EFL Students’ Perceptions on The Use of Wattpad as a Digital Literacy Enhancement Tool in Writing Narrative Text

Abstract

The digital literacy is an alternative media information in this development technology. In the 1st century, students were ready for the digital era and moved quickly out of traditional classrooms to become more flexible learning media. The existence of Wattpad application provides a potential for digital literacy in the ability to read, especially writing skill. This has been proven by the results of previous research that the Wattpad application is useful to increase the motivation of students in giving better engagement in reaching the literary competence and most of the students and lecturers said that Wattpad has fun features and Wattpad to support student’s literary competence achievement. Also, students can use Wattpad as a learning media outside of school. This study aimed to find the students’ perceptions on the use of Wattpad as a digital literacy, included three components; cognitive, affective, and conative and to provide a new recommendation for alternative learning media for EFL students out of and inside the school. For the research design in this study, the researcher used a basic qualitative. To find the data, this study used a questionnaire of two items; yes and no which had 11 questions consist of three components. After collecting the questionnaire, the researcher shared an interview to fourth students. Thus, to analyze the data, the researcher used a reducing data and coding data. The results of this study answered in terms what the students' perceptions of using Wattpad in two component aspects; cognitive and affective. For the cognitive component, Wattpad can be a learning media in teaching writing skill in this digital literacy era because it corresponds to the affective component, students have a comfortable feeling while using this application in their writing. In terms of how Wattpad helped students in their writing, it answered in a conative component. Students have a high motivation in writing skills in the Wattpad application and students can also learn to write outside of school with independent learning through the features contained in the Wattpad application. So, the researcher suggests to looking for the Wattpad's process in helping students learn to write in both aspects; cognitive and affective. Key Words : Perception, Wattpad Media, Digital Literacy, Writing Skill