News as Authentic Materials to Improve Essay Writing in a Hybrid Learning Setting

This study aimed to investigate the effect of using news as authentic materials for essay writing skills. This experimental study employed the one-group pre-test and post-test design to 18 fourth-semester students who joined the Essay Writing Course in one of the universities in Indonesia. These students were selected through systematic random sampling and went through treatments for 12 meetings where they were taught in a hybrid learning setting. The first four meetings used the conventional faceto-face classroom interaction. The rest of the meetings were done online because of the outbreak of COVID 19. The instruments to collect data were tests and documentation. Before they were given to the students, the teaching materials, pre-test, and post-test designs were tested and validated. The authentic materials were news texts about global issues such as poverty, environmental protection, gender, race and ethnicities, and diseases. Two raters scored the students’ writing by using Jacobs ESL Composition Profile. The researchers used IBM SPSS 25 software to analyze the data. The results of a paired sample t-test analysis showed that there was no significant difference in the students’ writing scores before and after using news as authentic materials (p = .959 > α = 0.05). The paper further discusses the implications of this study for theoretical and practical use.


INTRODUCTION
The teaching and learning process during the COVID-19 outbreak is much different from the typical meeting in the classroom. The classroom interaction during this outbreak is limited, and the use of learning sources cannot depend much on textbooks, teachers, and facilities physically available around students learning in direct classroom meetings (Mulyani et al., 2021;Rosyada & Sundari, 2021). As a result, teachers/lecturers in all levels of education are forced to shift their way of teaching from the conventional way to the virtual way (Amin & Sundari, 2020). A mix of conventional and virtual learning is called the hybrid learning model; it is also called blended learning or mixed learning (Allen et al., 2007;Idris, 2018). This learning model has long flourished since the invention of the internet, but much gained its momentum during the pandemic of COVID-19 in late 2019.
The shift from textbooks to online learning resources has made teachers/lecturers more innovative. They must make the best of technology and search for materials suitable to their teaching aims that the internet world has much to offer. There are a wide variety of authentic materials that teachers/lecturers can use to reach their instructional goals. These materials are those that employ communicative and natural use of the target language for communication in real-world contexts (Kilickaya, 2004;Tamo, 2009). Maroko (2010) stated that the types of authentic materials are such as audio, visual, and printed materials, while other forms are factual news in newspapers, magazines, and scientific papers published on the internet (Sundana, 2018). In learning, Park (2011) found that the use of newspaper articles and magazines can help EFL students to read and think critically. Literary works, such as narratives (short stories, novels), poems, and plays, is another type of authentic materials (Sari, 2016;Setyowati & Sukmawan, 2019).
Many language teachers/lecturers are familiar with authentic materials for language learning. It is common to use authentic materials to teach language skills and language components. According to the findings of the literature review, authentic materials help learners master the target language more effectively in both second and foreign language contexts (Sari, 2016). Among its assistance is that it is effective in enhancing the learners' listening comprehension (Ghaderpanahi, 2012;Sabet & Mahsefat, 2012;Woottipong, 2014). Some authentic materials that can benefit the learners in listening comprehension are the use of movies (Li & Wang, 2015;Qiu, 2017) and songs (Ghanbari & Hashemian, 2014;Solihat & Utami, 2014). Authentic materials are also effective in developing learners' reading Kalakaua motivation (Lin, 2004), reading comprehension (Marzban & Davaji, 2015), and vocabulary mastery (Ghanbari et al., 2015). It is also known to be able to improve two skills at once, such as reading and writing (Drolet, 2010).
Several researchers in Indonesia have studied the impact of authentic materials on EFL students' writing skills as well. Styati (2016), for instance, had used web-based materials (i.e., YouTube and picture series), to help her students to write and her research resulted in positive impacts to the students. In both reading and writing skills,  inquired about the use of authentic materials to teach these skills, as well as examining the students' reactions towards its use. Their findings revealed that the students are pleased with the use of authentic materials to learn reading and writing in English. They claim that analyzing short stories in the form of essays allows them to better understand the stories and further improve their writing skills. Next, Sundana (2018) investigated the use of authentic web-based materials for teaching descriptive text writing to high school students and it was also found that authentic materials provided constructive effects on the EFL students' writing abilities.
Besides experimental research, El-Sulukiyyah and Aisyah (2019) used a classroom action research design to determine the effectiveness of authentic materials for an essay writing course to EFL students. The authentic materials were printed texts downloaded from the internet to teach students their essay writing. Their research showed that these web-based printed texts were effective in improving students' essay writing skills. In a similar vein, Setyowati et al. (2021) also found that using authentic materials improved the EFL students' ability to write essays in their research.
Even though ample research has been conducted on the use of authentic materials for teaching both receptive and productive skills, since the pandemic, little research has been devoted to the use of authentic materials in the form of factual news for teaching essay writing at the university level and in the context of a foreign language in Indonesia, particularly those conducted in a hybrid learning setting. In face-to-face classroom learning, data collection was seen to be not much of a hassle. Nevertheless, considering the situation today, the researchers believe that the hybrid learning setting now poses different challenges. First, during the COVID 19 pandemic, the teaching and learning process in the hybrid setting is almost done unwillingly, with little choice for both teachers/lecturers and students (Dhawan, 2020). And secondly, the teaching and the learning processes are conducted online so that all works and assignments are done at home and submitted online (Amin & Sundari, 2020). Thus, investigating the effect of authentic materials in this setting is considered essential and worth doing. As a result, the goal of this study is to look into the impact of factual news as authentic materials on students' essay writing abilities. Therefore, this research was conducted to answer this question: • Is there any significant difference in the students' essay writing performance before and after they use factual news as authentic materials in a hybrid learning setting?

Authentic Materials
Authentic materials are widely used in language learning, whether for first, second, or foreign language mastery. In fact, for hundreds of years, teachers have used this type of material for learning a language (Gilmore, 2007). Yet, there are still some debates on the term 'authenticity' where researchers define this term differently. Peacock (1997) defines authentic materials as texts created to serve specific social functions in the native language community. In addition, Kilickaya (2004) authentic materials are those that use the real language of the native speaker's community. For Gilmore (2007), the authenticity of the materials is determined by the source of the texts and the context in which they were created. Furthermore, Tamo (2009) found authentic materials are materials that have not been altered in any way for students learning a language, either foreign or second languages. Finally, Tomlinson (2012) authentic materials are texts that are not written specifically for language learning. Maroko (2010) then concluded that authentic materials are those that use real language and are created by native speakers and writers for real audiences to deliver real messages in a specific context.
Many types of authentic materials can be used by instructors to teach writing, and they are classified into four broad categories: printed materials, audio materials, and visual materials (Maroko, 2010) and audio-visual (i.e., YouTube videos) (Styati, 2016). Literary works such as fiction (short stories, flash fiction, novels, poems, plays) and non-fiction (news, articles, talk shows) are also examples of authentic materials (Setyowati & Sukmawan, 2019). These materials are available in a real-world setting, both in printed and web-based formats. These materials are abundant, and the majority of them are free.

Authentic Materials to Teach Writing
The literature has noted that authentic materials are applicable and beneficial for learning new languages. In a foreign language context, much research has been dedicated to exploring the use of authentic materials for teaching and learning English. Firstly, Arifa (2011) investigated the use of authentic materials for teaching procedure texts to senior high school students in Palangkaraya, Indonesia. Her study found that the materials were effective, and this is proven by the results of her research which showed that the experimental group students who were taught using authentic materials performed better in writing than the students who were taught with nonauthentic materials (i.e., textbooks) group (i.e., control group).
Secondly, Setyowati (2016) used flash fiction to study the students' ability to write opinion essays. The flash fiction used was Frank Stockton's The Lady or the Tiger, in which the length of the fiction was 2000 words. In her study, the students were asked to respond to the story and give their opinions about how the ending should be. The result yields that 91% of the students were able to state their opinions in the form of a thesis statement. Yet, many of them were still not able to develop the essay well by providing examples and details relevant to the topic sentence. The results also showed that only a small number of the students were able to make a proper conclusion for their essays. The researcher concluded that authentic materials can be used for essay writing under several conditions. First, the materials should not be too difficult for the students in terms of vocabulary and syntactical complexity, and second, the materials should not be too long. The materials should be short enough for the students to read in one sitting. Styati (2016) carried out quasi-experimental research to determine the impact of authentic materials on students' paragraph writing performance. Her research subjects were college students in Madiun, Indonesia. She divided the participants into two groups: experimental and control. The experimental group used a digital photograph to write a paragraph, whereas the control group did not. Her research found that students who wrote a paragraph using digital photographs performed better than those who did not. Another study was conducted by . They looked into the students' thoughts and feelings about their experiences while writing essays for short story analysis. Each student was asked to write an essay of at least three paragraphs to evaluate the intrinsic elements of classic short stories. The results showed that the majority of the students felt positive about the activity. They stated that analyzing the intrinsic elements of a short story in the essay format enables them to understand the story better and improve their writing skills. Similarly, Sundana (2018) also showed a comparable result in his study. He investigated the efficacy of authentic web-based materials for writing descriptive text. In his study, the experimental group used authentic materials from booksie, IMDb, and Readers' Digest, whereas the control group did not and instead rely on textbooks. Compared to the control group, the experimental group that used web-based authentic materials had better writing performance. Moreover, using authentic materials, El-Sulukiyyah and Aisyah (2019) used a classroom action research design to solve the students' writing problems. Students from the English Education department at a college in Pasuruan were their subjects of study. They made use of printed materials obtained from the internet. They concluded after three cycles that using authentic materials was effective in improving students' ability to write a short essay. And lastly, the effect of literature as authentic material for teaching essay writing was investigated by Setyowati et al. (2021). The results of their study, which used a one-group pre-test and post-test design, showed that using literature as authentic materials is effective in improving students' writing skills.
To summarize, using authentic materials benefits both the teacher and the students (Al Azri and Al-Rashdi, 2014). Previous research on the use of authentic materials for foreign language teaching, particularly in the Indonesian context, has shown that authentic materials have a positive impact on students' writing performance at all levels of education and for various types of writing genres.

Process Approach for Teaching Writing
In the field of teaching writing in the ESL/EFL context, there are three popular approaches to do so. The product approach, the process approach, and the genre-based approach are those three approaches (Hasan & Akhand, 2010). Each has its distinctive characteristics. The product approach focuses on the imitation of a model with one single draft. Meanwhile, the genre-based approach focuses on the relationship between the language and how it is used in a particular context (Hasan & Akhand, 2010). The process approach, on the other hand, sees writing as a thinking process. Following Richards and Renandya (2002), the writing process is divided into four basic steps: planning (pre-writing), drafting (writing), revising (redrafting), and editing. Other researchers have also divided it into three stages, namely prewriting, writing, and rewriting/post-writing (Lincoln & Idris, 2014). Prewriting is intended to generate background knowledge (i.e., planning), as well as to select and narrow appropriate topics, brainstorm ideas, and organize thoughts (Wang, 2014). In a nutshell, planning entails organizing ideas and focusing on the subject, sequencing issues, aiming, and determining the target audience. The second step is the actual writing task. The writers put down their ideas on the paper, and make them meaningful and logical for the readers. And the final stage is rewriting or post-writing. This activity is to revise and edit the rough draft written in the first place. Even though researchers have presented them in a different number of stages, but essentially, they are the same.

METHODS
This experimental research employed the Kalakaua one-group pre-test post-test design. The one-group pre-test post-test design necessitates three steps: administration of a pre-test, treatment(s), and post-test (Ary et al., 2010). The differences before and after treatments are seen by comparing the pre-test and post-test scores. Using the systematic random sampling method, 18 fourth-semester students majoring in English at Universitas PGRI Wiranegara, Indonesia, and enrolled in the Essay Writing course, participated in this study. Because there was only one group in the study, the researchers compared the pre-test and post-treatment results. Then, the data collection instruments were tests and documentation. The pre-test, post-test, and instructional materials were created, validated, and tested on other populations with similar characteristics to those who participated in the study. For data support, the researchers documented all of the students' essays.
The researchers also developed the instructional material for research purposes. To develop the instructional materials, the researchers followed the research and development procedures which covered need analysis, planning, developing, validating, revising, and trying out (Borg & Gall, 2003;Setyowati et al., 2020). Even though the researchers used authentic materials which are already available on the internet, those materials still required students to complete tasks and worksheets for them to be used in the classroom. The instructional materials cover the pre-writing activities, the reading comprehension section, the vocabulary, the language/grammar for writing, and the writing part.
Two raters scored the students' essays. The raters were lecturers who had been teaching writing at the institution for five years. The Jacobs ESL Composition Profile scoring rubric was used by the researchers to grade the students' compositions (Jacobs et al., 1981). The scoring rubric addresses five aspects of writing, namely content, organization, vocabulary, language, and mechanics. The points for each of these aspects are 30 points for content, 20 points for organization, 20 points for vocabulary, 25 points for language use, 5 points for mechanics. The scores used in the computation were the averages of the first and second raters. The degree of strength is indicated by the correlational analysis between raters 1 and 2. The reliability coefficient is 0.674 and significant at 0.05 (α. 0.00 < 0.05). The data was analyzed using a paired-sample t-test analysis in SPSS 25 by the researchers.

Procedure
Prior to the treatment, the researchers divided the students into groups for research purposes. The data collection process took 14 meetings. The first four meetings, including the pre-test, were held before the Indonesian government issued the 'stay at home order' and the 'learning from home order'. Then, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, the remaining meetings were held online. The WhatssAppGroup/WAG, Telegram, and Google Meet applications were used for the online classes. However, prior to the pandemic, the offline classes had already adopted the writing process approach (Richards & Renandya, 2002;Lincoln & Idris, 2014), and this was continued to the online classes. Pre-writing activities, brainstorming, drafting, writing, and publishing were the instructional stages. The planning and pre-writing activities were completed during the online class. Meanwhile, the writing and revising time was done after the course was completed. The students were given a day after class to submit their first draft. The feedbacks were conducted online, either through a private line or through emails. There were two procedures that students did before publishing. First, the students were to check their language using online writing applications, such as Grammarly and U_dictionary, and second, they were to check the originality of their composition by using plagiarism tools, such as Plagiarisma, SmallSeoTools.com, and Grammarly.
The researchers used news from online newspapers/magazines/periodicals/ official blogs of the World Organization as the authentic materials, namely Jakarta Globe, Rainforest Action Organization, The Jakarta Post, and Indonesia Investment. The writing prompt required the students to read the news on a particular topic and present their thoughts about the news in the form of at least a three paragraphs essay. The students might disagree/agree about the news and relate the topic in the news with the personal life or life experiences of others. The researchers focused on expository and argumentative essays developed by different types of organization (example details, problem-solution, cause-effect, compare-contrast, and process). For the pretest and post-test, the researchers used direct writing tests. A direct writing test is a type of test in which students are asked to demonstrate their writing ability by writing a composition on a specific topic (Latief, 2014). The pre-and post-test trials revealed that the test wording and writing prompts were comprehensible. For the post-test trial, the correlational coefficient between raters 1 and 2 is significant at the 0.05 level (0.02 < 0.05).

Fulfilling the Statistical Assumption
In a one-sample t-test analysis, four assumptions are made. The first assumption is that the dependent variable is on the 'interval scale.' The second assumption is that the data are independent of one another. The third assumption is that there are no significant outliers, and the fourth is that the data is normally distributed. The first and the second assumptions only needed observations. But to fulfill the third and the fourth assumptions, the researchers needed to run statistical analysis.  Figure 1 shows that there are no outliers in the box-whisker plot; no scores are spread in the above and lower fence of the box-whisker plot. This shows that the third assumption had been fulfilled. The fourth assumption is the data should be normally distributed. Test of normality is a prerequisite for any statistical analysis to proceed to a t-test. The key to run a statistical test, either parametric or non-parametric test, is the normal distribution. If the data are not normally distributed, the researchers need to L. Setyowati & S. Sukmawan, News as authentic materials to improve essay writing in a hybrid learning setting | 1201 run a one-sample t-test for a non-parametric test. Yet, if the assumption is fulfilled, the type of analysis would be a one-sample t-test for parametric testing. As the data distribution is normal, parametric tests Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk were done in this study. The normality test employs the Kolmogorov-Smirnov, and Shapiro-Wilk tests. If the p-value is equal to or greater than the alpha value, the data is said to be normally distributed (p ≥ α). The α value is determined at 0.05. Table 1 shows that the significance values, both in the pre-test and post-test, are higher than the alpha value (0.05). The Shapiro-Wilk output in the pre-test is p= 0.157 > α = 0.05. While for the post-test, the Shapiro-Wilk output is p= 0.483 > α =0.05. Likewise, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov computation also shows similar results. It is possible to conclude that the pretest and post-test scores followed a normal distribution. This demonstrated that the final assumption was met. As a result, the researchers conducted a parametric statistical analysis.

Hypothesis Testing
This study formulated the following hypothesis (H0): "there is no significant difference in the students' writing performance before and after using authentic materials to write the essays". Before putting the hypothesis to the test, the researchers compare the mean writing scores of the students before and after treatment. According to the descriptive statistic in Table 2, the mean score in the post-test is higher than the mean score in the pre-test. The average score in the pre-test is 80.2222, while the average score of the students' writing performance in the post-test is 80.3222. The data show that there is a 0.1-point improvement in the mean. The difference is negligible. The researchers must conduct one sample-test analysis to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the means. The researchers must test and reject this null hypothesis for the researchers' hypothesis to be accepted. The null hypothesis is rejected when the p-value is lower than the α value (p ≤ α = 0.05). However, if the p-value is greater than or equal to the value (p ≥ α = 0.05), the researchers do not have sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis. Table 3 displays the paired sample t-test analysis in three important columns for interpreting the results. The t value is -.052, and the degree of freedom (df) is 17, calculated from a total sample size of 18, minus 1. The significant value of the twotailed test shows that there is no difference in the students writing performance before and after they used the news as authentic materials (p = .959 > α = 0.05). This demonstrated that the research fails to reject the null hypotheses, and the researchers fail to accept the alternative hypotheses.

DISCUSSION
The outbreak of COVID 19 changes all aspects of people's life. In the education context, the teaching and learning process shifts from conventional face-to-face meetings to online learning. This change is mostly done unwillingly. Yet, given not much of a choice, the mixed model/hybrid learning is carried out to keep education running. Printed textbooks for classroom learning are slowly given away. As most teaching and learning are conducted from home, teachers/lecturers start to shift their attention from printed materials to online materials. News, TV shows, videos, songs, literary texts, talks, autobiographies, and many more are posted online by people around the world. These authentic materials are rich in genres and context. Using these types of materials for learning a new language gives many advantages for both the teachers and the students (Al Azri & Al-Rashdi, 2014). The use of authentic materials makes the teachers creative and innovative. They can find the instructional materials suitable with the students' characteristics and appropriate with the learning objectives. While for the students, the use of instructional materials gives them insights into how the target language is used for real communication in a particular context.
Despite the fact that authentic materials provide numerous benefits, the current study found no difference in students' writing performance before and after treatment. The pre-test mean score was 80.2222, while the post-test mean score was 80.3222. The descriptive statistics show that there is not much improvement in the mean before and after treatment. The small difference in the mean (0.1) is not statistically significant when the data were computed with the paired sample t-test statistical analysis (p = .0.959 > α = 0.05). The pre-test score has a standard deviation of 7.96171, while the post-test score has a standard deviation of 4.62774. The standard deviation of the posttest score is lower than the standard deviation of the pre-test score. This meant that the post-test score is closer to the mean, implying that the pre-test score is more variable than the post-test score. The findings showed that the researchers lacked sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis. As a result, the 'no difference statement' in the null hypotheses is not rejected.
The current study's findings do not support previous research on a similar topic, such as those conducted by Arifa (2011), El-Sulukiyyah and Aisya (2019), Styati (2016), and Sundana (2018). These researchers discovered that authentic materials were successful in helping students improve their writing. Previous research into the effect of authentic materials had all been conducted in a typical classroom setting. Yet, the present research adds a new dimension that this study is conducted in a hybrid setting during the beginning of the outbreak of COVID 19 in which the teaching and learning process occurred both in the offline mode (before the pandemic) and the online mode (during the pandemic). The failure of rejecting the null hypothesis in the present study might be caused by several factors. Even though the researchers have used an appropriate approach to teach writing during the treatment, its implementation in the hybrid setting needs to be re-evaluated.
This study implemented a process approach to teach writing. One of the most popular approaches for teaching writing is the process approach (Graham & Sandmel, 2011). This approach is advantageous in improving the overall quality of students' writing. (Graham & Sandmel, 2011). Nonetheless, the abrupt transition from the traditional classroom to online class appears to give enough 'distress' to both the teacher and students. Hence, there was insufficient preparation to cope with online learning during the first wave of the pandemic.
The learning stages employed in this study were pre-writing activity, brainstorming and drafting, writing, and publishing. In the prewriting stage, the students discussed the topic, learned about the structure of the essay, as well as the vocabulary and phrases used to express their ideas. In the brainstorming and drafting stage, the students read the news in authentic materials on the issue which they were going to write. Then they made the first draft responding to the news they read. According to , planning or making drafts is an important step in any writing activity. This is all because, during the planning activity, the student writers can generate ideas and organize them in the composition (Alemu, 2020). There are many types of planning activities. Among others are to plan explicitly by using webbing organizers and listing, and another type of planning is the 'implicit' planning by making a series of drafts (rough drafting) (Setyowati, 2016;Setyowati et al., 2017;. In this study, the students used the later type of planning. Nevertheless, even though the process approach was implemented, the students did not get used to online learning. This can be seen from the complaints they gave during the teaching and learning sessions. During the feedback sessions, many of them stated that they needed to meet the lecturer and hear the explanation in person to have a better understanding of which part of their composition needed revising and how to revise it. There is a chance that this uneasy feeling caused the students' half-hearted motivation to join the writing class in the hybrid setting. As a result, the students were unable to improve the quality of their composition as expected, as evidenced by the same mean in the pre-test and post-test. The second factor might be the sample size. In any experimental design, the size of the sample always plays an important issue. Although there is no clear agreement among experts on the ideal sample size, Cohen et al. (2007) said that the larger the sample, the better. In this study, the researchers used 18 students as the sample. Therefore, the number of the sample might not be sufficient to provide enough evidence to decline the null hypothesis and to attest the outcomes of authentic materials on the students' writing performance. Thus, there is a chance to reject the null hypothesis if the sample size is increased.
The third factor might be the factor of the raters who rated the pre-test composition. The mean score of the pre-test (80.2222) and the post-test scores (80.3222) does not give much difference. The mean improvement of 0.1 points is not statistically significant. According to Wang (2009), raters need to be trained to rate the students' composition to reach high inter-rater reliability. The raters in this present study had been given some training to rate the students' composition by using Jacobs ESL Composition Profile. But there is a possibility that the one-week training might not be sufficient, especially in the beginning when they had to score the pre-test section. The researchers suspected that the raters were too 'generous' when they scored the pre-test composition. Jacobs ESL Composition Profile is known for its detailed aspects of writing elements that it requires skills and practice to be able to use skillfully (Setyowati et al., 2020).
Even if there is insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis, this does not imply that the application of authentic materials has no impact on students' writing performance. Previous research has suggested that authentic materials be used to teach essays. Students can learn the real use of the language in a specific context and improve their vocabulary by using authentic materials. These materials should be carefully selected, and appropriate with the learning objectives, as well as with the student's ability. Thus, the result of this study should be taken carefully. More research is needed to determine the cause-and-effect relationship of using authentic materials to teach writing. Overall, in order to implement authentic materials in the classroom and reject the null hypothesis in a hybrid setting, future researchers must consider all of the factors listed above.

CONCLUSION
The research of the present study was done in a hybrid setting. Some portions of the meeting were done conventionally, while the rest of the meetings were done during the pandemic of COVID 19. The sudden change from a conventional classroom to online learning was unexpected. Without adequate preparation, this unexpected hybrid learning contributes to the results of the present research. The researchers fail to reject the null hypothesis as the p-value is higher than the alpha value (p = .959 > α = 0.05). There is a chance that the use of authentic materials for language learning in a hybrid setting is equally effective as when it is done in a conventional meeting under certain conditions. They are 1) having sufficient preparation for hybrid learning conditions, 2) increasing the sample size, 3) having enough experience and skill to use the scoring rubric for writing.
The result of this research implies two suggestions both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, the researchers suggest that the result of this research does not support other previous research about the effectiveness of authentic materials for writing skills. The results in the context of this study showed that news as authentic material helped the students write an essay as seen from the high mean in the pre-test and post-test. Yet, there is no sufficient evidence to say that the authentic materials gave effects to the students' writing performance. Practically, the results of the study implied that the writing teachers/lecturers should use authentic materials for reading and writing activities. Even though there is no hard evidence that news is effective in supporting students to progress their writing abilities, the results of this study should not discourage teachers/lecturers to use them in the classroom. The use of news can strengthen their reading and vocabulary skills. The researchers believe that using news for reading before writing activity provides the students with sufficient background knowledge about the topic, making them up-to-date with the latest issues, and ignite their critical thinking skills. Instead of relying much on textbooks, the use of authentic materials gives a better opportunity for both the students and the teachers/lecturers to explore English and the world in general. The teachers/lecturers need to connect their teaching with life outside the classroom. In short, the use of authentic materials creates a bridge that connects the classroom and the real world.
There are some gaps in the study to be fulfilled by future researchers. Firstly, the current study had a small sample size. As a result, the study's findings can only be applied to a population with similar characteristics. More research on a larger population with larger sample size is required for broader applicability. Secondly, when using authentic materials, the researchers did not investigate the students' feelings or perceptions. Investigating the students' perspectives will provide useful information about their difficulties when reading and responding to authentic materials for both learning-to-write and writing-to-learn goals. Lastly, future researchers must determine the amount of time spent on timed (in class) and untimed (out of class) writing. Knowing how much time was spent finishing the writing task may assist teachers/lecturers in determining how much time is required for writing assessment.