The Effect of Literature As Authentic Materials for Writing Essays in A Blended Learning Setting

Abstract

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

News as authentic materials to improve essay writing in a hybrid learning setting

“…Their research showed that these web-based printed texts were effective in improving students' essay writing skills. In a similar vein, Setyowati et al (2021) also found that using authentic materials improved the EFL students' ability to write essays in their research.…”

“…They concluded after three cycles that using authentic materials was effective in improving students' ability to write a short essay. And lastly, the effect of literature as authentic material for teaching essay writing was investigated by Setyowati et al (2021). The results of their study, which used a one-group pre-test and post-test design, showed that using literature as authentic materials is effective in improving students' writing skills.…”

Improving Critical Malay Essay Writing Competency through Authentic e-Learning

“…When teaching writing in a foreign language, as in Indonesia, authentic materials produced by technology are employed to form the writing competencies of the students. Print materials from the Internet (short stories) (Setyowati et al, 2017), printed texts (Performa and Siswa, 2019), multimedia technology resources like YouTube and picture series (Setyowati et al, 2021), and websites (Sundana, 2017;Setyowati et al, 2021), are examples of authentic materials used to teach writing.…”

Blended Learning Strategies for Sustainable English as a Second Language Education: A Systematic Review

“…Findings from the research showed that the students have a positive perception of mobile-assisted language learning besides believing that it could highly motivate them to learn the English language. Apart from mobile-assisted language learning, two other authors, [66,67], have incorporated online authentic materials into their blended English language classroom. Both authors focused on writing skills and critical thinking skills, respectively.…”