Digital Application in EFL Classroom Activity: Using Edmodo to Improve Students’ Writing Performance

: This research aims at improving students’ writing performance on narrative text by using digital application namely edmodo . The method of the research was Classroom Action Research (CAR). The actions were implemented in a cycle. The researcher collaborates with the English teacher as the collaborator in conducting the research. The participants of the research were 20 students of grade tenth Administrasi Perkantoran 1 of SMK Nurul Falah Pekanbaru. The data were taken by using test, observation checklist, field note, and interview. After analyzing the data, it is found that the use of edmodo in writing narrative text activity was able to improve the students’ writing performance. In the other hand, the students were able to generate idea, identify and use various vocabularies, use the appropriate language use and mechanics. The data shows that the students’ score was 80.85. It was improved significantly from the students’ previous daily score, 69. There were several factors that influence the improvement. They are the media, learning activity, and teacher’s ability toward the application usage. Digital application edmodo is an interesting media that can catch the students’ attention so that the students were focus on the use of the media. Learning activity by using edmodo can improve the students’ enthusiasm. They enjoyed learning to write through edmodo with no worry of being mistake. The teachers’ capability of using edmodo motivated and help students to be creative in writing.


INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Problem
Writing ability is an important role of communication. Though we lived in an era with high technology that could decrease hand writing, writing ability is still important. As a fact, it could be argued that it was even more important now than ever. The purpose of writing is to make the readers get the ideas, so that we need to construct it perfectly and understandable.
In Senior high school, writing ability is a great part of the language skill that students need to master. In writing, they should produce the ideas in well organization. Students need to generate the ideas clearly and correctly, they need to use the correct and various vocabularies, and they need to write in good mechanism. In the other hand, writing is not an easy activity to do. Finally, it makes teachers need to think and apply a good strategy to motivate the students so they can produce a good composition.
English syllabus applied in learning and teaching process in Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan (SMK) Nurul Falah expects the grade tenth students of Jurusan Administrasi Perkantoran should be able to write narrative text in well organization. Even though narrative text aims at entertaining the readers it is not an easy task for the students to complete.
It can be known from the data, almost of all the students failed to get the standard score (minimum passing grade) for the daily writing test especially in narrative text. The average daily score of writing narrative text is about 69. Since the passing grade score for English as stated for grade ten is 75. In other words, the students could pass the writing test if they join the remedial phases.
After conducting a preliminary observation on the process of teaching and learning English at the grade tenth Jurusan Administrasi Perkantoran 1 of SMK Nurul Falah Pekanbaru on January 2018, the researcher found some problems concerned to the grade tenth Jurusan Administrasi Perkantoran 1 students' writing activity at SMK Nurul Falah Pekanbaru. First, most of them made mistakes in using grammar such as tenses, pronoun, and subject verb-agreement. Second, students had lack of vocabularies so that they feel hard to write. The lack of vocabularies could be seen when the teachers ask them in English and they had no respon. Third, it was hard for the students to develop ideas related to the topic of writing. The last problem was the students used the error spelling of the words. Therefore, many students consider that writing narrative text is a difficult activity to do.

Pertaining
to the above phenomenon, the researcher wants to assume a digital application as a media in improving the students' ability in writing narrative text. The media is one of classroom social media namely edmodo. This media is one of free writing related tools and resources available on the web. Edmodo is a kind of social learning network and discussion platform. By using edmodo teachers and students are easily discuss and collaborate online.
Edmodo helped students to achieve their needs. Moreover, it decreased their intensity to open other social media which make them being lazy to learn. By using edmodo, students will be more active to participate in finishing their writing tasks. From the regular uses of edmodo, students gave some opinions about the advantages of using edmodo in their English language class. B. Review of Related Theory 1. Writing Narrative Spratt, Pulvernes, and Williams (2005:26) state that writing is one of the productive language skills relate to delivering messages with the use of graphic symbols. In the other hands, writing is a productive activity related to delivering the messages or ideas in written language. The writer should be able to generate ideas well, choose the appropriate words, and using correct mechanism to produce a good composition.
Besides that, Sudaryanto (2001: 64) says that writing skill is an ability to express his/her mind and feeling which is expressed in a written form, in graphic symbols so that the readers are able to understand the message. It means that writing activity is a complex process of delivering what people feel and think into the written form with concern to the regulation such as how to generate the ideas well, how to choose and use the appropriate words, and keep focus to the language use and mechanism of writing a good composition. Anderson and Anderson (1997: 8) say that narrative text is a piece of text which tells a story and in doing so entertains and informs the reader or listener. Meanwhile, Percy in Permana and Zuhri (2013: 2) state that narrative is a type of essay that tells a story or a series of events in which they occur. Its purpose is to give meaning to an event or a series of events by telling story. Keraf (1989: 136) states that narrative is a kind of compositions with the main objectives of activities that are tied together to become an event that happened in a certain time. Furthermore, writing narrative text is a story that happened in the past time. It aims at entertaining the readers.
Meanwhile, Anderson and Anderson (1997: 8) show the steps for constructing a narrative text. They are: (1) Orientation, it is the opening story that contains of characters, the setting of time and place. (2) Complication, it contains events of the story which stimulates the reader to guess what will happen in the story. (3) Sequence of events, it contains of characters' reaction to the complication. (4) Resolution, it contains of the problem solving handled by the characters. (5) Coda, it contains of moral values which can be learned from the story, but this is an optional step. It means that in producing a good narrative text, students should keep focus on the generic structure of the text.
In this research, writing narrative is the students' activity in composing a well-organized paragraph of narrative. Students need to write a text related to a topic given by the researcher with carrying the generic structure carefully. Students have to generate the idea well, choose the appropriate and use the various vocabularies, stay focus and use the correct grammatical pattern, and keep attention to the mechanism of writing. Dale (1969) states that the use of learning media has an important role in the process of learning and teaching to gain the optimal outcome. The existence of learning media in the process of learning and teaching English in the classroom is a way to lead the students into the concept of learning that they have to understand. The use of digital application namely edmodo assumed as one of media that can be applied to improve the students' learning activity.

Learning Media
Goes along with the idea above, Abdullah (2012) says that the influence of good students' interaction with the learning sources will produces a good learning outcome. So that, there is a big different between students who have higher intensity and for them who have the lower one in the use of learning sources in gaining their learning outcomes. Sudjana and Rivai (2002) say that the advantages of learning media are motivating the students, supporting the learning material, learning method becomes various and enjoyable, and make the students easy to involve their self in the learning activity. It can be concluded that using learning media is very useful in improving the quality of learning process. It is neither facilitating the students to understand the lesson easily nor helping the teacher to deliver the lesson simply.
In this research, the media used by the researcher was an android application namely edmodo. It is a kind of social media made for learning activity. In another word, it is made for learning purposes, because every teacher can make his/her own classroom with some features supported such as chatting, giving comment, and posting and also downloading contents. The use of this media is expected can be able to improve the students learning outcome.

METHOD
The method of the research was Classroom Action Research (CAR). It is a kind of the research that process in a class activity. It involves a teacher in the classroom to empower and develop the quality of the classroom process. Kemmis & Mc Taggart (2000) state that "Classroom Action Research is systematic inquiry conducted by teachers, researcher, principals, school counselors, or other stakeholders in the teaching learning environment to gather information about how their particular schools operate, how they teach, and how well their students learn." So, Classroom Action Research is a research which is conducted by the teacher by applying a strategy, method, or media to improve the quality of the learning process in the classroom. In this research, the researcher used an android application namely edmodo to improve the students ability in composing a good writing narrative text.

A. Participants
The participants of this research were the grade tenth students of Administrasi Perkantorn I SMK Nurul Falah Pekanbaru academic year 2017/2018. They were about 20 students.

B. Instrumentation
In this research, researcher used some instruments to collect the data needed. They were test, observation checklist, field note, and interview.
In order to get the statistical data for this research, the researcher gave test to the students. It was used to know the students writing skill in narrative text. First, the researcher gave a topic related to narrative text. Then, the students write a narrative text in their comment columns. In this phase, narrative text writing scoring rubric used by the rater to assess the students' writing.
Observation checklist used to see and note the real activities in the classroom while the researcher taught narrative text by using edmodo. This instrument contained the indicators of teaching and learning process of writing narrative text. In this research, the observation sheet checked by the collaborator. The collaborator was the English teacher in the school.
Field note was used to support the data of observation checklist. It was used to note all the activities and the detail information of the learning process during the research. English teacher as the collaborator wrote all the activities and occurrences happened in the classroom. It was used for knowing the situation and condition in the classroom while teaching and learning process.
Interview used to know the students' perceptions about learning by using edmodo. The result of interview was expected to be able to give the detail information about the students' though of learning by using edmodo. In this phase, students were interviewed by the researcher in a set of questions.

C. Data Analyzing Technique
There were two ways in analyzing the data. The data was gotten from the result of the test are quantitatively analyzed through the formula of percentage proposed by Sudijono (2008:38)  The data was gotten from observation checklist, field note, and interview was analyzed by using the step of data managing, reading and memoing, describing, classifying, and interpreting.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
This research was conducted at grade ten Administrasi Perkantoran 1 of SMK Nurul Falah Pekanbaru. The research has been done in a cycle with four meeting for teaching and learning process and a meeting for doing test. The procedure of the research consisted of four steps; plan, action, observation and reflection.

A. FINDINGS
Cycle I was carried out for 5 weeks. The action was given to the students by using an android application namely edmodo. This application is an application that is intentionally designed for the learning process by utilizing technology in the form of android smartphones.
Edmodo is an application that assists the researcher or teacher in the process of teaching and learning writing narrative text. Researcher firstly created the digital classroom through edmodo. In applying this digital classroom, researcher created an access code for students to join the class. Specifically, the research was divided into some stages. The first action stage included some aspects as follow.

a. Planning
Before conducting a research, the first stage was planing. The researcher prepared all the things needed to do the research. They were lesson plan, media, topic, and schedule. Besides that, the researcher also prepared the test for the students as the instrument to get the statistical data about the students' ability in composing a narrative text.

b. Action
At the beginning of the first meeting in cycle 1, the researcher introduced the application to the students at which time students also got a passcode to enter the Edmodo English class. Then, material presentation was delivered through the information menu contained in edmodo. In this case, students are required to install the application on the computer with the aim that students can always be involved intensely and actively in the class. In the process of installing this application there is no significant problem.
In the next stage, students were given the opportunity to understand the information that had been shared by utilizing some of the supporting features that they had previously installed on the computer. These supporting features include search engines like Google, online and offline dictionaries, and others. Furthermore, students were given the opportunity to provide comments related to the information. At this comment stage, students were given the widest time and opportunity to be outside the classroom. However, as a finalization in the classroom, the lecturer provided clarification and reinforcement at the end of the class discussion by continuing to invite students to keep sharing ideas and comments outside the class.
At the end of the cycle I action, the researcher gave a test to students. This test was carried out with the aim to obtain student learning facts data for writing narrative text after using the digital application edmodo. The test given by the researcher was in the form of writing a narrative text. In addition, to obtain secondary data, researchers conducted interviews with several randomly determined students.

c. Observation
The third stage was observation. At this stage learning activities as planned were observed to see the improvement. The purpose of observation was to collect the data about how far the media implemented during the action had been able to solve the students' problems in producing narrative text.
At this stage, researcher was helped by a collaborator to observe all the activities during the learning process by using the digital application edmodo. In addition, collaborator also made field notes to obtain accurate data. Observations were made at each meeting that took place in this cycle I. This was done so that there was no inaccurate data.

d. Reflection
After conducting research by fulfilling several stages such as planning, action, and observation, the last step that must be carried out was reflection. At this stage, the researcher saw all the deficiencies found in the research study, especially in teaching and learning process of writing narrative text. Subjects where this deficiency would be input and improvement to be improved in the following stage or cycle.
After the entire research process in the first cycle ended, the data analysis process was carried out. The first step taken by the researcher is to assess and analyze the results of student writing. So that the data obtained are, among other things, the overall ability of the grade ten students Administrasi Perkantoran 1 SMK Nurul Falah was improved. The average score of the students' writing narrative text was about 80.85.
The factors influenced this improvement can be identified after analyzing the observation, field note, and interview transcript. So that, there were three factors found as the result. They are the media, learning activity, and teacher's ability toward the application usage. Digital application edmodo is an interesting media that can catch the students' attention so that the students were focus on the use of the media. Learning activity by using edmodo can improve the students' enthusiasm. They enjoyed learning to write through edmodo with no worry of being mistake. The teachers' capability of using edmodo motivated and help students to be creative in writing.

B. DISCUSSION
Based on the finding, it can be concluded that the use of digital application such as edmodo was very useful for both teacher and students in improving the quality of teaching and learning process in the classroom. It is supported by Sudjana and Rivai (2011). They say that the advantages of learning media are motivating the students, supporting the learning material, learning method becomes various and enjoyable, and make the students easy to involve their self in the learning activity.
After conducting the research, it was also found that there was an improvement of students learning outcome. In this case, the students' ability in writing the narrative text was improved. In the end of the cycle I, the researcher conducted a writing text of narrative for the students. As the result, the average score of students writing was 80.85. It means that the use of media is very crucial in the process of teaching and learning. As Dale (1969) states that the use of learning media has an important role in learning and teaching process to gain the optimal outcome based on the goal.

CONCLUSION
Using digital application is very useful in the process of teaching and learning the language. It can assist the teacher in delivering the lesson effectively and helping the students in understanding the lesson well. Furthermore, in this research, the use of edmodo was able to improve the grade ten students' Administrasi Perkantoran I of SMK Nurul Falah Pekanbaru writing narrative text. So, it is recommended for the further researcher to investigate the students' perception towards the use of digital learning.