WATTPAD APPLICATION:

IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSSION THROUGH WATTPAD

APPLICATION

(App Review)

By Andi Asti Ahyandhita and Tri Zoelfina

STKIP YPUP

Application Details:

Publisher: Wattpad Application

Product Type: Mobile Application Software

Language(s): Multilingual

Level: Any

Media Format: APK/IPA

Operating Systems: Android/iOS

Hardware Requirements: Smartphone/Internet Connection

Supplementary Software: None

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

1. Introduction
2. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
3. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
4. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
5. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
6. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
 7. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
8. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
9. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
10. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
11. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
12. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
13. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
14. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
15. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
16. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
17. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
18. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
19. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
20. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
21. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
22. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
23. The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood
to encompass an innovative
24. application of methods, tools, materials, devices, systems, and strategies
which are directly relevant to
25. English language teaching and lead to the achievement of the desired
goals
The use of modern technology in teaching English is broadly understood to

encompass an innovative application of methods, tools, materials, devices,

systems, and strategies which are directly relevant to English language teaching

and lead to the achievement of the desired goals (Alqahtani, 2019). The
relationship between technology and education has been well established. The

technological investments made by the Ministry of Education and the out-of-

school digital environments to which students are exposed strengthen this

relationship (Bal, 2018). Consequently, learners can only learn English through

regular class teaching, radio broadcasts, television, newspapers, magazines, and so

on. Furthermore, in most Indian high school English classes, the prevalent mode

of instruction is based on large-groups, teacher dominated grammartranslation

methods, and exam-oriented textbook-based lectures (Kranthi, 2017).

There are some ways that have been offered and used to teach reading in

university level and one of them is by integrating literature in ELT classroom.

Literature has been integrated in language teaching as one of the ways to improve

language skills, especially reading comprehension. Hismanoglu (2005, p. 54)

states, “The use of literature as a technique for teaching both basic language skills

(i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language areas (i.e. vocabulary,

grammar and pronunciation) is very popular within the field of foreign language

learning and teaching nowadays.”(dewi, 2016)

Among the technological innovations, mobile and hand-held devices such as

smart phones, tablet computers, laptops, MP3 and MP4 players, iPads are

particularly helpful due to their practicality and popularity (Nushi et al., 2018) and

“Social reading” is a term encompassing a wide variety of practices mainly related

to the activity of reading and using social media to talk about the reading

experience (Rebora & Pianzola, 2018). In fact, more than a decade ago, Keegan

(2003) believed that M (mobile)-learning, a subset of e-learning, would fashion

the future of learning. Similarly, Wagner (2005) stated that “the mobile revolution

is finally here. Wherever one looks, the evidence of mobile penetration and

adoption is irrefutable…. No demographic is immune from this phenomenon,”

In the 21st century, reading literature has become a widely diversified

phenomenon: in fact, nowadays it includes many different practices that go

beyond traditional processes involving only authors, solitary readers, publishers

and their distributors (Graham and Gandini 2017). In particular, digital media

have widened the possibilities available to authors and readers, often enabling

them to establish a direct contact and to oust publishers, as it happens with the

spreading phenomena of self-publishing (Dilevko and Dali 2006) and social

reading (Cordón-García et al. 2013).

It is becoming increasingly urgent to consider and analyse how reading

practices are changing, in order to outline a more reliable scenario of what kind of

readers exists nowadays, how much they read and what channels they use to

approach literature. Unfortunately, publishers are not fully aware of the magnitude

of the reading practices that are out of their control, for instance, omitting to take

into account data about self-published books in their reports about general book

sales (Hoffelder 2017).

In addition to the style and type of reading that continues to grow, the means

of delivering literature also changes with the times. If in the past people read

papers from paper and the internet, new media now appears in the form of

software that can be accessed from mobile and tablet devices. One of them is

Wattpad, an application that brings writers and readers together in a concise,

lightweight and fun platform (winarso, 2018).

From the explanation above, the purpose of this review is the researcher

would like to propose one teaching technique that would be a beneficial teaching

technique, which is using wattpad application. The researcher is interest in

conducting an action research in teaching reading by using wattpad application.

2. Description

Wattpad is predominantly orange and white in order to accentuate the

elements of the text making it easier for users to enjoy every word. Users who

have just opened Wattpad will be welcomed with the option to register a new

account. The choices are Facebook and Gmail, which one is free?

After logging into their respective accounts, including me. I was treated again

with an interface with an orange and white background. In the Home panel, you

can find two main tab menus namely Browse and Recommended. The Browse

menu contains a list of genre of stories, including Action, Adventure, Anime,

Billionaire, ChikLit and others. Then the Recommended menu contains a

collection of currently popular stories bundled in tags, such as Feature Lists and

names of popular authors. The Recommended menu contains a large selection of

stories that you can swipe as many times as possible until you find an interesting

story.

At the bottom there are five main buttons, I start from the far left of the Home

button marked with a home-shaped icon. In the second line there is a book

arrangement icon that contains my reading list starting from the titles of the

stories I'm reading, archives and reading lists as well as playlists in the audio

player application.
 In the third menu - in the middle - a pencil icon appears to turn out to be a

tool of war for the writers at Wattpad. So in this menu, the authors submit their

work starting from the cover, title, description and content of the story per

chapter. All prepared with systemation and easy by Wattpad. If there are

improvements, the authors also easily make revisions through the same platform.

Continue to the next menu, where you can see a large menu including News

Feed, Notification and Message. News Feed contains updates from friends such as

new story recommendations, interesting stories and others. The Notifications tab

contains a list of notifications that are more personal or related to your story,

readings or writing that you send. While the Message tab works just like the SMS

application on a smartphone or Inbox on Facebook, where you can send messages

to one another with contacts on Wattpad.

 The last menu on the far right is the account panel that displays your personal

information, for example your name, username, reading list number, followers,

activities and settings for changing email, language, notifications and others.

Wattpad feature

Most of the Wattpad features are actually already included in the Interface

explanation above. But I will add some other additional features that can also be

found in it.

Letter Format

Wattpad developers seem to know very well that not all users are
comfortable reading novels through the relatively small smartphone screen. For

this reason, they provide special tools to change the size and type of fonts and

extra settings, for example adjusting screen orientation, eliminating inline

comments, status bar, reading mode and also the screen brightness level (in

addition to the default settings of the device).

Comment

Like other community platforms, Wattpad also provides a comment column

for each reading. Through comments, readers can provide input in the form of

suggestions or criticisms to the author. Conversely, the author can also provide

responses for each input he receives.

Vote

In addition to commenting, as a form of appreciation for reading, users can

also vote.

Share

In the same bar as Vote, you can also find the Share button to share posts

through third-party applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, SMS,

Email, Twitter and so on. But in the same bar, you can also find the Facebook

button. I don't know the difference between the options in the previous Share
button. Isn't the function the same? It would be better if the spot is occupied by

another menu so it is more effective.

Invite Friends

In the account menu and also Message, you will also find an invite friend

feature. This invite friend feature does not refer to specific writing, but rather

invites friends who have similar interests to try using Wattpad.

Offline mode

This feature is certainly very useful for Wattpad users, because with it they

don't have to burn data quota to read their favorite readings. Most of the readings

on Wattpad have a number of chapters that are not small, so it takes quite a long

time to read it through to completion. Users can download their favorite novels

to read again later in their spare time.

But not all the readings on Wattpad can be read offline. The main

requirement to do this is to include selected novels in Librabry.

3. Evaluation
 Wattpad is a very interesting digital environment with a huge amount of

potential for schools and learning (Scolari, 2018). First of all, Wattpad provides

the opportunity to refect on the value of reading for young people, in a historical

moment in which much is said about the death of reading. For these reasons, the

main potential of the platform from the educational point of view is, in our

opinion, that Wattpad brings students closer to the world of reading and writing

through a purely informal channel based on peer-to-peer relationships. For

example, the creation and experimentation of new literary genres stimulates

refection on traditional genres and on the ability to transform them or put them

to the test. Books (often written in English) are categorized according to

different genres: some of them are quite classical, such as Romance, Action/

Adventure, Horror, Fantasy, but others, such as Teen Fiction, Chick Lit,

Werewolf, Random, are new forms of categorization established according to

the bottom-up activities of tagging undertaken by users. Furthermore, in

Wattpad we can also fnd a Classics section, where users transcribe famous

works (e.g. Wuthering Heights) in the Wattpad interface.

Genres are very important in Wattpad, especially to emphasize the creative

works produced by the writers. For example, there are metanarrative works

solely dedicated to the characteristics of Wattpad that contain specifc chapters

on genres (Welcome Home! A Newcomer’s Guide to Wattpad). Another

example is the “Wattpad Guide. How Wattpad works” written by Ambasciatori

Wattpad, a group that aims to give suggestions to readers and writers on the

platform. This profle and many others show how groups of infuencers can arise
on Wattpad, giving advice and decreeing the success and visibility of the works.

Another interesting aspect is the so-called “Wattpad challenge”, where

young writers are sometimes tagged by other Wattpad users. Occasionally they

consist of answering a series of questions; at other times the challenge is to write

chapters using a specifc number of words. Challenges have well-defned,

routinely set rules.

4. Conclusion

Wattpad is a very large collection of readings. which has more than 50

languages, the majority of readings there are in English. This is very supportive

for someone to improve reading comprehension through the wattpad application.

Wattpad can also be a new option for novice writers who want to hone their

skills and know how far they have progressed. At Wattpad they can get objective

feedback, because from my observation, most Wattpad users have a fairly

mature and fair behavior.

References

A, A. (2019). The Use of Technology in English Language Teaching. Frontiers in

Education Technology, 2, p168. https://doi.org/10.22158/fet.v2n3p168

Bal, M. (2018). Reading and Writing Experiences of Middle School Students in

the Digital Age: Wattpad Sample. International Journal of Education and

Literacy Studies, 6(2), 89. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.6n.2p.89

Cordón-García, José-Antonio, Julio Alonso-Arévalo, Raquel Gómez-Díaz, and

Daniel Linder. Social Reading. Oxford: Chandos, 2013.

dewi, P. S. (2016). The Effects of Short Story through Wattpad on Reading

Comprehension Achievement of Non- English Major Students of Bina

Darma University. HOLISTICS JOURNAL, 8(16 Des), 1–42.

Dilevko, Juris, and Keren Dali. “The Self-Publishing Phenomenon and Libraries.”

Library & Information Science Research 28.2 (2006). JAI: 208–34.

doi:10.1016/J.LISR.2006.03.003.

Graham, James, and Alessandro Gandini. Collaborative Production in the

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Hoffelder, Nate. “Damn the Facts: The 'Ebook Sales Are Down' Narrative Must

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Kranthi, K. (2017). Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL). 4.

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Rebora, S., & Pianzola, F. (2018). A New Research Programme for Reading

Research: Analysing Comments in the Margins on Wattpad. DigitCult |

Scientific Journal on Digital Cultures, 3.2, 19–36.

https://doi.org/10.4399/97888255181532

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winarso, bambang. (2018). [App Review} Wattpad. https://dailysocial.id/post/app-

review-wattpad-surganya-penulis-dan-pembaca/

APP REVIEW
 WATTPAD APPLICATION;

IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSSION THROUGH WATTPAD

Disusun Oleh :

ANDI ASTI AHYANDHITA 16 14 074

TRI ZOELFINA 16 14 111

PROGRAM STUDI PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

SEKOLAH TINGGI KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN(STKIP)

YAYASAN PENDIDIKAN UJUNG PANDANG(YPUP)

2019