The Effect of Blended Learning Model towards Students’ Writing Ability

The rapid development of science and technology in the current era of globalization brings many changes in various aspects of social life. These changes include education. Recognizing this, Indonesia has published English as one of the crucial subject. However, students got some difficulties in writing. To assist students in solving writing problem, this study was conducted to know the effect of blended learning model towards students’ writing ability of the eleventh grade students at SMAN 6 Pekanbaru. Sample of the study was determined through random sampling method. There were 10 classes randomly selected. It consisted of two classes that were XI IPA 1 as experimental class and XI IPA 2 as control class. Afterwards, the experimental group was taught by applying blended learning model through Telegram Messenger and the control group was instructed through the traditional method by lecturing method. To gain data, writing test was administered. After collecting data, the mean scores of the pre-test and the post-test for the two groups were calculated using the t-test. Findings of the study revealed that there were statistically significant differences between the means of two groups in favor of the experimental group which achieved better results in the post-test. It was proved by the significant level of ≤ 0.05 which was t=3.983 and p=0.000. On the other hand, there is a significant effect of blended learning model towards students’ writing ability.


INTRODUCTION
The rapid development of science and technology in the current era of globalization brings many changes in various aspects of social life.These changes include education, science, commerce, politics, tourism and other interesting things (Julian, 1993).Changes that occur are not limited only on a national scale, but appear also at the international level.Thus, the demand for the mastery of international communication becomes indispensable in order to support the various benefits of social interaction.The demands of mastery of international communication in question is one of them is English (Zahari, 2011), English has become the language that countries in the world use to communicate with each other.
Recognizing this, Indonesia has published English as one of the subjects that began to be taught since elementary school up to university.That is, English has become one of the many lessons that teachers teach, and are expected to produce or acquire skilled learners in English to face the challenges of the globalization era.Thus, the assumption that learners already have English proficiency is unquestionable.
However, based on observations made by researchers at SMAN 6 Pekanbaru in grade XI, English proficiency was still lacking, especially in writing ability.In fact, the progress of a nation and state can be measured from the advanced or not written communications of the nation (Tarigan, 2008).Lack of writing ability is even carried away at the level of college, according to Sutanto (2013).There are several things that the lack of writing skills caused as follows; the absence of ideas for language, one should be able to listen, speak, read, and write well (Tarigan, 2008).
In this case, the researcher focused on writing ability of second grade students of SMAN 6 Pekanbaru, especially in writing hortatory exposition texts which were still considered less able.Since, the demand for mastering the ability to write one of them writing hortatory exposition text in English explicitly stated in the standard of competence and basic competence (SK & KD) of the language subjects.Writing is considered to be one of the most complex language skills (Cole & Feng, 2015), no exaggeration if writing is considered to reflect people written, not confident in grammar, hard to arrange ideas, limited vocabulary, and no writing motivation.
Writing is one of language skill which is defined by Brown (2001) as "the graphic representation of spoken language, and that written performance is much like oral performance, the only difference lying in graphic instead of auditory signals".From the statement, writing means productive skill.As a productive skill, writing must have a process.Richard and Renandya (2002) & Oshima and Hogue (2007) state that writing process as approval activity may be broadly seen as comprising four main stages: planning, drafting, revising, and editing.Before starting to write a paragraph there are some steps: pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing those steps will help to make a better writing.A sufficient skill is needed to produce a good written language as stated by Brown (2001) that "writing products are often the result of thinking, drafting, and revising procedures that require specialized skills, skills that not every speaker develops naturally".
Therefore, the learning model should be precise and not monotonous in the class only.The learning model should also be able to facilitate and support students in learning a language especially writing where it is easy to learn.One that can be applied in English learning is the Blended Mobile Device Based Model through the use of Telegram application.
Blended Learning is a term derived from the English language derived from two syllables namely: blended and learning.Blended means mix or a good combination.Blended Learning is basically a combination of learning excellence that is done face to face (face to face) and virtually (Husamah, 2014: 11).Blended Learning as an online mixing and face to face encounter in an integrated learning activity.Blended Learning is a combination of traditional learning characteristics and electronic learning environment or Blended Learning (Husamah, 2014: 12); (Ellis, Goodyear, Prosser, & O'Hara, 2006); (Köse, 2010(Köse, : 2796)); (Norberg, Dziuban, & Moskal, 2011); (Horn & Staker, 2014); and (So & Brush, 2008).
In describing the blended learning ingredients, Carman (2005) has pointed out that the blended learning process includes five key ingredients, such as; (1) Live Events: Synchronous, instructor-led learning events in which all learners participate at the same time; (2) Online Content: Learning experiences that the learner completes individually, at his own speed and on his own time; (3) Collaboration: Learners communicate and create with others.E-mail, threaded discussions, and wikis are all examples; (4) Assessment: A measure of learners" knowledge.
Preassessments can come before live or self-paced events to determine prior knowledge, and post-assessments can occur following scheduled or online learning events to measure learning transfer; (5) Support Materials: These include reference materials both physical and virtual that enhance learning retention and transfer.They include: printable references, job aids and personal digital assistant.
Blended instruction offers an active learning environment with flexibility in using resources for the students and provides more time for faculty members to spend with learners in small groups or even individually (Oh & Park, 2009).In addition, blended learning has the potential to change students' experiences and outcomes through learning (Davis &Fill, 2007;Hameed, Badii, and Cullen, 2008;Azizan, 2010;Chen and Jones, 2007;& Yuen, 2010).
So, it can be concluded that Blended Learning is a learning model that combines face-to-face and nonface-to-face where online-based lessons or E-Learning becomes a media that has an important role in the process of learning and teaching.This learning model is also a combination of conventional and modern system learning.Through Blended Learning students will experience a new learning experience.
English language teaching has adopted blended learning to create a learner-centered class.Several studies were conducted in this respect.Al-Masry (2012) investigated the effectiveness of using the electronic blended learning in teaching a unit in English course at the cognitive levels (recognition, comprehension, and application) by second year secondary female students in Makkah.In the same context, Jia, Chen, Ding, & Ruan (2012) customized the open source course management system Moodle to build the individualized vocabulary review and assessment functions for English instruction.In her attempt to investigate the effect of the electronic portfolio on developing the English language writing skills for second grade preparatory school students, Sayed (2012) 2004) conducted her study to find out whether there were significant differences in achievement between English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) freshman students exposed to traditional in-class writing instruction depending on the textbook only, and those exposed to a combination of traditional in-class instruction and Web-based instruction in writing.These studies proved that blended learning was suitable and highly recommended for use inside and outside the classroom.Furthermore, the researchers in most of the studies outlined variant suggestions and recommendations to enhance blended learning employment in the teachinglearning process.
Moreover, Asnawi (2017) studied about the utilization of blended learning edmodo group in reading activity.The purpose of his research was to know the utilization of edmodo group in reading.This research was a kind of qualitative research with descriptive method of data presentation.
Data collection techniques in his study using a questionnaire which analyzing simple description percentage.The results of his study were providing a fun learning method, making the relationship of lecturers with students to be closer, facilitate communication between lecturers and students, learning can be done anytime, as a suggestion to share knowledge and knowledge with new people, and as a media completion of exercises, and quiz.
The last research, Wahyuni (2018) said that telegram messenger could be a media in learning and teaching process that could be seen from the students' perspectives in perceived ease of use for strongly agree which was 35%, perceived usefulness for strongly agree was 22%, attitude toward usage for strongly agree was 30%, actual system use for strongly agree was 19%, actual system use for strongly agree was 19%.In other words, respondent positively responded.
Based on the explanation described in the background of this research, the researcher was interested to conduct a research that designed with quasi-experimental method by looking at the effect of Blended Learning Model towards students' writing ability of the eleventh grade students at SMAN 6 Pekanbaru.

METHOD
Researcher adopted the quasiexperimental approach to suit the nature of the study which aimed at figuring out the effect of blended learning model towards students' writing ability.To know the effect of the independent variable (Blended learning model) on the dependent variable (Writing ability), two groups of the students were selected: an experimental class and a control one.The blended learning model was used in teaching writing of the experimental group by using Telegram Application on Smartphone while the traditional which was lecturing method only used in control group.
To test the study hypotheses, the researcher adopted the equivalent groups design (Experimental and Control groups) through selecting two similar groups and applying the experimental factor (independent variable) presented in the blended learning on the experimental group while the traditional method was used with the control group.As Ebeedat et al. (2005) explain researcher adopts this design to avoid the defects of one group design; more than one group are used when applying the experimental factor on one of them and leaving the other in its natural circumstances.Thus, the difference was the result of the experimental factor effect on the experimental group provided that the groups are completely equivalent except for the experimental variable which affects the experimental group (Creswell, 2013).So, the researcher depended on the following design to test the study hypotheses as shown on figure 1.This research was conducted at SMAN 6 Pekanbaru.The school was located Jalan Bambu Kuning No.28, Rejosari, Tenayan Raya, Rejosari, Tenayan Raya, Kota Pekanbaru, Riau 28151.The reason of choosing this school to be the place of research was because this school accreditation is A and the school policy that permitted students using mobile phone while learning.This research was done on September to December 2017.
Population of the research was the eleventh grade students.Afterwards, selecting the study sample is one of the most important steps of  Ebeedat et al. (2005) define the sample as "A part of the study main population, chosen by the researcher using various techniques, which includes members of the main population".The study sample was determined through the simple random method.At SMAN 6 Pekanbaru, there were 10 classes from eleventh grade.Then the sample was selected randomly from those classes.After selecting, sample of this study were XI IPA 1 as experimental class and XI IPA 2 as control class.
Further, Instrument of the research was writing test.It was administered to the students.The researcher applied in pre-test and posttest.It was administered to the students in experimental and control class to figure out and measure the students' writing ability taught by applying blended learning model and conventional method.The students' papers were corrected by English teacher according to the following rubrics: contents, vocabulary, organization, language use, and mechanics (Wahyuni, 2017).
In doing treatments, researcher used Telegram to conduct blended learning model before the class meeting, during the class meeting, and after the class meeting.To run the blended learning, before the class meeting, researcher posted something for students to read or ponder to prepare themselves mentally and emotionally on the selected topic.Sometimes they were asked to provide responses immediately in Telegram.This pre-learning activity assisted them to reactive their schema, for example existing knowledge, and therefore, increasing students' interest and awareness so they were ready for face to face class meeting.When having class meeting, they were guided in a discussion on the posted messages in Telegram, and engaged in a problem solving activity that reinforced what they had learned before class and during the class.
Then, the researcher collected the data which was required to support this study by distributing writing test to the class in experimental and control group.To collect the data related to the initial writing ability, pre-test was administered.Then, posttest was administered to collect the data related students' writing ability taught by applying blended learning model and conventional method.In addition, treatment was given to the experimental group in four times before pre-test and post-test by applying blended learning model.
In analyzing data, the researcher employed the score of pretest and post test of the students which were including in experimental and control group.The data were processed and computed by using SPSS.

FINDING AND DISCUSSION
At the beginning of the experiment of this study, the researcher used the pre-test in order to investigate the equivalence of the writing skill among the students.The results of the pre-test of the both groups, the control group and the experimental group, concerning the mean scores, are tabulated and can be seen on table 1. Table 1revealed that the mean score of the control group was 59.97with a standard deviation of 9.571and the mean score of the experimental group was 60.06 with a standard deviation of 7.064.The table also shows that there is no any significant difference between the mean scores of the both groups with the significance level of ≤ 0.05 as it can be seen to be .964.Hence, this result has proved that the participants of the experimental group and of the control group were equivalent before conducting the experiment.
In addition, all of the students were specialized in English language to be English teachers and all of them were studying in the eleventh level.Therefore, the change of the English writing performance would be attributed to the effect of blended learning through telegram.
The researcher employed telegram before the class meeting, during the class meeting, and after the class meeting.The pre-learning activity was conducted to reactive students before having class meeting.Also, it had been used for some activities in learning process such as: submitting the writing practice (can be seen on figure 2), forum for discussion (can be seen on figure 3), content/ material sharing (can be seen on figure 4), and problem solving (can be seen on figure 5).However, the obstacles in using this application also faced by the researcher.The problem was students were reluctant to use English when texting, asking the question, and giving responses.
Furthermore, after conducting the experiment, the researcher administrated a post-test to the both groups in order to evaluate students' writing.The results of the post-test of the both groups, the control group and the experimental group, are tabulated and can be seen in table 2. As can be seen from table 2, the results of the post-test show that the difference in the mean scores between the control group and the experimental group was statistically different with the significance level of ≤ 0.05 (t = 3.983, p = .000).Therefore, it can be suggested that the results of the experimental group in the post-test were better than the results of the control group.Thus, the question of this study has been answered.
The data analysis showed that there were no significant differences between the mean scores of the pretest of the control group and the experimental group, but there were significant differences between the results of the post-test of the both groups.For the control group, there was no obvious difference between their results in the pre-test and the post-test whereas the results of the experimental group in the pre-test and the post-test were statistically significant.
This study was set out to answer the question of the research which is "Is there any significant effect of blended learning model towards students' writing ability of the eleventh grade students at SMAN 6 Pekanbaru?"Therefore, objective of this study is to figure out the effect of blended learning model towards students' writing ability of the eleventh grade students at SMAN 6 Pekanbaru.
By comparing the mean scores of the control group and the experimental group in the pre-test and the post-test, the results revealed that there were statistically significant differences between the students' writing scores of the both groups due to the blended learning model through telegram.Before conducting the experiment, the scores of all participants in the pre-test were almost similar.The mean score of the control group was 59.97 and the mean score of the experimental group was 60.06, and after conducting the experiment, it was clear that the students' writing scores of the experimental group, which was taught according to the blended learning model through telegram, was better than students' writing scores of the control group, which was taught according to the traditional method in which the mean score of the control group was 76.13 whereas the mean score of the experimental group was 82.19.This was clear evidence that blended learning model affected in the students' writing ability positively.Therefore, the alternative hypothesis of this study was accepted.On the other hand, there was a significant effect of blended learning model towards students' writing ability.

CONCLUSION
This study investigated the effect of blended learning model towards students' writing ability of the eleventh grade students at SMAN 6 Pekanbaru.It shed a light on how blended learning through telegram could enhance the writing ability.In the light of this study, it was a clear sign that blended learning was very effective in which there were obvious differences in the results of the students' writing in the pre-test and the post-test.It was clear that blended learning improved the writing ability of the participants of the experimental group in which the experimental group achieved better results in the post-test than the control group.Blended learning helped many of the students to be more metacognitively aware of their English writing process.Thus, the results of this study showed that blended learning through telegram could be used as a model of learning for improving the writing ability outside of the classrooms.
Based on the results of this study, the researcher recommends the following; (1) Helping students use English language in "life-like" situations such as emails, chatting, forums, text messaging and blogs; (2) Adopting modern techniques that enhance students' participation and interaction; (3) Conducting the future research related to the effect of blended learning on another skills through other platform, social media, or application on Smartphone.

Figure
Figure 1.Research Design

Figure
Figure 2. Writing practice submission