The research focuses on the use of instructional media in the blended learning platform to improve students' ability in writing essays. The implementation of blended learning is carried out in three cycles: brainstorming, drafting, and final writing. At the end of each cycle, there is an evaluation to find out the progress of the learning. Feedback is given from the evaluation results to overcome problems that arise in the previous cycle. The subjects of the research are students of Universitas Andalas who divided as control class and experimental class. The purpose of this study is (a) short-term; To help overcome student problems and improve their ability to write essays in English (b) long-term is to provide a basis for learning models of English writing essays at universities. The pretest indicates that 59% of participants from the control class have a low score (below 60) while in experimental class, about 60% of participants get a score below 60. The result of the research shows significant improvement in essay writing performance with an average score of post-test 76.35. By using the t-test can be seen the significance value of 0.06> 0.05, which indicates that the use of instructional media in the blended learning platform can improve students performance in writing an essay.

This research describes the use of implicatures. This study aims to see the message in Barack Obama's campaign speech. Furthermore, this study uses the implicature theory proposed by  Grice and George Yule,  the  language  function  theory  proposed  by  Geoffrey  Leech  and  complemented  by  the ethnographic  theory of communication  by Dell Hymes.  The data is taken from Barack  Obama's utterances delivered in a campaign speech in Springfield, Illinois, USA on February 10, 2007. This research follows the research phase proposed by Sudaryanto. At the basic stage of the data, the writer used the listening method and the technique of listening to the free and speaking competently. At the analysis, the researcher used the pragmatic matching method. Based on the analysis, the researcher found forty-two implicatures contained in the thirty-eight teachings of Barack Obama in the campaign speech. In addition, each implicature has a different function and purpose.

Research on language competence of university students is critical since many people consider them have problem in well manner, especially in communication. Communication is not only passing information from speaker to hearer through language but also involve critical thinking and cognitive aspect of language. Macrostructure is competence which reflects speakers ability in using cognitive aspect to processing language. While microstructure is processed in left hemispher, macrostructure depends on process in right hemisphere. It is because macrostructure need holistic processing which connect partial informations and figure out the relation between the informations. Research toward students of Universitas Dharma Andalas shows that many students have problem in processing macrostructure aspect of language. About 81% participants have problem in summarizing, 75% participants have problem in memorizing adjective, 70% participants have problem in immidiate memory processing, 75% particiants have difficulty in figuring implicit relation, and 70% participants have difficult in using cohesion.