. 46% 20% 14% 14% 6% Instagram Whatsapp YouTube Facebook Twitter Facebook Instagram YouTube Twitter others 100% 85% 80% 34% 49% 83% 14% 3% 0% more than 3 only 3 only 2 only 1 46% 43% 8% 3% more than 5 hours 3-4 hours 1-2 hours less than 1 hour ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 326 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi Figure 4. The percentage of how long the students stay on social media per day Figure 4 shows that 16 students (46%) stay on social media for more than 5 hours per day, 15 students (43%) stay on social media for 3-4 hours per day, 3 students (8%) students stay on social media for 1-2 hours per day, and only 1 student (3%) stay on social media for less than 1 hour per day. Table 1. The result of the questionnaire SA A D SD Aspect 1: Social Media and English Communication Skills 1. Social media helps my written English. 23 12 0 0 2. Social media changes the way people communicate and share information. 24 11 0 0 3. Social media improves the way people interact globally. 25 10 0 0 4. Social media improves my knowledge about new terminologies in English. 16 19 0 0 5. Social media helps vocabulary development. 19 16 0 0 Aspect 2: Social Media Language Style and Student’s Writing Skills 6. Social media influences my way of writing. 22 12 1 0 7. Social media provides accessible tool for helping students to work together to create their own meaning in academic subjects. 13 20 2 0 8. Social media broadens students' knowledge. 19 16 0 0 9. Social media introduces students to modern writing pattern and techniques. 20 15 0 0 10. Social media language style influences students' mode of writing. 16 18 1 0 Aspect 3: Type of Social Media and English Ability 11. Students improve English grammar knowledge. 21 13 1 0 12. Using internet abbreviations sometimes affects my academic writing in a negative way. 5 16 11 3 13. Some social media influence students positively without any constraints. 11 19 5 0 14. Social media sites have been recognized as one of the most important resource avenues for education today. 15 17 3 0 15. Students enjoy Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, and Instagram more than any other social network. 27 6 2 0 Aspect 4: Social Media and English Competence and Performance 16. Social media improves English written skills. 23 11 1 0 17. Social media helps my writing of English. 19 15 1 0 18. I derive most of the terms I use from social media. 16 16 3 0 19. Students are only exposed to the fun and entertainment side of social 10 14 7 4 media. 20. Social media improves English competence and achievement. 23 11 1 0 Total 367 287 39 7 % 52 41 6 1 ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 327 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi Figure 5. The percentage of the questionnaire in section B Based on the data from Table 1 and Figure 5, it can be concluded that 32 students (93%) gave positive responses toward the use of social media for their academic writing, while three students (7%) of the class gave negative responses toward the use of social media for their academic writing. The results of the students’ academic writing mastery Table 2 shows the score distribution of the students‟ writing. There were 10 students (29%) who were graded excellent and 25 students (71%) who were graded good. Fortunately, no students were graded enough, poor, and failed. Besides, the mean score of the students‟ academic writing was 84. It can be concluded that the students' academic writing scores were in the good category. Table 2. The score distributions of students‟ academic writing Students’ Score Grade N % 86-100 Excellent 10 29 71-85 Good 25 71 56-70 Enough 0 0 41-55 Poor 0 0 0-40 Failed 0 0 Totals (N=35) Note. Average score = 84 (Good) The correlation between social media usage and academic writing mastery To know whether there was any significant correlation between social media usage and the students‟ academic writing mastery, the Pearson Product Moment Correlation was applied as seen in Table 3. Prior to the correlational analysis using Pearson Product Moment Coefficient, according to Achyar, there are three things that should be considered. First, the variables should be in interval/ratio data. Second, the data should be in normal distribution. Third, the total number of the sample should be at least 30 people as samples in a research (as cited in Anggraini, 2017, p. 33). Total number of sample in this study was 35 students. Before conducting the correlational analysis, the data had been put in interval data by converting them by using MSI (Method of Successive Interval). In addition, the normality test result of Shapiro-Wilk test shows for the questionnaire that 𝜌-value is 0.243, and the result of Shapiro-Wilk test for the academic writing scores shows that 𝜌-value is 0.455. Because the 𝜌-value (0.243) and (0.455) were higher than 0.05, the two data sets have the normal distribution. Strongly Agree, 52% Agree, 41% Disagree, 6% Strongly Disagree, 1% ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 328 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi Table 3. The correlation between social media usage and students‟ academic writing mastery Social Media Academic Writing Social Media Pearson Correlation 1 .337 * Sig. (2-tailed) .048 N 35 35 Academic Writing Test Pearson Correlation .337 * 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .048 N 35 35 *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). The result revealed that the Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient was 0.337 and the 𝜌- value was 0.048. Since the 𝜌-value (0.048) was higher than 0.05, it means that there was a significant correlation between the use of social media and academic writing mastery of the sixth semester students. According to Davis the correlation between the two variables was in moderate (0.337) (as cited in Kotrlik & Williams, 2003, p.2). The contribution of social media usage to the students’ academic writing mastery To know whether there was any significant contribution of the use of social media to the students‟ academic writing mastery, the Simple Linear Regression Analysis was conducted. The contribution of the students‟ use of social media toward their academic writing mastery is presented in Table 4. It shows that R 2 was 0.114, which means that the contribution of the use of social media toward students‟ academic writing mastery was 11.4%. Table 4. The contribution of social media usage to the students‟ academic writing mastery Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 .337 a .114 .087 2.472 a. Predictors: (Constant), socialmedia In addition, since the questionnaire on the use of social media had four aspects including Social Media and English Communication Skills, Social media Language Style and Student‟s Writing Skills, Type of Social Media and English Ability, and Social Media and English Competence and Performance, the writer wanted to know the contribution between each aspect of the questionnaire and the students‟ academic writing mastery. The writer used Simple Linear Regression Analysis to find out the contribution. The following tables show the result of contribution of each aspect to students‟ academic writing mastery. ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 329 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi Table 5. The contribution of social media and english communication skills to the students‟ academic writing mastery Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 .326 a .106 .079 2.483 a. Predictors: (Constant), aspect1 Table 6. The contribution of social media language style to the students‟ academic writing mastery Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 .227 a .051 .023 2.558 a. Predictors: (Constant), aspect2 Table 7. The contribution of type of social media and english ability to the students‟ academic writing mastery Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 .238 a .057 .028 2.551 a. Predictors: (Constant), aspect3 Table 8. The contribution of social media and english competence and performance skills to the students‟ academic writing mastery Table 5 shows that R square was 0.106. It indicated that the first aspect in terms of social media and communication skill explained 10.6 % of the variability in students‟ Academic Writing Mastery. Table 6 shows that R square was 0.051. It can be concluded that there was 5.1% of contribution of Social Media Language Style toward the students‟ Academic Writing Mastery. Table 7 shows that R 2 was 0.057. It indicated that the third aspect in terms of Type of Social Media and English Ability contributed 5.7% toward students‟ Academic Writing Mastery. Table 8 shows that R square was 0.020. It can be concluded that aspect four Social Media Language Style contributed 2% to the students‟ Academic Writing Mastery. Model Summary Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate 1 .142 a .020 -.010 2.600 a. Predictors: (Constant), aspect4 ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 330 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi Discussions Based on the findings of the study, several points need to be discussed. First, the results of the students‟ academic writing show that 29% students were in excellent category and 71% students were in good category. It can be inferred that the students had performed well in their academic writing, especially in writing essay. This can be related with the role of the teacher in this class as the one who chose to integrate Facebook in her class as the teaching appropriate teaching methods and/or teaching media to support her teaching and learning process. It is in line with Kudryashova, Gorbatova, Rybushkina, and Ivanova (2015) who give detailed analysis on the role of a teacher in the modern educational environment who justifies the need to reconsider instructional strategies that follow the shift provoked by a growing access to professional knowledge and revision Meanwhile, from the result of the questionnaire, it is assumed that the social media affect the students‟ English language in terms of social media and English communication skills, social media language style and students‟ writing skills, type of social media and English ability, social media and English competence and performance. The results showed that 90% students gave positive response to the first aspect, that is „social media and English communication skill‟. Then, there were 87% of the class gave response that the use of social media can affect students‟ writing skills. The next aspect is social media and English competence and performance as the result showed that there were 81% of the class chose this aspect. Besides, there were only 80% of the class gave positive response that type of social media can affect English ability. In addition, based on the findings, there were 32 students (93%) gave positive responses toward the use of social media in their academic writing, while 3 students (7%) of the class gave negative responses. It can be concluded that the students assumed that social media can improve their academic writing. This shows that the perceptions play an important positive role in giving motivation in their learning process as Lamatokan (2018) claims that students‟ perception of their teachers‟ teaching styles and learning strategies which covers attitudes, behaviors, interaction, method, teaching material and media during the teaching and learning process influenced the success of students in developing English skills. Meanwhile, the result of the use of social media and academic writing mastery was that they have any significant correlation since p-value (0.048) which was lower than 0.05. It can be implied that the students‟ academic writing was affected by the use of social media. This statement was supported by Shaver (n.d) who claims blogging, as one of the utilizations of social media related to writing, allows the opportunity to keep an electronic diary of the events the student experiences. This is an excellent way for students to keep track of their writing so that they can assess their improvement over time. Furthermore, O‟Keeffe and Clarke-Pearson claim that the use of social media gives students the opportunity to improve their learning since they have the chance to share knowledge with one another and conduct group projects more efficiently (as cited in Hashem & El-Badawy, 2015, p.48). This shows that social media can be advantageous in education especially in writing skill as Yunus and Salehi (2012) found that the use of Facebook is helpful for students to brainstorm ideas before they do their writing. Finally, the result of regression analysis showed that the contribution of the use of social media to students‟ academic writing mastery was 11.4% leaving 88.6 % of unexplained factors. Sakkir, Rahman and Salija (2016) conveyed that students use Facebook and other social media not only for accomplishing tasks, but also for developing writing skill because the students can learn how to express their opinion in writing by reading and giving comment on another students‟ posts so that they believe that Facebook can be used as an online environment to learn English easily. Moreover, Facebook gives the students an opportunity to develop their knowledge about text review since students can state and make their arguments through ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 331 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi commenting on Facebook (Inderawati, Pratama, & Loeneto, 2018). In line with this, Cheung, Chiu, and Lee had conveyed that the students‟ confidences were developed by writing and reading English, communicating with other users of Facebook and commenting in their Facebook (as cited in Inderawati, Pratama & Loeneto, 2018, p. 51). In this study, the writer found that the students who got writing scores in good and excellent category were influenced by that 11.4% and 88.6% was by another factors, for instance, personality factor that comes from the students themselves such as motivation and students‟ prior knowledge. According to Tawalbeh and Al-zuoud (2013), “Students‟ prior knowledge in writing has a strong effect on the way they realize writing because having prior knowledge can help students overcome their writing errors to successfully do their researches. Recalling this knowledge will have beneficial effects on students‟ writing performance” (p. 157). It can be concluded that the students‟ prior knowledge can give positive influence to the students‟ writing too. Moreover, the sixth semester students of the English Education Study Program had previously had three writing courses. It means that the students had learned how to produce good writing. Equally important, according to Brown, “Motivation is probably the most frequently used catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of virtually any complex task such as instrumental and integrative orientation, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation” (as cited in Herdi, 2015, p. 19). It means that motivation can make students creative and can stimulate them to write in order to improve their quality in writing a text. Furthermore, the highest aspect in the questionnaire that contributed to the students‟ academic writing mastery was the aspect of Social Media and English Communication Skills in terms of written English, the way people communicate and share information, the way people interact globally, knowledge about new terminologies in English, and vocabulary development. This result was conveyed by Sanchez, (2017) that the use of social networks have advantages for learning a foreign language such as English. For instance, students can practice the language at any time and place and in different contexts, they learn how to express themselves in writing, they make an effort to be understandable and learn from their interlocutors, sometimes they must learn how to write briefly. Finally, the students become more confident using the language because of practicing it constantly. Conclusions and Recommendations The results of this study showed that there are at least more than three social media including Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, and WhatsApp, which were used by the students, and Instagram is the most frequently used one. There was a significant correlation between the use of social media and students‟ academic writing since the 𝜌- value (0.048) was lower than 0.05. It means that the use of social media by the sixth semester students affected their academic writing at the English Education Study Program. Moreover, the result of the regression analysis showed that the contribution of the use of social media to the students‟ academic writing mastery was 11.4%. Therefore, EFL students are suggested to understand how social media can benefit and expand their knowledge and start using social media in positive ways in order to improve their English skills, especially the academic writing skill since there are so many kinds of social media that offer English material to help and support them if they are used wisely. While, lecturers should explore more on the development of digital technology including the social media and should guide the students in using social media wisely in order to improve their students‟ English skills by integrating the use of social media in their teaching and learning process. ISSN |2355-3669| E-ISSN |2503-2518| Volume 6| Number 2|December 2019| 332 Available online at http://jurnal.radenfatah.ac.id/index.php/edukasi References Abbas, M. F. F. (2017). Assessing and Evaluating EFL Learners‟ Ability In Writing Academic Essay. ISELT. 5, 257-261. Anggraini, F. (2018). 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