Integrated task on students’ writing quality: Is it more effective?

Integrated tasks are popularly known and accepted as an effective way of improving students’ writing quality. However, it is still not clear to what really accounts for its effectiveness. This study examined whether the students who were facilitated by integrated task achieved higher writing quality than those who were not. Twenty - two students participated within the group experiment utilizing a counterbalance technique in controlling the order effect. In the first session, twelve students were asked to write an essay based on an integrated (INT) task while the other 12 wrote based on an independent (IND) task. Then, the task division was switched in the second writing session. Students’ writing quality were scored by three raters and were analyzed descriptively and inferentially using Wilcoxon signed rank test (WSRT). The results confirmed that the quality of students’ writing using both integrated and independent tasks was not significantly different. There are still other aspects contributing to writing quality. Thus, task types do not guarantee the students’ writing quality.

Interactive Teaching in Writing Session of English Department Students

Interactive writing is a writing process used to teach students how to write a paragraph. The process involves the sharing of writing between the teacher and students. It can be in a group of students. The purpose of this research was to know the development of writing skill in the students of English Department through interactive method. All participants were the students of the English Department Faculty of Letters of Pamulang University. Interactive writing is an effective method as the teacher role is very important. A Theory used is Brown’s theory (2000). The procedure is to teach students how to write well by allowing them to directly copy the demonstration of the teacher. Interactive writing helps students improve their writing skills as using the same example as the teacher and creates the right mindset for the students to copy the technique of writing a paragraph by the teacher correctly. By directly following the guide of the teacher, the students writing is better than they use their own writing. As an introduction to writing, interactive writing is a useful and successful technique for teachers to use in teaching the basics.

Affective Effect of Multi-source Portraits Under Various Illuminants on One Scene

When portraits taken under various illuminants are placed together, they appear disparate from each other due to observers’ chromatic adaption to each portrait locally. Because the human perception has strong attachment to the memory color of human skin, it may cause an affective effect. This study intends to identify the affective effect of viewing multiple number of portraits whose white balance are not aligned. A visual assessment was conveyed, where portraits from different sources were matched. To simulate various illuminant conditions, three alterations of white balance were prepared for each portrait-warm (3000 K), neutral (6500 K), and cool tones (8000 K). This makes nine combinations for each stimulus. In Study I, 31 Korean college students were presented with a random one by one combination. Based on their subjective judgments on five criteria—authenticity, naturalness, professionality, content conveyance, and overall satisfaction—a statistical analysis was performed. In Study II, a creative writing session was followed in that the participants presumed the message of the portrait matches, and the content analysis was conducted. The results showed that a match of neutrally balanced portraits best appealed authentic and professional styles while minimizing any affective bias. When matches consisted of contrasting tones, on the other hand, they delivered content conveyance better while sacrificing naturalness of portraits. The white balance is limited to three types though this study provides evidence that it is a matter of choice to align, adjust, or alter the white balance of multi-sourced portraits depending on the aiming affective effect.