Rhetorical pattern of the Indonesian EFL undergraduate students’ writings

The present research aimed to study the rhetorical patterns in students’ writings, whether they follow a deductive pattern or an inductive pattern, and whether the pattern is similar when writing in English and the Indonesian language. The sample for this study was 20 undergraduate students from the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education majoring in English Education in several universities in Indonesia. Participants were requested to write two essays and two email-format letters, one of each was written in English, the other in the Indonesian language. The results showed that all students preferred the deductive pattern for their two types of essays. However, for the letter writing, students preferred the inductive pattern more than the deductive one, with 12 students using the inductive pattern in their letters in English and 16 students using the inductive pattern in their letters in Indonesian. It is suggested that the Indonesian culture and the teaching instructions received in the classrooms may influence students’ choice of the patterns they use in different types of writings. The findings should give valuable information for the design of teaching writing courses in English Education majors in Indonesia.

The effectiveness of writing techniques in improving students’ writing ability with different self-esteem

Identifying appropriate writing techniques to help students with different self-esteem improve their writing ability needs to be considered by educators. This study attempted to examine the effectiveness of two writing techniques, Reflective Learning Portfolio (RLP) and Dialogue Journal Writing (DJW) in improving the writing ability of undergraduate students with different self-esteem. A quasi-experimental design was employed in this study. The participants of the study were 62 undergraduate students from a private university in West Java, Indonesia, which were divided into two groups that received different treatments, RLP and DJW techniques. A set of questionnaires to measure students’ self-esteem and writing tests were utilized to collect the data. Data from questionnaires were analyzed by using Likert Scales. Data from pre-test and post-test, to know the effectiveness of RLP and DJW was administered by using a paired t-test. The finding revealed that the writing performance in RLP class was significantly better than in DJW class. In other words, RLP is more effective in teaching writing to students with different self-esteem. The use of explicit teaching, peer feedback, and teacher feedback in RLP class could have caused the RLP technique to be more effective in improving the students’ writing ability compared to the DJW technique.

Analyse the Issues and Challenges in Teaching Writing Among English Teachers

Teaching one of the productive skills of the English language, writing, involves developing students' linguistic competence, which many E.S.L. teachers find difficult. The study's main goal is to examine the challenges faced by E.S.L. teachers in teaching writing skills to students in university classrooms. This study aims to identify problems faced by teachers of Arts Colleges in Universities. The researcher used questionnaires to survey teachers' concerns about teaching writing skills. The researcher used a descriptive method to report the problems encountered by the sampled teachers in teaching writing skills. The survey had 12 questions. This study's findings not only revealed the problematic factors but also suggested some practical solutions. This study's findings and recommendations may help teachers reflect on their teaching practices and assist authorities in supporting teachers' efforts to improve student writing skills.

Analysis of Literary Situation and Reconstruction of the Writing Subject in Literary Education by Educational Psychology

Educational psychology focuses on the laws of change in the knowledge, skills, and individual psychology of the educatees in the process of education and teaching. Writing teaching is a key and difficult point in literature teaching. Nowadays, it is common for students to be afraid and tired of writing in school literature education. In view of these problems, the present work optimizes the teaching mode of writing from the perspective of reconstructing the writing subject. Through literature research and interdisciplinary analysis, a questionnaire is designed to analyze the literary situation and the reconstruction of writing subjects in literary education. The questionnaire is aimed at three aspects, namely the hidden educational effect of teachers’ personality charm, the influencing factors of students’ psychology and students’ learning effect, and the influencing factors of psychology of the communication between teachers and students and teachers’ teaching effect. Then, the changes of students’ performance in literary class in these three aspects before and after using the teaching strategy of writing subject reconstruction are analyzed. Finally, the changes of students’ grades in the literary course are investigated. In this experiment, a total of 400 questionnaires were distributed, and a total of 389 questionnaires were collected. The survey results show that the number of students who feel the classroom atmosphere is active increases by 10%, the number of students who listen carefully and take notes increases by 7%, and 45% of students have improved their grades. Besides, after the implementation of the teaching strategy, most students change their attitude to the literature course, become more active, and significantly improve their motivation for learning. This study has a certain reference value for the analysis of literary situations and the reconstruction of writing subjects in literary education from the perspective of educational psychology.

The Use of Diary to Improve the Writing Ability of the English Second Graders at Hamzanwadi University

The research aimed at finding out the use of a diary in improving the writing ability of the English students of Hamzanwadi University. The problems formulated in this research were (1) Is the use of diary effective in teaching writing for the English students of Hamzanwadi University? (2) How effective is using a diary in teaching writing for the English students of Hamzanwadi University? The research design of this study was one group pretest and posttest. The population of this research was the second-semester students of Hamzanwadi University, which consisted of 105 students in 4 classes. The present researcher took class D as the sample that consisted of 20 students. The present researcher generated a simple random sampling by obtaining an exhaustive list of a population and then randomly selecting a certain number of individuals to comprise the sample. A pretest and a posttest were given to the students to collect the data. The result of the data analysis indicated that the mean score of the pretest was 34.86 while in the posttest was 48.00. In testing the hypothesis, the result of the t-test was -9.706. The null hypothesis was rejected, and the alternative hypothesis was accepted. So, it can be said that using a diary was significantly effective in teaching writing.

THE INFLUENCE OF SKYPE TOWARDS STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL

One of the main skill in learning English as second language is writing. Learning writing is necessarily important nowadays, not only for education purposes but also for occupation purposes as well. However, most of the students feel bored in writing; one of the reasons is because the teaching learning process still uses conventional method. Thereby, it seems that writing is difficult and boring because the students score in writing is low. Therefore, the researcher uses Skype as the media in teaching writing as an alternative solution for this problem. The study aim is to find if there is any significant influence of using Skype towards students’ writing skill especially in writing descriptive text. The result of this study showed that there is a significant influence of using Skype towards students’ writing skill.

The Use of Genre Based Approach in Training and Mentoring for Improving Argument Skills in Research Articles Journal Writing for Social and Humanity Authors

Argumentation in writing research articles is very crucial for showing the position of authors in a certain science field, but the social and humanity authors are still lower in skill for argumentation. This research investigated the using and impact of the Genre Based Approach (GBA) in training and mentoring of Research Article writing in improving the skill of argumentation in writing RA. The aim of this study is to describe the activity of learning and teaching by using GBA in training and mentoring of writing RA for social and humanity authors and the impact of this training and mentoring on the skill of argumentation in RAs writing. The material and steps of learning and teaching activity are adapted and modified from Widodo (2006) who stated that the rule of GBA is to prepare, focus, task, evaluate and elaborate. Moreover, Ferris & Hedgcock (2005) also explained that GBA is started from joint construction and independent construction stages when students start to write. The instruments of this research were direct observation and RAs draft analysis. Direct observing is also conducted to record every side of GBA design for teaching writing articles. To find the effect of GBA in training and mentoring to improve argumentative skills, the content analysis to the draft of RAs is conducted. The Result shows that the first the activity of training and mentoring writing RAs by using GBA to improve argumentation skills can be described from prepare, focus, task, evaluate and elaborate. The second finding shows that the participants have competence in writing argumentative for each section of RAS. Thus, it can be concluded that GBA in training and mentoring to write RAs is effective to improve argumentative skills in writing class especially writing RAs class.

Reading - Based Writing Model: A blended learning alternative

ABSTRACT Writing is often regarded as a difficult skill to acquire by majority of EFL learners. Teaching writing is also unquestionably challenging. It is argued that an essential effort to assist learners is having them explore information to write through reading topic and genre- related sources extensively. This article seeks to explain the result of a study employing R&D method to develop a Reading-Based Model to teach academic writing. It will report the results of the needs analysis briefly and then explain the model itself. The data about the students' needs of writing according to the students and the writing lecturers were collected through questionnaire and interview. The results of needs analysis and relevant literature confirmed that reading prior and during writing is elemental. The syntax of the model was developed on the basis of literature dealing with the principles of reading-writing relations and the Genre-based Approach. It consists of 4 main stages. Some activities within each stage can be carried out online. The model has gone through a validation process by two experts (two experienced lecturers teaching writing skills). The model was considered valid by the experts; a few recommendations were concerned with additional activities.