The Effect of Peer Review Using Twitter on Students' Writing in

French

Dante Darmawangsa

Department of French Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia

dante.darmawangsa@upi.edu

Keywords: Peer review, students' writing, twitter.

Abstract: One innovation in language learning process is integrating the internet-based media in the process, including

Twitter as a social media. One subject that could use this kind of media is writing. Using this media allows

the students to do the peer activity in the writing process. The present study aims to investigate the effect of

peer review activity using Twitter on the student's French writing in a university in Indonesia. This study

applies the pre-experimental method using the one-group pretest-posttest design, which compares the pretest

and the posttest results to determine the effect of peer review implementation using Twitter. The results show

that the students' average score of writing skills significantly increases. It is determined by comparing the

average pretest score (12.94/20) to the posttest score (15.36/20), which indicates that the implementation of

the peer review using twitter give contribution to the improvement of the students' writing in French.

1 INTRODUCTION

Through the peer review activities, the students can

help each other by interacting and collaborating with

each other (Yastıbaş & Yastıbaş, 2015). Peer review

has also been shown to contribute to learners in

improving their writing (e.g. Lundstrom & Baker,

2009; Behin & Hamidi, 2011; Yastıbaş & Yastıbaş,

2015). In addition, peer review can also improve

confidence and reduce the writing anxiety (Yastıbaş

& Yastıbaş, 2015). A similar study determines that a

long process in the implementation of peer review, in

which the learners give feedback to each other and

learn from each other, gives contribution to improve

the quality of writing learners, especially those at

lower proficiency (Lundstrom & Baker, 2009).

Yet, as the technology developed, peer review on

writing learning process is not only done

conventionally on a paper but also on the other kinds

of media. The medias are expected to accommodate

some technical problems experienced by the students

in the class. One of the technical problems tends to

happen is the limited time the students have in the

class. Therefore, as recent as this decade, peer review

started to be implemented online. Several studies of

this matter have been conducted previously (e.g.

Moloudi, 2011; Knight & Steinbach 2011;

Darmawangsa, 2014). However, the results of these

studies still cannot be generalized and still leave some

recommendations. Darmawangsa (2014) for

example, recommends the implementation of peer

review by using a social media platform.

One of the social media platforms that can be used

in language learning is Twitter. Several studies on the

use of Twitter in teaching have also been relatively

conducted (e.g. Davis & Yin, 2011; Sekiguchi, 2012;

Kim, Park & Baek, 2013; Leclerc-Coulmain, 2014;

Chisega- Negrilã, 2015).

Twitter can be used as an enrichment-learning

medium conducted outside the classroom to facilitate

interaction and writing activities (Leclerc-Coulmain,

2014). In the context of the writing teaching, David

and Yin (2011) and Sekiguchi (2012) found that these

media contribute in improving writing skills. This

media is also contributing to maintain the learner's

motivation (Sekiguchi, 2012) as well as to maintain

the social interaction (Kim, Park & Baek, 2013).

However, previous studies mentioned above were

not specifically focused on the implementation of

peer review using twitter in writing learning process.

Even tough, as the media that have the features to

support the process of peer review writing process,

Twitter is still serve as a potential type of media that

can be used as a supporting aid in the learning process

of writing. Four out of five previous studies were only

focused on the English for foreign language learning

context. Thus, the present study tries to find out how

the usage of Twitter can contribute in the French as a

Darmawangsa, D.

The Effect of Peer Review Using Twitter on Students’ Writing in French.

DOI: 10.5220/0007162200710074

In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference

on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 71-74

ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2

foreign language learning process, particularly in

writing. The present study emphasizes the

implementation of peer review, and how it affects the

learners. The findings of this research are expected to

support the development of teaching writing skills by

using new media.

2 METHODS

This study was conducted to the 3rd semester students

in one university in Indonesia, academic year of

2015/2016. This study uses a pre-experimental study

that is the one group pretest-posttest design. The

treatment of this study is the implementation of peer

review in the writing learning process using Twitter

asynchronously. In conducting this process, the

students were divided into several groups. Each group

was given the task to prepare a collective narrative

text with different themes where each student writes

one sentence at a time on Twitter until they arrange a

complete story. The research instrument used is a

narrative essay writing test for A2 level of CECRL

with the grading scale 0-20.

The test result is then processed statistically using

the Normalized Gain formula to measure the

improvements of learning outcomes. The value of the

normalized gain < g > is obtained and interpreted in

accordance with the interpretation of the following

table (see Hake, 1998):

Table 1: Interpretation of Normalized Gain Value.

Normalized Gain

Criteria

< > < 0,3

Low

0,7 > < > > 0,3

Average

< > > 0,7

High

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Based on the analysis of the results of tests that have

been done, it is known that the writing skills of

students has increased. This is indicated by the

recapitulation of the scores of processing pretest and

posttest that can be seen in the following table:

Table 2. Summary of Data Processing.

Average

Gain

Average

Normalized Gain

(<g>)

Criteria

pretest

posttest

(<Si>)

(<Sf>)

(G)

Score

Value

12.94

129.4

15.36

153.6

2.42

0.34

Average

From the data above, it can be it can be said that

there is an increased students ability to write a

narrative essay. It can be seen from the acquisition of

an average normalized gain which reaches 0.34 that

fall into the average category.

In addition, based on the test scoring aspects, it is

known that there are scores average improvements in

the lexicon/lexical spelling aspect amounted to 1.1 as

well as in the morphosyntaxe/grammatical spelling

aspect which the scores average improvements

amounted to 1.32. Therefore, it can be concluded that

the effect of the peer review using twitter occurs only

in those aspect.

Moreover, due to the characteristics of Twitter

that can only post 140 characters in each post, the

students tend to correct only the sentence shown in

their Timeline. This is also the implication of the peer

review activities where students tend only to revise

the surface errors, which inline with some previous

research (e.g. Storch, 2005; Bijami, Kashef & Nejad,

2013). This can be seen from the following examples

of the revision process that focuses on grammatical

and lexical errors. In the examples below, tweet is

marked by "T" and the revision is marked by "RT".

T1: Ce restaurant était l'endroit près de la Seine.

Ce lieu était bon pour manger en regardé le

paysage. Les repas étaient si délicieux.

RT1: Ce restaurant était l'endroit près de la Seine.

Ce lieu était bon pour manger en regardant le

paysage. Les repas étaient si délicieux.

[This restaurant is located near the Seine. The

place is nice to have food while enjoying the

stunning sights. The meals are very delicious].

T2: Toute la nourriture que mon message a été

très délicieux. Aujourd'hui j'ai été bien mangé et

fatigue, et puis je suis rentrée au dortoir.

RT2: Tout le repas que j'ai commandé était très

délicieux. Aujourd'hui j'étais bien mangé et

fatiguée, et puis je suis rentrée au dortoir.

[All the meals that I have ordered were very tasty.

Today I had a wonderful meal and I am tired and

then I went back to the dormitory.].

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

From the data above, it can be seen that the errors

found is the phrase "en regardé" (T1) which was

corrected to "en regardant" (RT1), "toute la

nourriture", "mon message", and "a été" (T2) which

was corrected to "Tout le repas", "commandé", and

"était" (RT2). These errors are categorized as errors

on morphosyntax / grammatical spelling and lexicon

/ lexical spelling aspects.

The grammatical errors contained in the structure

of the phrase "en regardé" where it should be "en

regardant" [while watching / watch]. Other

grammatical errors contained in tenses aspects is on

the phrase "… a été très délicieux" which supposedly

"… était très délicieux".

There were also lexical errors made in the phrase

“toute la nourriture” and “mon message” in the

sentence “Toute la nourriture que mon message a été

très délicieux”. The first mistake was on the use of

the vocabulary “la nourriture” or in English means

“food”. The most appropriate diction for this sense is

“le repas”, which means “meal”. Furthermore, the

phrase “mon message” in the sentence is a mistake

caused by language interference from their first

language (Indonesian) where “mon” was translated as

“saya” [I] and “message” was translated as “pesan”

[order] and the full translation of this become “saya

pesan” [I order]. However this case is categorized as

a mistake, because “mon” is a possessive adjective

that shuld be translated as “my” instead of “I”. While

“message” is cannot be translated as “order”, because

the verb “to order” in French is “commander”. Thus

the appropriate translation of the sentence should be

“Tout le repas que j'ai commandé était très

délicieux”.

From the conducted study, the finding implies that

students in giving feedback on their peers' writing are

tend to emphasize their analysis on lexical and

grammatical errors. In this case, the teacher should

have intervened during the revision process by

encouraging students to revise also the content and

ideas, as well as the coherence and cohesion.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that

the peer review applied by using Twitter contributes

positively on the improvement of students’ writing

product. Yet, the findings also imply that this peer

review activity still tends to be done shallowly by the

students since they discusses more about the aspects

of lexicon/lexical spelling, morphosyntaxe/

grammatical spelling than the content and ideas, as

well as the coherence and cohesion.

Apart from the findings, there are some other

variables/matters that have not been covered by the

present research since it only focuses on the pretest

and the posttest results to determine the effect of peer

review implementation using Twitter. Therefore, this

present research needs to have further studies.

Nevertheless, this finding may be used as initial

assumptions in conducting advanced research.

Finally, it can be suggested that using media in the

writing learning process, in this case Twitter, allows

the lecturer to create a various writing activities

which allows the students to explore their ability

more as well as to motivate them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to show my gratitude to the 9

CONAPLIN Committee for this publication

opportunity.

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CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education