Improving Students‟ Ability in Writing Descriptive Text Using Instagram and

Process-Based Approach

Agus Suyanto

SMPN 1 Bancar
Email: [email protected]

Abstract
Writing is one important skill that must be mastered by the students.
Nevertheless, writing is still considered as the most difficult skill compared to the
other three skills, speaking, listening, and reading. The result of the preliminary
study carried out to the eight graders of SMPN 1 Bancar showed that the majority
of the students‘ ability in writing a descriptive text is low. The main problems
faced by the students were how to develop and organize ideas, lack of vocabulary
mastery, how to use the correct grammar, and how to put the right punctuation
and capitalization. Moreover, the absence of relevant and interesting media also
affects students‘ failure in writing. In relation to these problems, the researcher
tried to use Instagram as the media as well as process-based approach as the
method to improve students‘ ability in writing descriptive text. The research
findings showed that the use of Instagram and process-based approach can
enhance the students‘ ability in writing descriptive text. In addition, the
questionnaire result showed that all students (100%) gave positive response
towards the use of Instagram and process-based approach.
Key Words: Writing Ability, Descriptive Text, Instagram, Process-Based
Approach

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Writing is one important skill that must be mastered by the students. Nevertheless,
writing is still considered as the most difficult skill compared to the other three skills,
speaking, listening, and reading. As Richard and Renandya (2002:303) state that there is no
doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for learners to master. In line with Richard and
Renandya (2002), Broughton et al (2003) and Taylor (2009) state that writing is extremely
difficult for students. The difficulty of writing lies not only in generating and organizing of
ideas but also in developing these ideas into readable texts.
However, it is important for the students to improve their writing skill since it is a
very important skill in the teaching of English because by using written language, people can
give information to others in different times and places. People can also read the text many
times and give the information to the next generation. As Carroll (1990) states that the most
important invention in human history is writing since it provides a relatively permanent
record of information, opinions, beliefs, feelings, arguments, explanations, theories, etc.
Based on the preliminary study data collected by the researcher from class VIII-A to
VIII-F of SMPN 1 Bancar, most students had difficulties in writing, in this case the focus was
on descriptive text.The result of the preliminary study indicated that class VIII-C got the
lowest mean score in writing descriptive text compared with six other classes. The mean
score of class VIII-C was 59.83, while the other classes‘ mean scores were above 60.
The preliminary study indicated several problems dealing with the students‘ writing
abilities in class VIII-
C. The first problem is that the students have no adequate sense and abilities in developing
ideas for their writing. They find it difficult to build sentences into the body of the paragraph.
In fact, they only produced not more that three short sentences in each paragraph of their
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writing. The second problem is the limited vocabulary the students have and know in mind.
Consequently, they could not convey their ideas in a complete and correct sentence istead of
repeating the same words in different sentence. This lack of vocabulary matter obviously
make them difficult to develop the topic they have chosen for their writing. The third problem
faced by the students deals with capitalization and punctuation. They often got confused
about when and where they must put the capital letter and puncuation in a sentence.
Particularly, they tended to put lowercase letter in the beginning of a sentence. Moreover,
students also could not define where they must add puncuation in every sentence.

The next problem is students‘ low ability in organizing their writing. They were not able
to make a coherent sentence which caused their writing are not well organized. In accordance
with this matter, the students also did not have good knowledge in grammar which made
them difficult to arrange and form the sentence well grammatically. The last problem is the
students‘ low motivation in writing activities. They were less motivated and easily got bored
to write a text since they thought that this activity was wasting time and had no advantages
for them. Therefore, they just wrote what they wanted to without any desire and intention to
make or create a good composition.
Moreover, the preliminary study also pointed out some factors which may cause some
problems faced by the students above. The first cause is that the teachers do not provide
adequate time in the teaching of writing to their students. Teachers tend to only focus on
developing their students‘ reading ability since the National Examination or also known as
UN demands the mastery of this ability. The second factor is that teachers rarely used
relevant and interesting media to attract students‘ attention and curiosity in the teaching of
writing. The third cause is the lack of vocabulary distribution by the teachers. Teachers
seldom provide vocabulary exercises for the students which affect their low vocabulary
mastery. The fourth cause is that the students commonly do their writing task individually.
Teachers occasionally give them opportunity to work in pairs or groups when they are asked
to do and submit a writing product. Consequently, it makes the students have low motivation
in learning writing.

Based on the problems and causes mentioned above, it is crusial to minimize the
students‘ inability in writing descriptive texts by applying an appropriate strategy and
choosing relevant media. The strategy and relevant media are not only to solve the students‘
difficulty in writing descriptive texts, but also arouse students‘ interest and motivation during
the writing activity. In an attempt to create a successful teaching learning process especially
in the teaching of writing, the researcher chooses Instagram as the media and process-based
approach as the strategy.
Instagram is a platform that can be found in social media. It becomes popular
especially to youngsters all around the world since it provides many features that can be used
by its users to post and expose their best photos to the followers and other users. Hence, this
media surely can catch students‘ attention if it is used in the teaching learning process
especially in writing descriptive text. The researcher believes that Instagram is compatible
since it provides lots of photos that can be used by students as the source to write a
descriptive text. The photos embedded in Instagram are vary from famous person to ordinary
one. Therefore, students have many choices to enrich their learning sources which ease them
in creating a text. Moreover, in the technology era, most of students in Indonesia have their
own Instagram account. So, they will not have difficulties in accessing this social media.
Process-based approach is an approach where language learners focus on the process
by which they produce their written products rather than on the products themselves. In the
end, learners surely need to and are required to complete their products, yet the writing
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process itself is stressed more. By focusing on the writing process, learners come to
understand themselves more, and find how to work through the writing. Therefore, the
researcher applied process-based approach in this study. This approach is suitable for the
teaching of writing since it can give students more helpful guidance during the writing
activities. During the implementation of this approach, teacher guides the learners how to
compose a good writing. Hence, the teacher needs to guide the learners and gets involved in
the process of writing from the very beginning to the last.

Statement of the Problem

In accordance with the background of the study above, the problem of the research is
formulated as follows: ―How can Instagram and process-based approach improve
students‘ ability in writing descriptive texts?‖

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this research is to find out the effectiveness of Instagram and process-
based approach in improving students‘ ability in writing descriptive text.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A. Writing Skill
Writing is one important skill that must be learned and mastered by the students.
Many experts have defined the definition of it. Saleh Abbas (2006: 125) states that writing
skill is an ability to express an idea, opinion and feeling to others through writings. In line
with it, Darmiyati Zuhdi (1999: 159) say that writing skill is kind of skill to put one‘s
thought, idea and opinion about something, responding on the statement of wish or
expressing a feeling in the form of writing.
According to Hendry Guntur Tarigan (2008: 3), writing skill is a productive and
expressive language skill which is used in indirect communication with others. It means that
by writing, one can communicate with
other people without meeting each other. Meanwhile, Byrne (1996: 77) states that writing
skill is an ability to convey one‘s thought in the form of writing which is arranged clearly and
completely so that it can be understood by others.

B. Instagram
In the technology era, social media has been used widely in all life aspects including
education aspect. Basically, social media is the most sophisticated invention of technology
with internet base. Its function is to ease people to communicate, participate and share
information on line so that they can broadcast their contents themselves. Social media
networking is one of many websites which then becomes a new space for people all around
the world to have a communication with their friends.
One social media that has the most users worldwide is Instagram. The word Instagram
derives from the word ‗insta‘ (instan) like polaroid camera in which during its famous era
known as instant photo. Meanwhile, the word ‗gram‘ is come from ‗telegram‘ which
function is to send information to other people in short time. The same point is that Instagram
is able to publish photo using internet connection so that the information sent can be received
fast.
In the teaching learning process, teachers can use this media to announce a homework
creatively and share students‘ experience during the classroom activities through photos
published in Instagram. That‘s why teachers should be creative to use technology in the
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classroom. Yet, teachers should also be selective to decide the suitable media with internet
base since there are hundreds of social media released.

C. Process_Based Approach
Process-based approach is approach in teaching writing that concern on students‘ process
during writing. As Raimes (1992) states that teacher‘s role is to guide students through
teaching writing process, avoiding an emphasis on form to help them develop strategies for
generating, drafting and refining ideas. Therefore, teacher should guide the students in the
writing process and gives feedback to the students writing errors.
White and Arntd (1991) state that focusing on language errors improves neither
grammatical accuracy nor writing fluency. They also suggest that paying attention to what the
students say will show an improvement in writing. Therefore, it is important for the students
to focus on the process by which they produce their written products rather than on the
products themselves. By focusing on the writing process, students come to understand
themselves more, and find how to work through the writing. It means that by focusing on the
process of writing, students could be more aware of their writing and solve the problem
during the writing process through guidance from the teacher. So, it can be said that by
concerning on the process the students could produce better product of writing and their
writing achievement could be maximum since they had passed the process in writing well.
According to Richards and Renandya (2002) and Gebhard (2000) there are four stages of
the writing process itself, those are: planning (pre-writing), drafting (writing), revising (re-
drafting), and editing. In line with Richard, Renandya, and Gebhard, Zemach and Rumisek
(2010) also state that there are some main steps of writing process including pre-writing –
drafting – reviewing and revising – rewriting. In addition, Harmer (2002) states that the
process of writing consists of planning – drafting – editing – final version. Another version of
the process of writing is proposed by Tompkins (2004) that there are five stages of writing;
pre-writing – drafting – revising – editing – and publishing. However, in this study the
researcher focused on the four stages of writing process; pre-writing – drafting – revising and
editing.

Table 1. The Stages of Process-Based Approach

Steps Activity
Planning Students try to order or list their ideas and arrange them
(Pre-writing) according to their
priorities topic. The students put the ideas into subsist based
on the main idea and eliminate all the irrelevant ones.
Drafting (writing) Students focus on the fluency of writing and are not
preoccupied with grammatical accuracy or the neatness of the
draft. Students begin to write down their ideas based on the
composition of the main idea in pre-writing stage. Students
can consult their ideas to the teacher and ask his or her help to
arrange the sentence structures. Meanwhile, teacher responses
to
students‘ writing product by giving written or oral comment
and feedback.
Revising Students revise their writing by reviewing their draft on the
(Re-drafting) basis of the
feedback or comment given by the teacher in the drafting
stage.

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Editing Students are engaged in tidying up their texts as they prepare
the final draft for evaluation by the teacher. They edit their
own for grammar, spelling, punctuation, diction, sentence
structures and accuracy of supportive textual material such as
quotations, examples, and the like. This step is actually
almost the same with activity in revising, yet in revising the
main concern
is adding, deleting, and modifying.

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METHOD
This research is designed regarding to the problem faced by the English teacher and
the learners in learning English especially in writing descriptive text. The research design of
this study is action research. It is a method for solving the problems of teaching objectively
and systematically. This is useful for improving and modifying the teaching-learning process.
Wallace (1998: 1) defines action research as the systematic collection and analysis of data
relating to the improvement of some area of professional practice. It would be often
considered as the most accessible form of research for teacher because its goal would be
solution of problems encountered in every practice.
In this research, the researcher works collaboratively with one of the English teachers
at SMPN 1 Bancar as a collaborator. Here, the collaborator helped the researcher to observe
and take notes during the process of implementing the strategy in the observation stage.
Meanwhile, the researcher will act as the teacher in applying the strategy involving the
implementation of process based approach combined with cue cards to develop the students‘
writing ability in descriptive text.

FINDINGS

The students‘ results in writing descriptive texts indicates that the students‘ mean
score in the preliminary test has increased from 59.83 to 82.75. It means that the students‘
mean score has improved 22.92 points. Moreover, all the students‘ individual score (100%)
improved more than 10 points from the preliminary test. From the data analysis, it is found
that 21 students (70%) out of 30 students of the class could pass the minimum passing grade.
It means that all those students achieved the score above 75, the minimum score which must
be achieved by the students to pass the lesson. Meanwhile, a number of 6 students (30%)
attained the score below 75 which means that they could not pass the minimum passing
grade. However, they still made improvement by increasing their score more than 10 points.

As analyzed from the students‘ individual scores, all students made better achievement
compared to the result in the preliminary test. Their improvement scores are varied from the
smallest 12.5 points to the largest 45 point. From 30 students in the class, 7 students
(23.33%) improved 20 points, while 15, 25, and 27.5 points were achieved by 4 students
(13.33 %) for each. Another 2 students (6.66%) improved 12.5 points, 2 students
(6.66%) improved 17.5 points, 2 students (6.66%) improved 22.5 points, 2 students (6.66%)
improved 35 points,
and the rest 1 student (3.33%) improved 30 points, 1 student (3.33%) improved 37.5 point, and
1 student (3.33%) improved 45 point.
This result proved that the students have made significant improvement. Moreover, it
also validates that the use of Instagram and process-based approach succeed to enhance the
students‘ ability in writing descriptive text. The students‘ improvement in writing descriptive
text in this study was describing people which was considered hard and difficult in the
preliminary study. Hence, this improvement has made the study meets the first criteria of
success in which 80% of students can pass the minimum passing grade and 10 points
improvement for the students‘ individual score. Students‘ improvement points in writing test
compared to the preliminary test is shown in the following figure.

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 Figure 1. Students‟ Improvement Points in Writing Test Compared to the Preliminary
Study
Dealing with all aspects of writing (content, organization, grammar, vocabulary and
mechanincs), the data analysis result indicated that the students‘ ability in writing descriptive
texts had significantly improved compared to the their preliminary test scores. The scores in
the post action showed that the students made improvement in all aspects of writing

In aspect of content, the students‘ mean score in the cycle improved compared to their
mean score in the preliminary test. It improved from 2.80 in the preliminary test to 3.65 in the
cycle. Related to the organization, the students also made improvement by achieving 3.50
compared to 2.50 in the preliminary test, next in term of grammar, the students‘ score also
improved from 2.20 in the preliminary study to 2.95 in the cycle. Furthermore, in aspect of
vocabulary, the students made significant progress by increasing their scores up to 3.20 from
2.36 in the preliminary test. For the last aspect of writing, in mechanics the students also
increased their score from 2.10 to 3.15 in the cycle.
DISCUSSION

The implementation of Instagram and process-based approach is proven could improve

the students‘ ability in writing descriptive texts as can be seen from the findings that all
students could increase their scores in all aspects of writing. Compared to the preliminary
test, the students‘ mean score in the post test increased significantly from 59.83 to 82.75. It
means that the students made improvement up to 22.92 points. Besides, related to students‘
individual scores, all of them also made improvement in which it varied from 10.25 points to
40.50 points. The students‘ improvement in increasing their scores both for the mean score
and the individual scores was the evidence that the media and strategy used in this study
could improve the students‘ ability in writing descriptive text.

The implementation of Instagram and process-based approach has affected the students
to improve their ability in writing descriptive text and made the quality of their writing better.
As the result, the students could improve their scores in all aspects of writing in one cycle.
There are two factors which make the success of the students‘ improvement in increasing
their ability in writing descriptive text. The first factor which contributed to the success of
this research is the use of Instagram as the media in the teaching of writing. Instagram which
provides various pictures has attracted the students‘ interest and motivation to be actively
involved in the writing activity. By the help of Instagram, students could easily find the ideas
since it provides some information in the form of pictures and captions. Besides, they could
also find some vocabularies by looking at the pictures and then consulted the words through
their dictionaries. This activity led them to be more active in the planning stage in which they
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must take notes based on the pictures they observed and then generated these ideas into a
composition in drafting stage. Moreover, Instagram also attracted the students‘ interest and
motivation which then created a good atmosphere in the teaching learning activities.

The second factor is the implementation of process-based approach as the strategy in

the teaching of writing. This strategy has proven its effectiveness to increase the students‘
achievement in writing descriptive texts since it provides some writing stages which are
useful and helpful for the students in joining the writing activity. In planning stage, the
teacher‘s guided questions were very helpful for the students to make notes based on the
pictures they observed which then made them easy to generate the idea and develop it into a
composition in the drafting stage. Therefore, the students succeeded to increase their writing
product quality in term of content which can be proven by the findings that 66.66% students
could achieve the maximum score 4 while the rest students achieved score 3.

In the revising stage, the teacher‘s comment and feedback accompanied by peer
correction enable the students to improve their writing quality in term of content and
organization of their composition. In this stage, the students could easily revise their writing
based on the teacher‘s comment and feedback as well as their peer correction which made the
content and organization of their composition better. Meanwhile, in the editing stage, the
students could decrease their grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes by discussing
with their groups or partner. In addition to that, the editing stage also helped them reduce
their vocabulary misuses

Based on the research findings, this study met the criteria of success which has been
determined by the researcher. The success could be attained in one cycle since all the stages
applied in the strategy gave positive contribution to improve the students ‘writing ability in
all aspects of writing, in terms of content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics.
Furthermore, the use of Instagram also played a very crucial role to enhance students‘ ability
in writing descriptive text.

CONCLUSION
The research findings show that the implementation of Instagram and process-based
approach could improve the students‘ ability in writing descriptive text, especially in
describing people. The use of the media and strategy could also increase the students‘ interest
and motivation in the teaching learning activities. The success of the research included the
students‘ individual improvement score, the effectiveness of the teaching learning process,
the students‘ activeness during the writing activities. In addition, there were two factors
which affected to the students‘ success in improving their writing ability. The first factor was
the use of Instagram as the media in the teaching of writing, while the second factor was the
implementation of process-based approach in the teaching teaching learning activities.

The use of cue cards as media in the teaching of writing supported the strategy which
could raise the students‘ motivation and activeness in the writing activities. Meanwhile, the
implementation of process-based approach as a strategy in teaching writing took a very
important role and was very helpful for the students to make improvement in their writing
ability, particularly in writing descriptive texts. This strategy proved its effectiveness in
solving the students‘ problem in all writing aspects in terms of content, organization,
grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics.

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