The current situation of teaching and learning process has undergone a drastic change during the COVID-19 outbreak. The conventional classroom meeting is no longer available because of the pandemic. As a result, the classroom interaction is blended with the online learning model until the end of the semester. In a blended learning setting, teachers are forced to be innovative to reach the instructional objectives. As most learning is done online, the use of authentic materials is considered relevant to the current situation. Many authentic materials are available online. Yet, there is no sufficient information on whether the authentic materials can improve college students’ ability in writing essays in a blended learning setting. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of literary genre as authentic materials on students’ writing performance. As such, this research uses an experimental design. The target population of the study was all fourth-year students of the English Education Study Program, Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology, University of PGRI Wiranegara, Pasuruan, East Java, Indonesia. Samples were employed using a systematic random design. The treatment was conducted in 14 meetings between March and June 2020. The main instruments used to collect data were pre-test and post-test. The students’ writing was rated by two ratings using the Jacobs ESL-Composition Profile. The result of the one-sample t-test computation using the IBM SPSS 25 showed that there is a significant difference in the students’ writing performance before and after the treatment (α = 0.00 < 0.05). Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of authentic materials in literary genre can improve the student’s ability in writing essays. Keywords: authentic materials, literature, essay, effect

Writing in English is very important for every student who learns English as a foreign language (EFL). With good writing skills, information can be conveyed well to readers. Yet, EFL students often find difficulties in writing by using English as a target language, especially during the pandemic of COVID 19.  This paper aims to investigate some problems faced by the students in their learning of  writing during the pandemic of COVD 19. The design of the study is a case study. The instruments to obtain the data were interviews and documents. The subjects of the study were three high achiever students and three low achiever students who joined the writing course in the English Education Study Program in the University of PGRI Wiranegara.   They were chosen based on their writing achievements.  The finding shows that the high achiever students’ problems are more on the  technical problems (the internet connection, bad signals, and family distractions during online learning). For them the technical problems would lead to other issues such as materials comprehension and task accomplishment. The  low achievers have more problems in generating ideas for all type of writing.  The study also reveals that the low achievers have more time management problems and more language problems. Interestingly, they share the same solutions. The solutions are 1) to read  more sources to get ideas and to help them write; 2) to boost moods before writing by reading a lot, listening to music, and watching movies;  3) to ask friends and lecturers to help understand the materials and tasks;  and 3) to use writing tools application to solve the writing problems particularly in vocabulary and grammar.

<p><em>This study is intended to find out the students’ problems and their solutions in writing argumentative essays.  The subjects of this study were the fourth-semester students of English Education study program, Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology, University of PGRI Wiranegara in the academic year 2019-2020. This study used Byrne’s classification in 1995 about writing problems, namely psychological, linguistic, and cognitive. This uses descriptive quantitative design. The instruments were documentation of the students’ writing tasks and interviews. The result shows the almost all students have no problems in making thesis statements and refutations for their argumentative essay regarding gender issue. The students’ psychological problems are anxiety, nervousness, the feeling of pressure in timed writing and perfect work, a negative expectation in writing, and low self-confidence.  For the linguistic problems, the result from both data indicated that students faced problems in tenses, word-class, word formation, the use of the article, and word error. While the cognitive problems faced by the students are being ignorant in the use of punctuation, short knowledge in giving appropriate examples and details in the body of the essay, and lack of knowledge in writing reference. The solutions proposed by the students, among others are to have more readings on the topic, to be self-motivated learners, to propose untimed writing to the lecturer, and to use writing tools applications.</em></p>

This study used authentic material as the tool in essay writing class. Authentic material is made not for teaching need; it is the material that bring real language knowledge. It can be brought to the class as a learning tool. There two beneficial types of authentic materials; printed and audio authentic materials. This research used authentic printed materials to improve students' writing achievement. This is a Classroom Action Research in three cycles. This study aims to explain in detail the implementation of authentic printed material in writing class and how the authentic material can improve students ' writing achievement. The result is the research has been done in three cycles, because the first and second cycle could not reach the goal. The third cycle finally could reach the criteria of success. The conclusion of this research is authentic material can improve students' writing achievement and it is recommended to use authentic material in writing class and other language classes.