Collaborative Writing: An Integration of Snack Bars and Hi-Five Fingers via Social Media

Abstract

English has been the second language taught in schools in Malaysia both in primary and secondary level. Writing skill has been a major part of the English education in the Malaysian schools. However, writing skill is the most difficult skill to master by our Malaysian pupils. Both teachers and pupils find teaching and learning of writing a difficult task to accomplish in the classroom. This can be caused by the lack of teacher-pupil time in school. Teachers do not have time to give feedback to pupils after they have written their essay. Thus, the writing skill was taught out of the classroom contact hours using social media. Therefore, the aim of this action research is to help the Secondary Four pupils use the hi-five Fingers and Snack Bars via social media (Powtoon and Facebook) in their writing to achieve better results. The activities were conducted on 55 participants located in two different schools in Kuantan, Pahang and Johor Bahru, Johor. The study involved two different approaches namely, Product-based and Process-based. The instruments used in this research are pretest, posttest and face-to-face interview. The findings have shown that there is an improvement in pupils’ grades in their writing performance after using the hi-five fingers and snack bars via social media. Thus, it is evident that the usage of hi-five fingers and snack bars via social media in collaborative writing is essential to increase pupils’ writing skill and ability.