STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS ON ENGLISH SPEAKING HABIT AMONG FRIENDS THROUGH WHATSAPP: A CASE STUDY ON EFL LEARNERS AT UMSU

Abstract

The use of social media platform nowadays has become popular among students, especially WhatsApp. This study was intended to investigate students’ perception on the implementation of speaking English through WhatsApp. The aspects of perception covered in this study according to (Robinson, 2001) were confidence, difficulties, interest, stress, and motivation. Source of data in this study was 26 EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students in 6th Semester of Universitas Muhammadiyah Sumatera Utara, academic year 2021/2022. Primary data technique was applied to get the data in this study that were obtained from the answers of respondents who had filled out a questionnaire about speaking English through WhatsApp via Google Form. The data of students’ perception were collected through Likert-type scales questionnaire which mixed with open-ended questionnaire for the reason of their response. Research design which was used in this study was qualitative design. The qualitative data were described to support the findings of students’ perception toward the implementation of speaking English through WhatsApp. The finding showed that the majority of students had positive perception towards speaking English through WhatsApp which led this study to beneficial and gave positive impact to the students, especially in the aspect of motivation, followed by aspect of interest and confidence. For example, in the aspect of motivation, all the students answered strongly agree and agree, and no one disagreed because of their strong desire to improve their English-speaking skill so the students are willingly motivated to use WhatsApp as the media to engage in conversations with their friends.