THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE SECOND YEAR STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF E-LEARNING AND THEIR WRITING ABILITY AT BUNG HATTA UNIVERSITY

Abstrak

INTRODUCTION In Indonesia, English is a foreign language. It is studied by the students at school and university in order to master the four skills. The four skills are writing, listening, speaking, and reading. The language skills are important for communication. [1]. Writing is the most difficult language skills in English language because we have to put the ideas into written text in a complex process. That complex process in writing has to consider important aspects; content, vocabulary, language use (grammar), organization, and mechanics [2]. Writing skill can be mastered by the students if they practice to write. One of the methods is writing descriptive text.. Descriptive text is the text about the way of things, people, or places. In descriptive texts, the students can use imagination and sense to make reader hear, taste, smell, see, and feel as they present a good word of the subject. Students may be describing a sunset, an individual, or a sinking ship [3]. With the Covid-19 pandemic widespread around the world and also Indonesia, all of the activities must be carried out from home. In that time, E-learning is widespread used out to provide meaningful learning experiences for students. E-learning refers to an education which is led by teacher by using Internet and web-based educational delivery system that is known as synchronous (participants involved are in real time communication for example online mode by using zoom, google meet and many others) and asynchronous (participants involved are in not real time communication for example interaction in chat room in social media or learning discussion forum) [4]. The main purpose of the research is to find the correlation between second year students’ perception of E-learning and their writing ability at Bung Hatta University. Hypothesis is often described as an attempt by the researcher to explain the phenomenon of interest. Hypothesis can take various forms, depending on the question being asked and the type of study being conducted. The researcher took the hypotheses as follows: Null hypotheses (Ho): Ho: There is no significant correlation between second year students’ perception of E-learning and their writing ability at Bung Hatta University Alternative Hypotheses (Ha): Ha: There is significant correlation between second year students’ perception of E-learning and their writing ability at Bung Hatta University METHOD This was a correlational design. A correlational study is a quantitative method of research in which two or more quantitative variables from the same group of subjects are taken through series of computations to determine if there is a relationship (or covariance) between variables [5]. There were two kinds of variable in this study. The first variable was students’ perception of E-learning and it was considered as independent variable (variable x). The second variable was students’ writing ability and it was considered as dependent variable (Variable y). The sample of this research was all the second year students at the English Department of Bung Hatta University consisting of 30 students. To collect data of the research, the researcher used two kinds of instrument. They are students’ perception of E-learning questionnaire and writing test. To get the reliability of questionnaire, the researcher used Alpha formula and the index reliability of the questionnaire was 0.62 which means that the questionnaire had high correlation. To see the reliability of the writing test, the researcher used inter-rater technique. This technique requires two scorers to examine the test and the researcher found that the index reliability of writing test was 0.88 that was classified as very high correlation. To collect the data of students’ perception, the researcher asked the students to answer the questioner. Next, the researcher counted the total score. Then, the researcher classified students’ perception into very negative, negative, positive, and very positive category. To collect the data of writing test, the researcher asked the students to write the descriptive text. Next the researcher counted the score of each student. Finally, the researcher correlated the students’ perception of E-learning and their writing ability by using Pearson Product Moment Formula. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS The result of students’ perception of E-learning questionnaire is shown in table 1: Table 1: Students’ Perception of E-learning No Classification of perception Frequency of students Percentage 1 Very positive 8 26.7% 2 Positive 21 70% 3 Negative 1 3.33% 4 Very negative - 0% 30 100% From the table above, we can see that 21 students (70 %) had positive perception and 8 students (26.7%) had very positive perception about E-learning. Besides, only 1 students (3.33%) had negative perception, while zero students had very negative perception about E-learning. It means that most of the students had positive perception about E-learning. The result of students’ writing ability test showed that the highest score was 90 and the lowest score was 62.5. It also showed that the mean of the test was 78.9 and standard deviation was 8.25. After that, the researcher conversed the students’ score into high, moderate, and low. And their percentage as shown in Table 2: Table 2: The Classifications of Students’ Writing Ability Students’ descriptive writing ability Classification of ability Number of Students Percentage High >87.15 5 16 % Moderate 70.65 - 87.15 19 63 % Low <70.65 6 20 % 30 100 % Based on the table above, the researcher found that the students’ ability to write descriptive text was on the level of moderate. Based on the result of data analysis, the researcher found the coefficient correlation between students’ perception of E-learning and students’ writing ability was 0.77. It is classified as high correlation. It means that there is a positive correlation between second year students’ perception of E-learning and their writing ability at English Department of Bung Hatta University. Then to determine the correlation was significant or not, the researcher compared r counted with r table at a significant level 0.05 and df=n-2= (28). The result of 0.77>0.374. So, the calculation is: 1. Ho is rejected (There is no correlation between the second year students’ perception of E-learning and their writing ability at English Department of Bung Hatta University 2. Ha is accepted (There is a correlation between the second year students’ perception of E-learning and their writing ability at English department of Bung Hatta University) From the result of data analyzing, we can see that there is a correlation between students’ perception of E-learning and Writing ability. It means that, students get advantage from the used of E-learning in their writing. Using e-learning in Academic writing is as a positive experience for the students, and most of students agree about it. Somehow, they agree if using E-learning in Academic Writing make them more confident, discipline and enjoy when learning [6]. CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Based on the finding of this research, it can be conclude that, the researcher found that the students had positive perception about E-learning (70%), students’ ability in writing descriptive text was moderate (63%) and there was a significant correlation between students’ perception of E-learning and students’ writing ability of the Second Year Students of English Department of Bung Hatta University (r counted > r table; 0.77>0.374; α 0.05 df n-2. The researcher suggest the English lecturer to implement teaching strategy so that students’ perception of E-learning and writing ability can be better. For the future researcher, it is suggested to do some research and find students’ learning needs in order to improve the efficiency of E-Learning and students writing ability. Keyword: Students perception of E-learning, Writing ability, descriptive text