Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 52 The Effectiveness of Blog as Media in Improving The Students‟ Writing Skill of Descriptive Text (An Experimental Study of the Eight Graders of MTsN Brangsong Kendal in the Academic Year of 2013/2014) Thoriq Hidayaturrahman Undergraduate Program, Faculty of Languages and Arts, Semarang State University Email : hidayaturrahmanthoriq@gmail.com Abstract This study aimed at comparing students‟ ability in writing descriptive text with blogtechnique and without blog. This study is used to answer the questions: Is there any significant difference in the achievement between the students who wrote descriptive text with blogtechnique and the students who wrote descriptive text without blog? And how well the students write descriptive text after being taught by using blog. Quantitative method was used in analyzing the gathered data. The basic outline showed that in the writing skill, the second year students in the first semester of Junior High School are supposed to write a descriptive text, so the data weredescriptive texts written by two classes of the second year students of MTs Brangsong Kendal as the sample. One of them was the experimental group and the other one was the control group. The result of the study shows that Blog technique applied in writingdescription texts of VIIIgrade of MTs Brangsong, Kendal, actually gave contribution in improving the students‟ skill in writing descriptive texts. This technique could be an effective method. It is proper since there was a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group when the study was conducted. Based on the statistical analysis, it could be seen that the students‟ in the experimental group was improving higher than the control group. The mean of the experimental group was higher (from 71.81to 80.11) than the control group (from 71.72 to 74.61). The t-value for two means of post-test was 4.170; meanwhile the critical value at α = 5% was 1.67. Since the t- value was in the Ho rejection area, it was concluded that there is a significant difference in the achievement between the students in control group who were not given the treatment and the experimental group who were given the treatment (Blog technique). By using this technique in the experimental class, the class situation was very enjoyable, the students freely communicated to each other to share their ideas. The writer had observed that the writing descriptive texts scores of the experimental class were higher than those of the students who wrote descriptive text without Blog. Keywords: Blog, Descriptive Text, WritingSkill INTRODUCTION Nowadays English is an important language. As one of the international languages English is used to communicate almost people in the world. People in the world are accustomed to speak English well. Most sources of information like journals, articles, books, research report, etc are written in English. Our government is aware of how important Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 53 English is, so they made English as one of the subjects which is taught from primary school until university level. It is important to learn English because it is an international language for most people around the world, and it is the widest medium of communication. In Indonesia, curriculum has changed from time to time. It starts from curriculum 1975 until Curriculum 2006 or known as School Based Curriculum (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan). The study of English language has started from elementary school until senior high school, and it is not surprising if so many students join some English courses. They need new system or new way to understand their subject. The students are taught four basic skills in learning English. They are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Writing skill in junior high school or SMP is more complex than in elementary school. We cannot ignore this skill because it is also as important as other skills. Moreover, it is not simple thing to teach writing skill because we do not only pay attention on grammar or vocabulary, but also how to teach our students to use the correct punctuation, the capital letters, how to develop their ideas, and also how to make them interested in making a good writing. Writing skill in junior high school is taught based on genres. The genres that should be taught in junior high school are procedure, descriptive, recount, and narrative. Descriptive text is one of the genres that must be taught in order to make the students know how to describe objects in their surroundings. According to Oshama and Hogue (1977:48), “description is writing about how something (or someone) looks and uses space order. In space order, you might describe something from up to bottom or from left to right”. Teaching writing to junior high school students is not as easy as we think. Students in junior high school is easily get bored in following monotonous writing class like the teacher keeps writing and explaining the material. To make learning process becomes attractive and easy to understand, the teaching technique and method are needed to make the teaching learning process becoming Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 54 effective. Finnochiaro (1974:173) states, “A teacher needs methods and techniques of teaching English as a language to develop certain skills”. Besides technique and a method, we need media in learning process. Media take part in process of learning English. It makes teacher and students able to teach and to receive the materials. It goes without saying, in education process, we should use ICT as one of media in teaching and learning, for it can help teachers and also students to be successful in their teaching and learning process. It also can make the teaching learning process more attractive and interesting. ICT development as media provides knowledge for students. Blogs, websites, social networking, and Content Management System can be used to improve students‟ writing skill. One of the interactive media that can be used to improve writing skill is blog. There are many blogs in internet. They can provide many information and knowledge. We can upload pictures and some videos in blogs to make the English teaching more attractive and more interesting when it is used as media. Using media in teaching English junior high school students is better than only using books. In this case teachers can take advantage blog as media. Blog is famous now. Almost everyone can create it because it is easy to make it. Teachers can also create blog to make their teaching English more attractive. Therefore, their students do not only get materials from books, but also from blog. Teachers will not be busy to prepare many books in every meeting in a class. They just bring a laptop and connect to internet when they have a class. Internet now is provided by almost schools. One of them is Islamic Junior High School in Brangsong, Kendal. Islamic Junior High School in Brangsong has been facilitated by computer laboratory that is connected to internet. Usually in that school, computer laboratory is used only when the students have ICT subject. It is opportunity for the English teacher there to use the computer laboratory to teach English, so the teachers and students can open blog easily. Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 55 Teachers can attach or post materials on blog. They can also post some pictures or list of vocabulary to improve their teaching materials. Finally, students can enrich their materials not only from their text book but also from their teacher‟s materials uploaded on blog. Teachers do not have to ask their students to write down their teaching materials because they are already available in the blog. Students just open their teacher‟s blog and read the materials anytime they want. They just only open the browser in their mobile phones and type the address of teacher‟s blog, and they can read the materials With the blog, we can find many pictures that can be used as media to teach writing descriptive texts. Teaching descriptive texts should provide many pictures to make students easier produce descriptive text well. Once more, teachers and students can take advantages of blog to understand the materials easier anytime and anywhere. When the students open facebook, for example; at the same time they can surf blog. From the statement above the writer concludes that media, technique, and method are some ways to make both students and teacher interested in their teaching and learning process especially in writing descriptive text. The main purpose of this study is to help the students to be more interested and attractive in learning writing and to help the teachers to find some alternatives method in teaching English, especially writing descriptive texts. Hopefully, the students will also be more knowledgeable because this media offers the suitable media in learning English writing. METHODS This study used quasi experimental design with non-equivalent pre-test and post-test groups design. The writer used control group pre-test and post- test. The design of the experiment can be described as follows: E O1 X O2 C O3 Y O4 (Arikunto, 2006:86) In which: E : Experimental group C : Control Group Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 56 O1 : Pre-test for the experimental group O2 : Post-test for the experimental group O3 : Pre-test for the control group O4 : Post-test for the control group X : Treatment with Blog Y : Treatment without Blog. There are three stages in doing this experiment; pre-test, experiment, and post-test. 1. Pre-Test The pre-test was administered before the treatment session. It was held on 6 May 2014. The students were asked to write a descriptive text about their favorite actors or actress in the world. This was done by two groups, the experimental group and the control group 2. Giving a Treatment The two groups were given different treatments. The treatments were held on 10, 13, 15 May 2014. Every group was given twice treatment. The experimental group got a treatment by using blog as a technique in writing descriptive text. On the other hand, the control group wrote descriptive text without using blog. 3. Administering a Post-Test After different treatment was given to both groups, the students in both experimental and control groups were given a post-test on writing test. It was held on 20 and 24 May 2014. The students were asked to make a descriptive text with some topics, such as people, place, and things. From this test, the data were obtained in the form of students‟ test scores. Moreover, the figure of procedures of the experiment could be described as follows: (1) Choosing the population of the study that was the eight graders of MTs N Brangsong. (2) Taking two groups of the population as the experimental group and control group. In this study, class VIII H as the experimental group and class VIII I as the control group. (3) Conducting the experiment. The experimental group got a treatment by using Blog as a technique in writing descriptivetext. On other hand, the control group wrote descriptivetext without using blog. (4) Comparing the means of both experimental and control groups by applying the t-test formula. Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 57 Then, consulting the t-test value with the critical t value at 5% (0,005) alpha level of significance. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Before the experiment was conducted, on sixth May, the students were given a pre-test in order to know how well the student‟s writing ability of descriptive text before the treatment.In this test, each student from both groups were asked to write a descriptive text in the same topic. The students were asked to choose some topics such as describing people, places or things. The pre-test score of experimental group was 71.94, and the control group was 71.6. Result After the different treatments were given to the experimental and control groups, all of the students had to do the post-test to review of their writing ability. In the post-test, each student of the both groups was asked to write a descriptive text with selected topic. The topics were describing places, people or animal. Then, the post-test of each student was scored to be analyzed. From the data obtained, it was found that there is an improvement relating to the student‟s average score after the treatment. The simple charts below show the improvement that the students achieved: Figure 4.1 The Mean Score in Pre-Test, Post-Test of Experimental and Control Groups 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 Pre-Test Post-Test Experiment Control Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 58 From the charts above, it can be seen that there is an improvement in students‟ achievement of writing descriptive texts during the study with rates for each group. The average score for experimental group was 71.94 for the pre-test and 80.14 for the post-test, while the average score for control group was 71.6 for the pre-test and 74.51 for the post-test. It is apparent that the experimental group improves achieved higher scores than the control group. Teaching with blog provides some advantages. One of them is blog provides some pictures, such as photos of actress, actors, and sceneries. It also provides online dictionary, so the students can look up the vocabulary easier. There are also some improvements in aspects of writing when the writer used blog in teaching written descriptive text. They are content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. When students use blog or write on blog, they get some benefit. One of them is when they make mistakes or mistype, automatically there is a red line on the mistyped words. When students get confused about the difficult word, they can look up on online dictionary that is provided by blog. To check whether or not the difference between the two means of the control group and the experimental group is statistically significant; the t-value obtained should be consulted with the critical value in the ttable. In the experiment, the number of subject of both the experimental and control group was 72. The degree of freedom was 70. The critical value with the degree of freedom 70 and the 5% alpha level of significant is 1.67. The tvalue is higher than the critical value (4.293> 2.03). It can be concluded that there is a significant difference of the post test result between the experimental group and the control one. The writer concluded that there is a significant achievement in the result between writing descriptive text using blog and without using blog to the eightgraders of MTs Brangsong at the first semester. The improvement of their writing could be seen in the students‟ result of their pre-test and post-test. Based on the result of the pre-test before the strategy was implemented, the students faced many difficulties in writing descriptive text. Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 59 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 grammar vocabulary content organization mechanic Their writings contained errors in content, organization, grammar, vocabulary and mechanic. The students‟ writing was poor in which the content was not relevant to the topic. The ideas were also not clearly stated and the sentences were not well- organized. The sequence of sentences made by the students was also not complete. There were also many mistakes in content, grammar, vocabulary, organization and mechanic. Therefore, their writings could not be understood well. To minimize the numbers of errors and mistakes in the students writing, the teacher needed to use some media. After giving the treatment to the students by using blog, the students‟ ability in writing descriptive text improved. They could make sentences based on the pictures and some key words given by the writer. The paragraphs made by the students in the following texts were easier to understand because the content of their writings was complete and relevant to the topic. The ideas were also clearly stated and the sentences were organized well. Their paragraphs contained only few mistakes. The chart below shows the improvement of aspects of writing from experimental and control groups, the white is pre- test and black is post-test Figure 4.4. The Mean Score of Experimental Group on Each Writing Aspects Pre-test Post-test Pre-test Post-test Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 60 Figure 4.5. The Mean Score of Control Group on Each Writing Aspects The improvement of students‟ achievement for all of aspects also could be seen from the computation. After comparing the result of pre-test score and post-test score of the experimental group for each aspect, the writer concluded that there was improvement of students‟ achievement in quantity. The students‟ improvement in writing skill might be caused by the increasing of their vocabulary and their ability to form some simple sentences. The students‟ vocabulary increased because they used to train using Blog in the process of writing. The result of the data analysis showed that using a blog as teaching media to increase the students‟ ability in writing descriptive text seemed to be applicable for the eighth graders of MTs N Brangsong, Kendal. It helped the students to solve their problems in writing descriptive text. It also encouraged the students to be more active and motivated in learning teaching process. The effectiveness of using blogs as teaching media to increase students‟ ability in writing descriptve text could be seen from the computation Blog as teaching media is effectively used to improve students‟ skill in writing descriptive text. By using blog the students could represent ideas into their writing. Blog also can increase the quantity of vocabulary and enhance of the text. Students got more imagination when they saw a blog shown by the teacher in creating a descriptive text. 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 grammar vocabulary content organization mechanics Pre-test Post-test Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 61 Blog made them easily explore their ideas. By looking at the pictures, they were stimulated to explore ideas in their mind at the time. They might write anything related to the pictures in their papers. Thus, their texts covered the sequences of events in detail since the missing and forgetful words or ideas were reminded when they saw the blog. Blog helped the teachers in teaching writing descriptive text attractively. They could explain the materials more detail, and he also got students‟ attention. The materials in writing descriptive texts here referred to the categories used as the guidance in scoring the students‟ test results that had been stated before in the previous chapter. They were content, grammar, vocabulary, organization and mechanic. The students were motivated more to learn English, especially writing skill since they were still in a developing age. It was proven when they got the treatment. Therefore, the writer could conclude that using a blog as media in teaching writing descriptive text can bring the students‟ interest and imagination. In this case, blog is appropriate teaching media in improving students‟ skill in writing descriptive text. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION Conclusion According to the result of the data analysis in previous chapter, the writer could draw conclusions about the students‟ writing skill improvement through the application of blog in this study. The use of blog as a teaching medium in writing descriptive text is more effective than the conventional way. Based on the computation, there are some significant differences between experimental and control groups. In the pre-test, the average score of the experimental group was 71.81 and the control group was 71.72. The writer considered these score as a potency of the students for getting betterment. After that, the writer administered a post-test for both group. Further, the result of the post- test from the experimental group was 80.11, which was higher than the result of the control group. It was 74.67. From this result, the writer considered it as a significant result Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 62 from the previous one. The improvement scores of experimental group and control group were 8.31 and 2.95. It was taken from the post-test‟s score which was reduced by the pre- test‟s score. When students use blog or write on blog, they get some benefit. One of them is when they make mistakes or mistype, automatically there is a red line on the mistyped words. When students get confused about the difficult word, they can look up on online dictionary that is provided by blog. From the computation, the writer also got the result of the t-test = 4.167 then he consulted the critical value on the t-table using the 5% alpha level of significance and 70 degrees of freedom was 2.03. Since the t-test was higher than t-table (4.167 ˃2.03), the writer concluded that there is a significant difference in the students‟ writing score of the eight year students.. Suggestions Based on the whole result of the study, the writer could recommend some suggestions in this study. (1) It is better for English teachers to try using blog in teaching writing descriptive text. It proves that the use of blog as a teaching medium to improve the students‟ ability in writing descriptive text is effective. (2) Based on the research, it is good for students to write descriptive text by using blog. This makes them to be better and better in their writings‟ achievement. For other researchers, they can use this study as their reference to conduct other researches on the same field. They are also expected to be able to cover the limitation in this study and provide more detail information about this. REFERENCES Arikunto, S. (2006). Prosedur Penelitian: Suatu Pendekatan Praktek. Jakarta: PT. Rineka Cipta Hartoyo. (2010). Research Method in Education. Semarang. Universitas Negeri Semarang Press Journal of English Language and Education Vol 1. No. 1, June 2015 ISSN : 2460-7142 63 Finochiaro, M. (1974). English as a Second Language from Theory to Practice. New York: Regent Publishing Company, Inc. Karani. (2008). Area of Problems in Writing Descriptive Text. A Final Project : English Department of UNNES: Unpublished Oshima, Alice and Ann Hogue. (1977). Introduction to Academic Writing, Second Edition. Newyork: Addison Wesley Longman.