Risma Nur Anissa, Sri Utami, Rediana Setiyani, Tusyanah, Mar’Atus Sholikah, Ahmad Nurkhin
Social networking via social media has become a universal culture and in Indonesia, there were 45% mix and minglers (active social media users), 41.6% cliquers (Tusyanah, et al., 2015). It was unfortunate if the development of internet technology was only used to simply update status or to give comment. Therefore; an instructional learning model through social media was needed. It was a blended learning through WhatsApp (WA) Group Discussion. The objectives of this study were: (1) to formulate the implementation of blended learning model through WA Group Discussion to improve English writing skill in Indonesia, (2) to know the influence of blended learning model through WA Group Discussion on English writing skill in Indonesia. It was an experimental study with 205 university students who were divided into experimental and control groups. The data were collected by the test, students’ journal, and observation. The results of this study showed that WA Group Discussion could be implemented to improve students’ English writing skills. The study showed that the experimental class after being treated with blended learning through WA Group Discussion for 2 months was better to improve English writing skill than students at the control class. The posttest mean of the experimental group was higher (from 74.88 up to 84.20) than the control group (from 75.58 up to 81.75). The value of the t-test of 7.595 with a significance of 0.000; and the critical value at α = 5%. It means that there was a significant difference of students’ skills in producing text between experimental group and control group. Furthermore, lecturers’ observation showed that the experimental groups were more excited than the control groups. © 2017 American Scientific Publishers. All rights reserved.
Faculty of Economics, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Sekaran Campus, Gunungpati, Semarang, 50229, Central Java, Indonesia
