Students' Attitudes towards Internet Memes in Writing Descriptive Text

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate students’ attitudes in writing descriptive text using Internet memes as a writing medium and the reasons leading to the particular attitude that occurred. This qualitative descriptive research was conducted using purposive sampling to a class that consists of 13 fourth semester students of the English Language Education study program at Universitas Tanjungpura in Essay Writing course. There are two types of data collected in this research; they are primary and secondary data. The primary data were obtained from the semantic differential questionnaire and the semi-structured interview, which was conducted to five of the students, whereas the secondary data were acquired from students’ writing scores of the Internet memes descriptive writing task. The findings reported that students have a positive attitude towards the task of writing descriptive text using Internet memes. Factors that influenced their positive attitude are the sense of enjoyment and casual feeling from the task, the sense of freedom and relatedness from their chosen memes, and the visual aid from the pictures that helps illustrate better description and helps them understand how to describe better in words. From the result, it is clear that the Internet memes pictures are helpful to boost their attitudes in writing descriptive text. It is suggested that by using fun writing media, such as Internet memes, writing teachers can put students in a comfortable learning atmosphere, so that they can absorb other important learning materials better.

Meme Integration in English Writing Instruction

“…Lastly, a comprehensive international research project explored the use of internet memes in education across various languages, investigating linguistic aspects, purposes, and content in liberal, ideological, and exact sciences, employing scientific methodologies (Dongqiang et al, 2020). Concurrently, Adha et al (2023) conducted qualitative research on students' favorable attitudes towards using internet memes in writing, attributing their positivity to the enjoyable, liberating, visually supportive nature of the task, suggesting that integrating entertaining mediums like internet memes can foster an effective learning environment for absorbing educational content.…”