USING FACEBOOK TO ENHANCE STUDENTS’ SKILL IN ESSAY

WRITING

Paper presented in
the 2nd National English Language Teachers and Lecturers
Conference,
State University of Malang, Indonesia,
March 20, 2010.

By

Bambang Yudi Cahyono

__________________________________________________________

State University of Malang, East Java

State University of Malang

2010
 Using Facebook to Enhance Students’ Skill in Essay Writing:

Report of the Innovative ICT-Based Teaching Grant Project

Bambang Yudi Cahyono

State University of Malang

1. BACKGROUND

Nowadays, the Internet has become a complementary means not only for the pursuit
of knowledge but also to disseminate knowledge. It is therefore important to take a look at
Internet materials and use them as sources for learning in a more interesting way. One of the
ways that can be used to achieve this aim is to ask the students to have an Internet account of
Facebook, which is the focus of this teaching grant project.
The teaching of a language, like the teaching of many other fields of study, deals with
two major aspects: what to teach (content) and how to teach (techniques). The types of
content (materials) for language teaching are determined by factors such as the purpose of the
language program and the need of the language learners (Dubin & Olshtain, 1986). The
techniques of teaching performed by the teacher depend on the English language teaching
approaches adopted in the classrooms. Although the two aspects of language teaching can be
accomplished by the availability of a teacher alone, the use of language teaching media is
likely to make teaching more interesting and make it more successful. Many language
teachers have enthusiastically embraced networking technology and have developed
innovative ways of using the technological facilities in language teaching and learning.
These various forms of technological facilities have shaped the way teachers teach
language. With the need of information and communication in globalization, the role of
technology, especially the Internet, cannot be ignored. One of the Internet facilities that has
not been studied extensively is Facebook. With the advanced development of the Internet,
this teaching grant project incorporates Writing II course activities with the Facebook
(www.facebook.com), a new Internet offering which is of great interest due to its popular and
attractive features.
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 Facebook is popular among others because of the following interesting features:
 It can be used for asynchronous written communication (like email)
 It can be used for synchronous written communication (online chat)
 It can be used for group written communication (like mailing-list)
 It can be used to store documents
 It can be used to store pictures (like album)
 It can be used to write a long text accompanied with a picture and can be
responded.
 It can record the data of the user’s “friends” and show them in a list with
their profiles.
In this teaching grant project, Facebook is used to improve students’ ability in writing
essays, partly leaving the conventional nature of the “paper and pen” writing activities which
are conducted in the classroom.

2. THE PURPOSE OF THE TEACHING GRANT PROJECT

Based on the background described above, this teaching grant project is aimed to
improve the teaching of Writing II (Essay Writing) course in the English Department of State
University of Malang using Facebook.
With the purpose stated above, this teaching grant project is important in three ways.
First, the use of technological facility in the form of Facebook will improve the teaching of
Writing II (Essay Writing) course in the English Department of State University of Malang.
Second, the use of Facebook will improve the students’ ability in writing essays in an
interesting way. This is because they can publish their essays accompanied by digital images.
Finally, the students are trained to give responses to their classmates’ essays and to receive
feedback from their classmates and their teacher. The writing process approach adopted in
the teaching of Writing II will also help the students to be able to publish a good final essay
as it is the result of a series of drafting activities.

3. SCOPE OF THE TEACHING GRANT PROJECT

Writing is one of the language skills taught in the English Department of State
University of Malang, along with other language skills, namely Listening, Speaking, and

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Reading. Writing is given as a series of courses beginning with Writing I focussing on
paragraph development, Writing II focussing on the development of essays of various types,
and Writing III which is limited to the development of Argumentative and Persuasive Essays.
Writing II in particular, which is offered in the odd semester of 2009/2010, is treated in this
teaching grant project because of its strategic role in introducing students to writing texts
larger than a paragraph. Essay writing is important because it prepares the students to write
long academic texts such as term papers or thesis. The description of the course is presented
below:

The course develops students’ ability to write English expository essays using
different methods of development: examples, details, chronological order, comparison
and contrast, cause and effect relations, as well as division and classification.

(see Katalog Jurusan Sastra Inggris, 2009: 35)

The teaching of Writing II is normally conducted in the classroom using face-to-face

mode of interaction. The textbook used for the course is Refining Composition Skills written
by Smalley, Ruetten, and Kozyrev (2001). This book is divided into two major parts: Writing
paragraphs and Writing Essays. The part used for this teaching grant project is the Writing
Essays part. Based on these texts, the students are guided to achieve the ability in writing
various types of essays which include example essay, comparison and contrast essay, cause
and effect relation essay, classification essay, and process analysis for descriptive and
expository types of essay.

4. DESCRIPTION OF THE IMPLEMENTATION

The teaching grant project is implemented through a series of stages, starting from the
planning the course to the completion of the course. The stages stretching from these
preliminary and final stages are described in this section.

1. Planning the Writing II Course

The planning stage of the course is basically the point where the course description
and syllabus should be determined. The determination of the purpose of the course, the

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content, assessment, and syllabus is not a difficult task to do as these components have been
specified in the Catalogue of the English Department (Katalog Jurusan Sastra Inggris, 2009)
and samples of course outlines from the teaching duties in the previous years are available.
In addition, with regard to the teaching grant project, it is also the point where
decision is made to include Facebook as the part of the teaching and learning process in the
course. Because the course requires a series of drafting activities and publishing, decision
was made with regard to which topics should be presented using face-to-face mode and
which ones should be presented using facebook. With this consideration, the topics in the
course can be divided into two: drafting activities which are conducted using face-to-face
mode and publishing activities which are conducted through Facebook.
The use of Facebook in Writing II course is complementary in nature. It is used to
complete the face-to-face interaction in the teaching of various types of essays. The types of
essays to be developed by the students include (1) Free Essay, (2) Example Essay, (3)
Comparison and Contrast Essay, (4) Classification Essay, (5) Process Analysis Essay, and (6)
Cause-Effect Analysis Essay. Each of these types of essays was taught in one unit of
instruction. The categories of topics can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1. Outline of Topics and Activities in Writing II Course

Weeks Topics Activities Mode of Learning
1-3 Unit 1: Free Essay Drafting Face-to-Face
4 Publishing Online/Facebook
5-10 Unit 2: Example Essay Drafting Face-to-Face
11 Publishing Online/Facebook
12-16 Unit 3: Comparison and Drafting Face-to-Face
Contrast Essay
17 Mid-term Examination Publishing Online/Facebook

18-21 Unit 4: Classification Essay Drafting Face-to-Face

22 Publishing Online/Facebook
23-25 Unit 5: Process Analysis Drafting Face-to-Face
Essay
26 Publishing Online/Facebook
27-32 Unit 6: Cause-Effect Analysis Drafting Face-to-Face
Essay
33 Final Examination Publishing Online/Facebook

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2. Implementing the Writing II Course

The teaching and learning process for the Writing II Course is implemented by
considering the types of topics presented. However, because the use of Facebook signifies
the implementation of the teaching of Writing II Course, how student can work on with
Facebook is explained further as follows:
Based on the features of the Facebook, for the purpose of this course, a special album
“Essay Writing” was created in each of the students’ Facebook accounts. With this album
facility, Facebook users can upload a picture or some pictures. Once a picture is uploaded, a
description of the picture can be made in a space underneath the picture. Moreover, as the
picture and its description are published online, other users can give comments on the
pictures. An example of the album can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1. “Essay Writing” Album Created in a Student Facebook Account

As can be seen in Figure 1, there are four albums that the student has. One of the
albums it the student “Essay Writing” album containing 3 foto (pictures). While the other
albums are basically personal albums, the “essay writing” album is the album required and
made for the Writing II course. Once the album cover is clicked, the three pictures are
revealed. The result of clicking the album cover can be seen in Figure 2.

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Figure 2. The Contents of the Album Created in a Student Facebook Account

Figure 2 shows that in her “Essay Writing” album, the student has 3 covers or
pictures (and 3 essays). A space for comment is available for the collection of pictures and
essays in this album. However, the comment space of an album is not used. If each of the
pictures is clicked, the larger version of the picture and the student essay can be retrieved.
The result of clicking the first picture is shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3. A Student Essay Published on Facebook

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 Once the student has published his/her essay, his/her classmates as well as his/her
teacher can give feedback. An example of some uploaded peer and teacher feedback is
shown in Figure 4. As can be seen in Figure 4, the student’s classmates and her teacher gave
feedback on the student’s essay.

Figure 4. Peer and Teacher Feedback on Student Essay

3. Completion of Writing II Course

The main activities for the completion of the course are to assess the students’
progress of learning. The types of assessment reported here focus on the application of
Facebook. For this purpose, the students’ essays are assessed using the ESL Composition

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Profile (Jacobs, et al., 1981). This method of assessment is applied to all types of essays. At
the end of the teaching semester, the students will be given a questionnaire to ask their
opinions about the application of Facebook.

5. PRODUCTS

The teaching grant project resulted in a number of products. The products include: (a)
The Course Outline, (b) Model Unit Syllabus, (c) Model Lesson Plans, (d) Sample Handouts
for the Students (e) Assessment Rubric: ESL Composition Profile, (f) List of Student Names
and Attendance Record, (g) List of Student Formative Scores and Final Grade, (h) Sample of
the Results of Student Scoring Using Assessment Rubric, (i) Sample of Student Online
Essays on Facebook, and (j) Results of Peer Correction, and (k) Student Feedback and
Comments on Writing II Course. In this section, each of these products is explained in a
greater detail.

(a) The Course Outline

The Course Outline contains the important details about the course that are useful for
the students as well as the lecturer. It contains the course objectives, the topics to be dealt
with in the course, the activities to be conducted in both by the students and the lecturer, the
system of evaluation, and the references. In addition, it shows the weekly schedules of the
sessions. For this course that has 4 credits, there are 32 sessions altogether. The Course
Outline for Writing II can be seen in the Appendix.

(b) Model Unit Syllabus

The thirty-two sessions in the Writing II Course are grouped into 6 units. Unit
Syllabus contains an outline of what a particular unit is about and its various aspects. More
particularly, it contains the following components:
 Standard of Competence
 Basic Competence
 Instructional Objectives
 Indicators
 Materials

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  Teaching and Learning Activities
 Instructional Media
 Assessment Procedures
In this report, a model unit syllabus is included.

(c) Model Lesson Plans

Based on the unit syllabus, several lesson plans explaining the components of the unit
syllabus in a greater detail are made. Depending on the scope of a particular unit, several
lesson plans can be made. For example, five lesson plans were made for Unit 2 as this unit is
presented in five sessions. The five lesson plans have the same topic, but different subtopics.
The subtopics for the “Example Topic” include the following:
 Subtopic 1: Thesis statement of an example essay
 Subtopic 2: Outline and logical order
 Subtopic 3: Coherence
 Subtopic 4: Connotative and denotative meaning
 Subtopic 5: Publishing students’ final example essays

(d) Sample Handouts for the Students

To ensure the achievement of instructional objectives stated in the lesson plans,
handouts are made and distributed to the students. For example, the handouts given to the
students for the teaching of how to write an example essay (Unit 2) include the following:
 Types of Development of Example Essay
 Thesis Statement Checklist
 Lyric of Song “Welcome to My Life”
 Examples of “Example Essay”

(e) Assessment Rubric: ESL Composition Profile

The students’ final products in the writing tasks are evaluated by considering five
components of general proficiency in writing as proposed by Jacobs, et al. (1981). These
components with their marking proportion include:
 Content (30%)
 Organization (20%)

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  Vocabulary (20%)
 Language Use (25%)
 Mechanics (5%)

(f) List of Student Names and Attendance Record

There were 20 students who attended this Writing II Course. The number of the
student could be maintained until the end of the semester and all of the students fulfilled the
requirement to attend the course for more than 80% of the sessions.

(g) List of Student Formative Scores and Final Grade

The students published six essays in their Facebook account. Each of these essays
was given a score. At the end of the semester, the students were also given an overall score
that reflects their achievement in the course.

(h) Sample of the Results of Student Scoring Using Assessment Rubric

All of the six essays that the students submitted online through their facebook account
were evaluated and the score sheet (the Assessment Rubric) was given to the students so that
they knew their progress in learning to write essays.

(i) Sample of Student Online Essays on Facebook

All of the six essays of the students that were published in their Facebook account
were accompanied with images to make them more interesting.

(j) Results of Peer Correction

In the process of teaching and learning, the students conducted group discussion to
discuss about grammatical errors in the essays made by their classmates. The discussion
results were written on transparency sheet so that they could be presented using Overhead
Projector for classroom discussion. Group discussion and presentation of the results of peer
correction were conducted three times for the following sessions:
 Comparison-contrast essay
 Classification essay
 Process analysis essay

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(k) Student Feedback and Comments on Writing II Course
For the evaluation of the teaching and learning process of Writing II Course, the
students were ask to complete a questionnaire. This questionnaire asked the students to give
answers on three important points:
 Do you think your writing skills have improved in some way after
following Essay Writing (Writing II) course? Please Explain.
 What’s your impression/opinion about publishing your essay in Facebook?
Please explain.
 Do you have any comments/concerns about a certain aspect of Writing II
course? Please write down, if any.

6. CONCLUSION

This paper has presented a report of the ICT-based innovative teaching grant that was
aimed to improve the teaching of Writing II (Essay Writing) course in the English
Department of State University of Malang using Facebook. At this present form, this paper is
not meant to show the results of a research project, as the focus of the teaching grant was on
the improvement of the teaching and learning process. The examination of the teaching
implementation and student feedback shows three major advantages of this innovative
teaching grant project. First, the use of Facebook to a certain extent improved the teaching of
Writing II (Essay Writing) course in the English Department of State University of Malang.
Second, the use of Facebook improved the students’ ability in writing essays in an interesting
way. The students were able not only to follow the planning-drafting-revising-editing process
of learning to write, but also to publish their essays online with attractive digital images.
Finally, the students were able to give responses to their classmates’ essays and to receive
feedback from their classmates and their teacher. It is expected that the application of
Facebook in the teaching of Writing II course in this innovative teaching grant project can
inspire other teachers to consider applying Facebook to help students improve their English
learning.

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REFERENCES

Dubin, F., & Olshtain, E. (1986). Course design: Developing programs and materials for
language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jacobs, H.L., Zinkgraf, S.A., Wormuth, D.R., Hartfiel, V.Faye, & Hughey, J.B. 1981. Testing
ESL Composition: A Practical Approach. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Katalog Jurusan Sastra Inggris. 2009. Malang: Fakultas Sastra Universitas Negeri Malang.
Smalley, Regina L., Ruetten, Mary K., and Kozyrev, Joann R. 2001. Refining Composition
Skills. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.

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APPENDIX

THE COURSE OUTLINE

(SEMESTER I 2009/2010)

Subject: Writing II Code: ELS 415

Stratum: S1 Prerequisite: Writing I
Status: Compulsory Credits/Hours: 4/4 hrs/week
Class: A Offering: A
Schedule: Monday (9-10) & Thursday (5-6) Room: J6.103 & J5.105
Instructor: Bambang Yudi Cahyono Code: 872207

Objective
The main objective of this course is to develop the students’ ability to write various types of
essay, comprising example, comparison and contrast, cause and effect relation,
classification, and process analysis for descriptive and expository types of essay.

Contents
The knowledge and skills offered to the students would cover the components and
organization of an essay, including using examples, details, casual analysis, comparison
and contrast, cause and effect, classification and process analysis. Besides skill in writing,
the students are also expected to learn to judge good essays.

Activities
The course assigns class work and outside-class work. In class there are brief lectures,
discussions, and writing exercises in application of the given theories. More assignments
are to be done outside class, which include reading texts and writing the given assignments.

Evaluation
The evaluation will consider the recorded assessments of the products of all the work done
by the students, their participation during the class activities, the mid-term test, and the final
examination. Classroom exercises/assignments must be done in class and students who
miss them will get no score for those particular tasks.

References

Required:
Smalley, R.L., Ruetten, M.K., & Kozyrev, J.R. 2001. Refining Composition Skills. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company.

Recommended:
Oshima, A., & Hogue, A. 1997. Writing Academic English. New York: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company.

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SCHEDULE
Meet Date Focus Note
ing
1 3/9/2009 Introduction to the course Face to face
2 7/9/2009 UNIT 1: FREE ESSAY Face to face
Thesis statement & Introductory paragraph
3 10/9/2009 Developmental paragraph Face to face
4 14/9/2009 The conclusion Face to face
5 17/9/2009 Publishing the “Free Essay” Online session
6 Eid-el Fitri Festival --
7 Eid-el Fitri Festival --
8 28/9/2009 UNIT 2: EXAMPLE ESSAY Face to face
Text: “The Power of Culture and Language”
9 1/10/2009 Outline and logical order Face to face
10 5/10/2009 Coherence Face to face
11 8/10/2009 Connotative and denotative meaning Face to face
12 12/10/2009 Publishing the “Example Essay” Online session
13 15/10/2009 UNIT 3: COMPARISON-CONTRAST ESSAY Face to face
14 19/10/2009 Introductory & concluding paragraphs Face to face
15 22/10/2009 Developmental paragraphs Face to face
16 26/10/2009 Finishing draft and editing Face to face
17 29/10/2009 Mid-term Examination: Publishing the Online session
“Comparison-contrast Essay”
18 2/11/2009 UNIT 4: CLASSIFICATION ESSAY Face to face
19 5/11/2009 Introductory & concluding paragraphs Face to face
20 9/11/2009 Classification Face to face
21 12/11/2009 Writing a complete essay Face to face
22 16/11/2009 Focus on error correction Write an essay
23 19/11/2009 Publishing the “Classification Essay” Online session
24 23/11/2009 UNIT 5: PROCESS ANALYSIS ESSAY Face to face
25 26/11/2009 Process Analysis Face to face
26 30/11/2009 Developmental paragraphs Face to face
27 3/12/2009 Feedback on process analysis essay Face to face
28 7/12/2009 Feedback on grammar Face to face
29 10/12/2009 Publishing the “Process analysis” Online session
30 14/12/2009 UNIT 6: CAUSE-EFFECT ANALYSIS Face to face
ESSAY
31 17/12/2009 Developmental paragraphs Face to face
32 21/12/2009 Finishing cause and effect essay Face to face
Final Examination: Online session
Publishing the “Cause-effect Essay”

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