1 ELT FORUM 5 (1) (2016) Journal of English Language Teaching http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/elt THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INSTAGRAM WRITING COMPARED TO TEACHER CENTERED WRITING TO TEACH RECOUNT TEXT TO STUDENTS WITH HIGH AND LOW MOTIVATION (The Case of Eight Grade Students in SMP Kesatrian 1 Semarang in the Academic Year of 2015/2016) Gisty Listiani English Department. Faculty of Languages and Arts. State University of Semarang. Aticle Info ________________ Article History: Received in February 2016 Approved in March 2016 Published in April 2016 ________________ Keywords: Instagram Writing, Recount Text, Students with High and Low Motivation. ____________________ Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ This final project is based on a study which attempts to examine the effectiveness of instagram writing compared to teacher centered writing to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation of SMP Kesatrian 1 Semarang in the academic year of 2015/2016. This final project has several objectives; to measure how effective instagram writing is to teach recount text to students with high motivation, to measure how effective instagram writing is to teach recount text to students with low motivation, to measure how effective teacher centered writing is to teach recount text to students with high motivation, to measure how effective teacher centered writing is to teach recount text to students with low motivation and to measure how effective instagram writing is compared to teacher centered writing to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. This study was conducted by using Experimental research with 40 students participated. Those students were divided into experimental and control group. The experimental group was taught writing recount text by using instagram as a teaching technique, whereas the control was taught by using teacher centered writing. Results indicated that the final average score of experimental group was 73. Meanwhile, the control group got a lower average score with 67.15. After calculating the significance of the test, the result of the t-value was 2.210 and t- table was 2.002. With regard to the previous results, it can be concluded that teaching recount text using instagram resulted a better achievement. Besides, the t-value of the post test was higher than the critical value which meant that the difference was statistically significant. Thus, the higher achievement of experimental group indicated that the use of instagram promoted a better understanding for students with high and low motivation which improved the quality of their writing. © 2016 Universitas Negeri Semarang  Correspondent Address: B3 Building FBS Unnes Sekaran, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229 E-mail: unnes_english@yahoo.com ISSN 2252-6706 Gisty Listiani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 2 INTRODUCTION Language has four skills to be mastered. The four skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Those four skills are linked to each other, but many students argue that writing is the most difficult skill to be mastered because of its complexity. However, students must realize the essential role of writing skill. Writing is used when the spoken communication cannot be done in a certain situation. Writing communicates our thought or ideas to be understood by someone else. Thus, in order to get others’ understanding, students must convey their ideas in a good concept and arrangement. It includes the combination of grammar, diction, vocabulary, and also the imagination of the students to make a good writing. In line with this, Heaton (1975: 127) stated that “writing is a task which involves the writers in manipulating words in grammatical correct sentences, those sentences in form of writing which successfully communicates the writer’s thoughts and ideas on certain topic.” In classroom practice, students tend to be unenthusiastic when they are given a command to write and many of them neglect the important role of writing skill due to its complexity. Therefore, as a future teacher, I realize that the problem above must be solved immediately. I got some experiences related to the evaluation of writing skills when I took Language Administration Assessment course in the sixth semester. That subject required me to observe how the teacher compose a test and how students did the test. In this case, my concern is how the students did the test in writing skill. When students were asked to do the multiple choice, there was no problem because they just chose one of the provided options that was right. However, the problem rose when students were asked to answer the essay by making a text that tells about their past experiences. When students were working on their writing, they seemed not understand the structure and the language feature of the recount text. In addition, students also lack of knowledge in using correct grammar and the way of arranging a good recount text. The experience showed that writing skill is still ignored. The reality of this present situation is that writing is not a main aspect in a test. A test tends to use multiple choice form than essay form to measure deep comprehension on the lesson. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons why students are not trained to develop their thought, to express their ideas, or even to practice using correct grammar. Thus, writing should be a habit. Students sould be taught to write something. They can open up their mind by writing, convey their opinion about something, or just tell the readers what they have experienced. The medium must be able to create fun situation in writing class. The point is, if teachers can develop writing as students’ habitual activity, students can find many interesting things inside their writing. To support this goal, I will use social media as a medium because it will provide several supporting aspects to enhance student’s writing ability. Students need such a technology to mantain their attention during the lesson. According to McGraw-Hill, President of Higher Education, Brian Kibby, "Studying effectively – and with the right type of technology – is one of the best ways to ensure that students succeed in class; however, focus is the key!” (Belardi, 2013). Therefore, instagram can be the solution to help students working on recount text. Instagram is a social network based on sharing pictures and fifteen-second videos which can be posted to other social media sites. Students can upload a picture, fill the caption (a description of the picture) in unlimited provided spaces, and give comment to others’ pictures. In addition, there will be a written communication between one student and the others in a limited topic based on the picture uploaded. Starting from this point hopefully the combination between instagram and a good atmosphere of teaching learning process can lead students to the development of their motivation and their ability in writing recount text. Gisty Listiani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 3 REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE There are a number of researchers who conducted the study concerned the method of teaching recount text. The first belongs to Giyatno (2011) who conducted a study entitled Improving Students’ Writing Skill on Recount Text Using Questioning Technique and Facebook Media. The objectives of the study are to identify to what extent questioning technique and facebook media improve the students’ writing skill on recount text and to describe the impovement of classroom situation of the students’ activities in the process of teaching and learning on recount text. The findings showed that the program of improving students’ writing skill using questioning technique and facebook media was successfull viewed from some dimensions: (1) the improvement of structure and vocabulary, (2) the improvement of organizing ideas, and (3) the improvement of using punctuation. Then, the findings revealed that the classroom situation was also getting improved. Then, a study was conducted by Helmi (2012) entitled Improving Students Skill in Writing Recount Text by Using Personal Letter. The objective of the study described the improvement of students’ writing skill after being taught by using a personal letter. The result showed that there was a significance differences between the test result during pre-cycle, cycle I, and cycle II. Students’ score in the pre-cycle test was 55.5, in the cycle I test was 65.7 and in the cycle II test was 72.2. In line with this, the researcher concluded that the medium was very effective and useful to improve students’ skill in writing recount text. Furthermore, the personal letter was also in good design and good theme, so students are more motivated and enjoyed in the learning process. Another literature related to the use of instagram writing to teach recount text is a study conducted by Indah (2010) in her thesis entitled Improving Writing Recount Text by Using Photographs. The findings of this study explained that photographs were able to improve the students’ ability in writing recount text because students got more motivation to develop their ideas, feeling, and opinion. Besides, students were more interested in teaching learning process using photographs than using a conventional method, so that it affected the situation of the classroom to be more fun. Some statements related to the use of teacher centered learning in language class were added by Zohrabi, Ali, and Baybourdiani (2012) in their journal entitled Teacher-centered and/or Student-centered Learning: English Language in Iran. The findings obtained in their research supported the implementation of teacher-centered process for the purpose of developing grammar learning in Iranian EFL learners. The data generated by this study suggested that implementing student- centered activities within a communicative domain would be interesting to both teachers and learners, but could not fulfill the learners’ needs on English education in both communicative and traditional learning. TCL’s results in pre-test were low in comparison to SCL, but there was a steady increase in post-test. Motivation in Learning English Learning a new language is not an easy thing. It is necessary for students to have such motivation to maintain their interest in the process of understanding. The role of their family and school teacher will be so important to keep students’ motivation high. Based on some researchers’ definition, there are some factors which affect the motivation of students in learning English as a foreign language such as parental involvement, teachers, classroom environment, and peers. In discussing the relation of motivation to second-language learning, Nida (1956:16) argued that “motivation” should be conceptualized in terms of an interest in learning particular linguistic skills for specific purposes. He concluded that there are “two fundamental types of motivation which when present to any considerable degree tend to guarantee a high measure of success in language learning”, the first is desire to communicate and the second is sensitivity to the out-group. Therefore, in gaining a good result of learning English, students must have a motivation to communicate in order to do an exchange of any ideas that will broaden their Gisty Listiani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 4 knowledge. In addition, a sensitivity is needed to aware the social situation in which the students are able to keep up with the social standard. Teacher-centered Learning Huba and Freed (2000) described teacher- centered learning as students passively receive information, emphasis is on acquisition of knowledge, and teacher’s role is to be primary information giver and primary and evaluator. There is no room for student’s personal growth. In teacher-centered classrooms, control is primary importance and “authority is transmitted hierarchically”, meaning the teacher exerts control over the students (Dollard & Christensen, 1996, p. 3). To help teachers maintain control over students, instructional methods that promote a focus on the teacher are frequently used, such as lectures, guided discussions, and demonstrations. These forms of instruction lead themselves to have the teacher stands in the front of the classroom while all students work on the same task. Boston (1991) stated that the physical design of the classroom often promotes a focus on the teacher and limits student activity that disrupts that focus. In other words, rooms are often organized so that desks face toward the primary focal point, the teacher. In addition, teachers exert their control through a system of clearly defined rules, routines and punishments that are mandated rather than developed with the students. Finally, in teacher-centered classrooms, teachers may rely on extrinsic motivation to influence student behavior. Chance (1993) mentioned that completion of a task is seen as a prerequisite for obtaining something desirable such as social rewards (e.g. praise), activity rewards (e.g. free time, com- puter time) and tangible rewards (e.g. candy and stickers). To sum up, teacher-centered learning is the teaching technique where the teacher is a sole leader. Teacher makes rule and takes responsibility for all paperwork and organization. This teaching technique can be applied in conducting a research of teacher centered writing to help students comprehend the recount text. Therefore, in doing the research, teacher centered writing will use the teacher’s role in managing the class and teacher will be the centre of students’ attention during the lesson. In teacher centered writing, all instruction comes from the teacher including discussion and evaluation on students’ work. Social Media Instagram Instagram is a fun and quick way to share one’s life with his or her friends through a series of pictures, snap a photo with a mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever. Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and was launched in October 2010. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012 and over 300 million as of December 2014. Instagram is impressive with its amazing features to support people’s purposes related to daily needs and education. Moreover, instagram can be used as learning media due to its supporting features, such as: (1) Photo Sharing Instagram allows the user to take pictures within the application or use photos that already exist in user’s camera roll. Users can give their photo a title, which is helpful and fun. The title itself can make people curious about what is actually going on. (2) Social Instagram, like any other social network, is based on having friends or followers. On Instagram, users ‘follow’ people. At the top of the profile (or anyone’s profile) the user will see the username, profile pic, how many photos have been uploaded, how many followers the account has, and how many they are following. When users follow someone, their photos show up in their stream. The other things people can do here are ‘like‘ photos and comment on them. Both are appreciated. People ask questions in the comments, like “where was this taken” or “what app did you use for that?” It’s currently a very friendly community. (3) The Community People’s experience on instagram has been extremely enjoyable. Instagram connects people Gisty Listiani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 5 around the world. It’s a very global community and has many advantages for students to express their feeling by writing something. It means when students are involved in a community they will try to make better move, in this case is their product in writing recount text. (4) An Education on our Shared Humanity. Those features of instagram are great opportunity to teach students writing skill. Students involve in a good atmosphere of writing recount text because when working on their project they will get better insight from the picture uploaded. Pictures make them think wider and will support them in arranging a text in provided space because what they write is based on their personal life’s experience. METHODS In this study the writer used the form of quasi experimental research. In this method the writer divided one group as the experimental group and another as the control group. Both of experimental and control group consist of students with high and low motivation. The subject of the research were 40 students of eight graders of SMP Kesatrian 1 Semarang in the academic year 2015/2016 randomly. Twenty students as control group and 20 others as experimental group. In this research, the independent variable were instagram writing and teacher-centered writing. Then the dependent variable was the ability in writing recount text of the students with high and low motivation. Then, the writer used questionnaires and a writing test as an instrument. The questionnaire was used to collect data from students’ interest, relevance, advantage, students’ achievement, and sustainability during the teaching learning process. Besides, the writer gave students a writing test so that the writer could observe the students’ writing ability in telling their past experience. The test consisted of two parts, pre- test and post-test. Pre-test and post-test were conducted in the beginning and end of the research by using writing test. Meanwhile, the treatments were given given to the students before the post-test was conducted. The experimental group utilized instagram writing as the teaching technique and the control group taught using teacher-centered writing. Both groups consist of students with high and low motivation. In the experimental group, students were asked to upload many pictures and then fill the caption or description related to the picture uploaded then they were required to give comment on their friends’ picture. After conducting treatment, post-test was given. I used SPSS Program to calculate the data. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION The course of this study is to answer the research problems. Generally, this reserach explains how effective instagram writing is to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. The second is to find out how effective teacher centered writing is to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. And the last is the comparison between instagram writing and teacher centered writing to teach recount text to high and low motivated students in the eight grade of SMP Kesatrian 1 Semarang. In this study, questionnaire was used to group students into the category of students with high motivation and students with low motivation. The validity and reliability of questionnaire have been tested to students in another class. From the data tabulation, it was known that in the control group the high motivation level of students range from 67% up to 80%, and the rest of it had low motivation level that range from 48% up to 61.25%. Meanwhile, in experimental group the range of high motivation level of students was between 67.5% and 90%, and the low motivation level took position between 51.25% and 61.25%. Based on the questionnaire result, in general, it could be summarized that students with high motivation level were enthusiastic in learning English not only because English is an obligatory subject at school, but also due to its importance. They think that English will be an essential factor in getting a good job. They try any ways to improve their English skills, such as listen to the English song, try to use English in several Gisty Listiani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 6 social media, even they feel worse when their score is not as good as their firends’. Besides, in order to support their passion in learning English, they are open to any feedback of their works to have a better understanding. On the contrary, students with low motivation level assume that English is a difficult subject. Thus, they find it hard to focus on the lesson during the English class. Worse than that, they had no enthusiasm in doing their English assignments. Many of them have the same thought with high motivated students that English is an important subject, but they had no enough effort to prove it. Furthermore, pre-test as the first test that was conducted became a guidance to know how deep of students’ understanding in learning recount text. The time of doing pre-test was 80 minutes for each group. In pre-test, students were asked to compose a recount text based on their own experience in a student’s sheet. The scoring coloumn had also been provided at the back of it to make assessment easier. After finishing pre- test, each of students’ work was collected to be assessed. It was corrected by using the rubric of Brown and Bailey. Each aspect had range score between 5 to 20 and also had score category. From the scoring result, students in both groups had similarity in grammar errors and mechanism. The most mistake was produced from the use of grammar and followed by writing mechanism. In grammar aspect, students were not consistent in using past tense. Meanwhile, in writing mechanism aspect, students made errors in spelling and punctuation. However, their ideas were well-developed eventhough the way they organize the text needed to be improved. The data tabulation showed that the students’ mean score in writing recount text either in control or experimental group was almost similar. The average score of control group was 62.6 and experimental group was 62.8. Hence, there was no significant difference in students’ grade of achievement. After that, treatments were conducted both in control group and experimental group. Control group taught using teacher centered writing, while experimental group used got treatment using instagram writing. After conducting the research, the writer found that students in experimental group seemd excited and interested in the use of instagram writing. Consequently, they followed the teaching learning process enthusiastically. After conducting some treatments, both groups were tested once more to know how far their progress in understanding recount text after getting some treatments. The results of the test between control group and experimental group were compared to measure which one the most effective way to teach recount text to students with high motivation and low motivation. After calculating the score, it was indicated that the average score of both groups and both categories (high and low motivated students) were sharply increased, in which the control group got 67.15 and the experimental group got 73. The improvement of both groups were made by the progress of their writing. In post-test, students seemed more confidence in writing recount text. Their ideas developed well, with good grammar using and also diction. However, there were several differences between the control group’s product and experimental group’s product. Students in experimental group produced a better writing than students in control group. They were able to use uncommon phrases and succeed in developing their story to be more attractive. They also had many different topics and followed the right generic structure of recount text. Meanwhile, in control group, students seemed too monotone in writing recount text. Too many students wrote about holiday and still had several grammar errors. The use of expression was not as good as the experimental group. Hence, from those results, it can be analyzed that after getting some treatments using instagram writing, the experimental group achieved better result than the control group which was taught using teacher centered writing. CONCLUSION The main objective of this study was to determine whether there is any significant difference in improvement of students’ progress Gisty Listiani / Journal of English Language Teaching 5 (1) (2016) 7 in writing recount text between students who were taught using instagram writing and those who were taught using teacher centered writing. The progress can be proved by the sharp improvement of students’ ability which was explained by the scoring system of rubric Brown and Bailey. It includes the organization, ideas development, grammar, mechanism, and style of writing. In addition, their mastery in choosing appropriate words was better than before, so that it improved the quality of their writing. Regarding to the final result, the comparation of the average score of post-test in experimental group and control group were significant different. The experimental group achieved higher mean score with 73, meanwhile, the control group only got 67.15. It meant that instagram writing was more effective than teacher centered writing to teach recount text to students with high and low motivation. Furthermore, the t-test measurement obtained 3.251, for α = 5%, with dk = 20 + 20 – 2 = 38. The ttable score obtained 2.002. This meant that the t-test score was higher than the ttable score. Since the t-test measurement was higher than ttable, it was indicated that the experimental group’s achievement in writing recount text was better than the control group’s achievement. SUGGESTIONS Based on the conclusions, the writer would like to offer some suggestions. First, English teachers have to be able to create new atmosphere during the teaching learning process in the classroom, so that students will be interested in learning English. English teachers have to be able to combine the materials with various media to attract students’ attention and to maintain their focus during the lesson. Therefore, they will not get bored during teaching learning process. Second, in order to improve students’ language mastery and writing skill, English teachers should encourage students to practice writing intensively. Then, teachers should provide feedback on every students’ work so that students will have a better understanding on the lesson. Thus, English teachers optionally could use Instagram writing or another interesting media in order to make students more motivated and enthusiastic in learning English. Third, for future researchers, they can use this study as a reference to guide them in conducting the next similar project. 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