ESP Students’ Perceptions on the Use of Whatsapp Application as a Learning Tool

: The development of technology provides a huge impact on the educational setting which increasing Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) usage especially in supporting ESP students. One of the mobile applications used in supporting language learning is WhatsApp Messenger. This study aimed to investigate ESP students’ perceptions on the use of WhatsApp in English language learning. The research approach was a descriptive quantitative approach while the design of this research was a survey. The participants were 22 male ESP students who followed the English class held by Helutrans Art-moving Company. For collecting the data, the researcher employed a questionnaire adapted from Mistar & Embi (2016). The questionnaire consisted of three parts such as the attitude towards WhatsApp, the usefulness of WhatsApp and also the constraint in using WhatsApp. In analyzing the data, it applied descriptive statistics using SPSS version 26 in the form of frequencies, means, and standard deviations. The findings of the research revealed that the majority of the research participants had positive perceptions concerning the use of WhatsApp in the ESP setting. It implied that ESP students agreed for using WhatsApp on language learning was easy, useful and effective in increasing their motivation, interest, confidence, and their activeness. They also felt that using WhatsApp could increase their English skill such as listening, reading, writing and speaking. Abstrak


INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the effect of the current globalization in the economic aspect and also the increasing of international communication in numerous fields affect the demand for English as an International Language. Brown (2007: 118) stated that English is not frequently learned for understanding and teaching the US or British cultural values. Instead, English has become a mean for international communication in all aspects including transportation, commerce, banking, tourism, technology, diplomacy, and scientific research. Moreover, people who work in those specific work fields need to learn English, which can support their specific job instead of learning General English (GE). This kind of English is called as English for Specific Purposes (ESP). ESP students are not only expected to get familiarized with general English knowledge, but they had to be able to have language proficiency in their specific areas (e.g., business, technology, science) (Kitkauskiene, 2006).
Thus, for developing the English skill of ESP students, it is important to use various resources, not only limited to book. Especially, it has to be adjusted to the flexibility and the effectiveness of the learning activity. For example, Hamad (2017) stated that the use of technology and internet is believed to be able to help students and teachers for having easy access to the teaching and learning process. One of them is by applying mobile learning in the education process. In language teaching, it is well known as Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL). Using mobile devices for assisting language learning is believed to be successful and promising, and both teachers and students have positively welcomed in using this technology in language classrooms (Cui & Wang, 2008;Tayebinik & Puteh, 2012). Obari & Lambacher (2015) stated that the utilization of mobile devices in language learning can have diverse advantages than using other methods. Moreover, there are a lot of studies agree about the mobile devices characteristics which make them useful in the education setting such as portability, affordability, connectivity, and in turn, this technology can stimulate interactivity, spontaneity, curiosity, creativity, courage and other attitudes to the learning process (Darmi & Albion, 2014;Godwin-Jones, 2017;Hashemi, Azizinezhad, Najafi, & Nesari, 2011).
In using a mobile device, people tend to use various applications for communicating with each other. One of the mobile applications used in supporting language learning is WhatsApp Messenger. WhatsApp Messenger becomes a popular mobile application used by people around the world. The data of statistics have revealed that there were 1.2 billion active users monthly in 2017 (Statista, 2017). WhatsApp can be considered as a smartphone-and web-based instant message application in which its users can exchange information using various types of media such as image, text, video and also audio messages (Church & De Oliveira, 2013). Moreover, the characteristics of this mobile application is a free, fast, easy to use, convenient, and also a personal mode for communication (Al-Mothana Gasaymeh & Gasaymeh, 2017). Additionally, for the use of WhatsApp in ESP classroom, teachers and students can use it for sharing information because it can be easily accessed every time and most of the students used it in their daily life. It can also provide access for the learning recourse or material when the teacher and students are separated by distance and time. So the language teaching and learning process still can happen every time and everywhere. In addition, there are many other researches which have investigated the use of mobile devices as a tool for assisting language teaching and learning. Some of them focused on the language skills such as reading (Hsu, Hwang, & Chang, 2013), speaking and listening (Tsou, Wang, & Tzeng, 2006), vocabulary (Hayati, Jalilifar, & Mashhadi, 2013) and pronunciation (Saran, Seferoglu, & Cagiltay, 2009). Nevertheless, those previous studies were commonly conducted in a general EFL or ESL classroom, while it is still few studies which conducted on the use of mobile devices in ESP classroom, especially in the Indonesian context. Therefore, the goal of this study is to investigate the use of WhatsApp as a learning tool in ESP class, especially focusing on the perception of ESP students towards this mobile application in helping them to learn the language. Hence, by conducting this study, hopefully, it could fill the gap in the absence of the application of WhatsApp in the Indonesian ESP context. The findings of this research could provide some useful insights on how WhatsApp can help students in improving their English learning based on the students' perspectives.

METHODS
This study used a descriptive quantitative approach because this research approach can be useful for increasing the understanding of the research variable to evaluate its relation to the research problem. Thus, this research approach is more applicable than qualitative research. For the design of this research, it was survey research. Commonly, survey research is used for gathering the data from the samples in order to get to know and describe the criteria or characteristic such as beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, behaviors of the population.
There were 22 participants in this research. They are male students who join ESP class held by Helutrans Art-moving Company. The range of age among the participants is between 19 -40 years old with around 24% of them are in their 28, and 8% of them are in their 40 and above. Then, their backgrounds were also various such as art workers, university students, etc. They joined this English project held by Helutrans because they would be sent to Hong Kong for working as the art handlers for Art Basel 2019.
The participants attended the ESP course twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday, with each session lasting ninety minutes. Mostly the English level of them is still at the beginner level, and they got the last English education from senior high school. In facilitating their learning process, the flippedclassroom used in this case by utilizing WhatsApp as a tool of learning outside the classroom.
For the data, those were collected using a questionnaire consisting of 21 questions, and it was a four-point Likert scale that ranged from strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), agree (3), and strongly agree (4). This instrument was used to investigate the participants' perception toward the use of WhatsApp, and it was applied in the last meeting of the ESP course. This questionnaire was developed and adapted based on Mistar & Embi (2016). The questionnaire consisted of three parts such as the attitude towards WhatsApp, the usefulness of WhatsApp, and also the constraint in using WhatsApp. The reliability of this questionnaire was calculated using Cronbach Alpha formula and it was 0.97, which is considered acceptable for this study.
In analyzing the data, it applied descriptive statistics using SPSS version 26 in the form of frequencies, means, and standard deviations. This analysis was used to answer the main question of this research. For analytical purposes, here are the scale used to show the level of estimation for students' responses in the questionnaire. Less than 2: Very Low, 2-2.49: Low, 2.50-2.99: Medium, 3-3.49: High, 3.5 and above: Very High

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The result of this research focussed on examining the ESP students' perception of the utilization of WhatsApp as their learning tool in the classroom. There are three main points of the findings, they are "the students' attitude towards Whatsapp (8 items)", "the usefulness of Whatsapp (11 items)", and "their constraints in using Whatsapp as a learning tool (2 items)". The analysis of the result will be presented based on those three points in the following passages.
The descriptive analysis results which are presented below include frequency, percentages, mean and standard deviation. Those analyses are used to know the level of students' attitudes on WhatsApp. The result is shown in Table 1 as follows. From table 1, it showed that almost all of the items were in the high level (based on the mean score) regarding to the students' attitude on the use of WhatsApp as the language learning tool. The students have a positive attitude and agree that learning English by using WhatsApp is an enjoyable and positive idea. ESP students also could easily use WhatsApp to support their learning, and it helped them to share knowledge and information easily. This result was similar to the previous study conducted by Mistar & Embi (2016) in which they also found that WhatsApp could support the language learning of ESL students that they could communicate their information and exchange knowledge without difficulty. Norfaezah ( 2015) added that the utilization of WhatsApp could help students for sharing many things with their teacher or their other friends. The teacher could upload a video or voice recording related to the material which had been discussed in the classroom. So, ESP students could easily access those materials from WhatsApp anytime as they wanted because they had familiar with using it (Jafre, et.al, 2017). Alhabbash (2012) added that WhatsApp was used as a teaching tool because it was a common mobile application used by students, did not need any support from other devices and was cost inexpensively. He also added that students were more excited and interested in learning the language by using this mobile application. Tang & Hew (2017) also found that the utilization of WhatsApp in supporting students' learning did not require any intensive training in using it, so WhatsApp could be integrated into the learning process effortlessly. The result regarding ESP students' positive attitude of WhatsApp's ease of use was aligned with other studies such as (Ahad & Lim, 2014).
The next aspect is related to the students' perception towards the usefulness of WhatsApp. The points will include the use of WhatsApp as leaning media, whether it can increase the students' interest and motivation, students' language skills and the student's activeness and confidence in language learning. The analysis result is shown in Table  2 below.  Table 2 shows the result of the students' perspective towards the usefulness of WhatsApp is at high level. It implied that ESP students had positive perception due to a lot of benefits which they could get by learning English thought WhatsApp. That usefulness of WhatsApp included the improvement in ESP students' interest and motivation, enhancing the English language skills of ESP students, the improvement of students' activeness and confidence in language learning. This result was aligned with other studies such as (Mistar & Embi, 2016;Jafre, et.al, 2017). Jafre, et.al (2017) found that learning the language by using WhatsApp could make students more enjoy, motivate them to increase their English skills, improve their communicative skills, and increase their collaboration with others. Additionally, Dweikat (2019) argued that by using WhatsApp students could have willingness and motivation in collaborating and communicating with their teacher. Students also would feel that the teacher always supported and guided them and they would interact with their friends in the process of language learning (Dweikat, 2019). Moreover, for the benefit of increasing English skills, the result was similar to other researches (e.g (Alsaleem, 2013;Hamad, 2017). Hamad (2017) also found that Whatsapp could address some teaching and learning problem which needs a contextualized interaction in communicative competence. His research showed that Whatsapp could develop learners' listening skills, speaking skills, writing skills, and vocabulary mastery. Additionally, Alsaleem (2013) investigated the effect on the use of WhatsApp in the EFL context, especially on the students' written vocabulary task. It found that there was a positive effect on the students' writing performances.
The next point is about the constraints which may be faced by ESP students. There were only two items as shown in Table 3 below. The table above shows the research result concerning the level of the constraint which ESP students would face in using WhatsApp. The numbers shows it was at a low level. This revealed that only a few students faced problems during language learning through WhatsApp while others agreed that they did not have any constraints. Some factors caused the problems in applying WhatsApp, for instance, the age gap. Some ESP students who were adults might face this constraint due to the lack of familiarity in using it. Moreover, a previous study revealed that there were some challenges of WhatsApp integration as learning tool such as "extra workload, a distraction to learning, lack of students' commitment for effective participation, lack of WhatApp integration skill and small screens of mobile technology" (Tarisman & Hanafi, 2019). Jafre, et.al, (2017) added that few students might have problems using WhatsApp as a learning tool, for example, anxiety issues, internet connection, etc. Overall, the finding regarding ESP students' positive perception on the use of WhatsApp in their language learning aligned with the results of previous studies (Gasaymeh, 2017;So, 2016;Dweikat, 2019;Zakaria & Abdullah, 2018;Warman, 2018;Mistar & Embi, 2016)(Al-Mothana Gasaymeh & Gasaymeh, 2017).

CONCLUSION
The finding of this study revealed that the majority of the research participants had positive perceptions concerning the use of WhatsApp in the ESP setting. The value of all means of the students' responses for each item was at 3.00-3.55 which indicated ESP students' perception was positive or at a high level, except the items for students' constraint. The questionnaire results showed that ESP students agreed that applying WhatsApp on language learning was easy, useful and effective in increasing their motivation, interest, confidence, and their activeness. They also felt that using WhatsApp could increase their English skills such as listening, reading, writing and speaking. However, few students might face some constraints when using WhatsApp for learning language due to some reasons. Although there were constraints faced by a few students, almost all of the students could get benefits by applying WhatsApp to ESP students' learning activities. In conclusion, there was a positive perception of utilizing WhatsApp from ESP students. This research was only limited to the ESP students' perception of WhatsApp. More researches need to be done in other aspects, especially for the effect of WhatsApp to language skill both productive and receptive skill.