The effects of digital story writing instruction on narrative writing skills of junior high school students in Indonesia

Abstract

The objectives of the study were: 1) to explore the effects of digital story writing instruction on narrative writing skills of junior high school students in Indonesia; 2) to investigate how digital story writing instruction enhance English writing motivation of junior high school students in Indonesia. The instruments used in this study were online narrative writing test, writing motivation questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview. The sample in this study was 35 students from eighth- grade who were studying in 2017 academic year at Sekolah Menengah Pertama Islam Terpadu (SMP IT) in Indonesia. The research design was one-group pretest-posttest, quasi-experimental design.

The results from students’ English writing test showed a significant difference between students’ pretest and posttest mean scores at the significant level of 0.05. Firstly, it showed that students’ narrative writing skills were improved after taking the class implementing digital story writing instruction model. Secondly, the results from questionnaire and interview showed that digital story writing instruction improved students’ writing motivation. Students’ answers and opinion also confirmed that the learning phase, activities, classmates, and teacher played an important role to encourage them to write.