Supporting Students’ Literacy in Writing Popular Articles Using a Social Media Application

Abstract

This study aims to describe the process and results of using the WhatsApp application as a medium for assisting in writing popular articles for students at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to support their literacy development. The subjects of this study were 180 twelfth grade students of MAN 1 Banyuwangi (Islamic State Senior High School). The focus of this research was the process of writing mentoring and the results obtained after the mentoring had been completed. Methods of collecting data were interviews, discussions, and questions and answers. The data were analyzed by using qualitative descriptive techniques. This research shows that at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, WhatsApp was the most suitable to be used as a medium to assist students in writing popular articles. The stages of mentoring carried out included themes, drafting designs, finding materials, developing designs into complete writing, and editing. The results obtained by students after the mentoring process using the WhatsApp application were that students could write popular articles with good categories for the suitability of themes and content, sentence composition and diction selection, paragraph cohesion and coherence, and use of written language. As many as 30 of the 180 popular articles written by students as a result of this mentoring were successfully published in the mass media. Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that teachers use digital applications to facilitate the process of personal and intensive mentoring in writing popular articles to get better results.