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Students Perception of the Importance of Diary Writing to Writing

Skill Development

Ribka Nasita Putri
Christian University of Indonesia

Abstract

Many students think that writing is difficult things. This study was conducted
to see the perception of writing diary can improve their writing skill by employing
survey and use questionnaire to collect the data. The sample was 10 participants out
of 19 sixth semester class A by using the cluster random sampling techniques in
English Teaching Study Programe. The statistical test resulted the effectiveness
between two variables. This means there was a positive between the students
perception of diary writing and Writing Skill Development in sixth semester on
English Teaching Study Programe.


INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of the most important skills among the four skills. Many students
consider that writing is a difficult subject to learn even in their own language. Harmer
(2004) states that writing is a weird activity for students because they seldom write
even in their own language. Its hard for them to start writing. The activity of writing
can comprise writing a message, a letter and a diary.
Ghaith (2002) states that students are more willing to experiment, explore, revise
and edit their own writing. Most students surrender when they cannot get good results
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in the beginning of their writing. They are involved in the process of writing by
exploring, revising and editing their writing. In creating a good topic for writing,
students provide the opportunities to communicate their ideas through enjoyable
writing. In this case, writing diary is used as an activity to improve students writing
ability. Writing diary is interesting to do for students because they tell their activity or
experience.
A diary is a personal daily record of ones life. Diary also can be used to change
the image writing from complex and boring exercise become enjoyable and
interesting exercise in writing. Realizing that diary writing is a good and meaningful
to develop writing ability and also that not many school in our context apply this, the
researcher tries and believes that to make study on these are a valuable effort to be
done. This is also supported by Numrich (1996, p.131) that diary writing has become
a useful tool for L2 learners to discover underlying factors that influence their success
(or lack) in learning an L2. In this study, researcher does research in sixth semester
class A of English Teaching Study Programe and will see the students perception
about diary writing skill to develop their writing skill.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Writing is discovery process, it involves discovering ideals, discovering how
to organize them and discovering what that you want to put ever to your reader. So a
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lot of what a writer does a writer doesnt actually appear on the page. Writing is very
complex. It is neither an easy as spontaneous activity. Writing needs some mental
efforts that must be combined and arranged. Writing needs hard working, when the
students do writing. They not only have to keep minds but also considered the past
opinion or ideas, which are relevant to their goal at the teaching.
According to (Hedge, 2003: 11) reflect this change of view point and attempt
to apply it insight to the EFL and ESL context. The emphasis throughout is on the
process involved in producing complete, conceptualized, pieces of writing. The focus
is especially on why the writing is being done (a serve of purpose) and how it is being
written for a (a scene of audience). The activity that which offers are both highly
practical based as they are or her long and varied experienced and interesting to do.
Writing is one way of making meaning experience for students and for other.
Writing daily experiences is a good start to develop students writing ability.
Students like to write things that happen in their daily lives in a diary. When students
are accustomed to writing, they might write easily. Build students habit in writing is
not easy. A diary is related or close to students life, it can be effective for those who
do not like writing. In addition, they can write anything in their daily activities.

MRTHODOLOGY
This research was a perception of students which employed the cross sectional
survey and the document study to obtain the data. The survey was conducted using a
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set of questionnaire to collect the variable (X) of students perception of diary
writing. The questionnaire consists of 8 statements on a 5- point Likert scale- that
ranged 1-5 from strongly disagree to strongly agree. To ensure that the whole
participants could respond appropriately, the questionnaire was written in English.
The second variable (Y), the students Writing skill development, was determined by
their most recent English scores.
The population of this research was the whole sixth semester students of
English Teacher Study Programe in Christian University of Indonesia, around 39
students. The sample was selected using the cluster random sampling techniques, i.e.
by randomly selected 10 participants.

RESULT AND DESCRIPTION
Data Description
This section presents a general overview of the processing of data concerning
the two indicators in this research. The first subsection describes the students
perception their feel comfort in diary writing whereas the second exposes the
studentsperception the benefit diary writing.
1. Students Perception Feel Comfortable
The results of students perception their feel comfortable writing in diary
book. As shown in Table 1, that the item of quesionarre based on indicators.

Table 1: Item about Students Perception Feel Comfortable
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No Statement SD D N A SA
1. I enjoy writing 2 - 3 5 -
2. I feel, Im good writer when I
write diary
- 4 1 5 -
7. I enjoy when I write in
Indonesian
- - 3 7 -
8 Writing diary book is
interesting
- - 5 5 -


2. Students Perception Benefit Writing Diary
The results of students perception the benefit writing diary. As shown in
Table 2, that the item of quesionarre based on indicators.
Table 2: Item of Students Perception Benefit Writing Diary
No Statement SD D N A SA
3 I always write something in my diary book - 3 - 7 -
4 I think diary can improve my writing skill - - 4 6 -
5 I trust myself as a person who can find good
idea,words and perception
- - 5 5 -
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6 I can find new vocabulary from writing diary - - 4 6 -

Hypothesis Test
The results of the correlation beetween students perception diary writing and
their writing skill development. As shown in the last table with the percentage of the
result with quesionarre data.
Table 3: The Result of Students Perception Diary Writing Skill
No
Responden
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total
1 1 3 4 4 3 3 4 4 26
2 3 2 4 3 3 3 4 3 25
3 3 4 2 3 4 4 4 4 28
4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 32
5 3 2 2 4 3 3 3 3 23
6 4 4 4 3 4 4 4 3 30
7 1 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 29
8 4 2 2 4 3 3 4 3 25
9 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 31
10 4 2 4 3 3 4 3 3 26
275


Using the correlation coefficient criteria after we find 275, this devided with
400 and change into percentage, so the result 68,75% indicated that that there was a
positive moderate correlation between students perception diary writing and writing
skill development. In addition, since the obtained coefficient that is not enough
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significant but these findings students need to keep on developing to write diary book
so they can always improve their skill in writing.


CONCLUSION
The results showed that there was a moderate positive relationship between
the students perception diary wiritng and their writing skill development at sixth
semester ETSP in Christian University of Indonesia. Although only 68,75% of the
perception was determined by their feeling and the benefit using diary wiring. In
relation to these findings students need to keep on developing to write diary book
especially in English so they can always improve their skill in writing.
Since this study investigated motivational factor only, further studies are
recommended to focus on attitudinal, intelligence, talents, and maturity of the
students. So students must always improve write something especially write diary to
writing skill development and get some benefit of motivation of it.

REFERENCES
Best, J. W., & Kahn, J. V. (1989). Research in education (6th Edition). Englewoods
Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.
Hedge, T. (2003). Teaching & Learning in the language. UK: OUP.
http://english-text-blogspot.com/

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