scholarly journals EXPLORING THE TERTIARY EFL STUDENTS' ACADEMIC WRITING COMPETENCIES

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aunurrahman Aunurrahman ◽  
Fuad Abdul Hamied Hamied ◽  
Emi Emilia
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Private University ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Achievement ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
West Kalimantan ◽  
Writing Genres ◽  
Efl Students

For tertiary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students, academic writing is not an easy task. It requires knowledge of the academic writing genres with their particular linguistic features. Moreover, academic writing demands good critical thinking. This research aims to explore the students' academic writing competencies that also focus on critical thinking. The research involved thirty-six first-year tertiary EFL students from a regular class of a private university in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The source for data collection was the students’ texts. Three texts were selected and the students were categorized into low, medium, and high levels of writing achievement. The text analysis utilized functional grammar rooted in systemic functional linguistics (Emilia, 2014). The analysis shows that the students, regardless of their levels of writing achievement, have little control over the schematic structure and linguistic features of an argumentative writing. The text analysis also shows that the students’ texts have some limitations as regards their critical thinking capacity. Still, a few examples of academic language were detected in the texts. The findings suggest that the lecturer should incorporate explicit teaching and cooperative learning activities to alleviate the students' difficulties and develop their academic writing and critical thinking capacity.

scholarly journals Enhancing Critical Thinking Through Calla In Developing Writing Ability Of EFL Students

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 302-313
Author(s):  
Hery Yufrizal
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
Writing Achievement ◽  
Writing Ability ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Experimental Group

The objectives of this research are firstly to investigate the application of Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach in improving students’ English writing ability andsecondly to answer what factors influence the students’ writing performance. The subjects of the research were the students of senior high schools in Indonesia consisting of a group of students as experimental group and as control group. The results showed that students improved their writing after they were involved in Cognitive Academic Language Learning Actvitities. Furthermore, the study also showed that levels of students’ critical thinking did not any significant effects toward their writing achievement  

scholarly journals Detection of Common Errors in Turkish EFL Students’ Writing through a Corpus Analytic Approach

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elif Tokdemir Demirel
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
First Year ◽  
Plagiarism Detection ◽  
Writing Difficulties ◽  
Lexical Categories ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Concordance Program

The present study aims to explore Turkish EFL students’ major writing difficulties by analyzing the frequent writing errors in academic essays. Accordingly, the study examined errors in a corpus of 150 academic essays written by Turkish EFL students studying at the Department of English Language and Literature at a public university in Turkey. The essays were written on assigned topics as take home exam papers or assignments in the context of a first year academic writing course. The corpus consisted of essays of various lengths ranging from 500 word essays to 1500 word essays. The essays were compiled into a corpus and analyzed by using a concordance program. The essays were also checked for plagiarism using the online plagiarism detection software and plagiarized essays were excluded from the analysis. Errors were classified by using an error classification system which was organized according to lexico-grammatical categories. The resulting categories consisted of mostly syntactic and lexical categories of error but academic style errors were considered as well. As a result of the analysis, in terms of error categories, the most frequent errors were observed in the verb related error categories. When considered individually, the most frequent errors were observed in noun modification and were mostly interference related.

scholarly journals Exploring Academic Writing Needs of Indonesian EFL Undergraduate Students

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ratnawati ◽  
Didih Faridah ◽  
Syafiul Anam ◽  
Pratiwi Retnaningdyah
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Private University ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Need Analysis ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
General Skills ◽  
Students Attitudes ◽  
The University

Academic writing is noteworthy competence to be accomplished for English as a foreign language (EFL) students to fulfill their academic needs at the university. To do so, Indonesian tertiary universities accommodate and foster this competence using academic writing course. The study, therefore, sought to look into: 1. what undergraduate EFL students’ perceptions of the importance of academic writing to their current study and future career, 2. what the students’ perceptions of the difficulties of academic writing, 3. what the students’ attitudes towards their previous and future academic writing courses. The present study investigates students’ needs emerging in academic writing during classroom practices to gain insightful and profound perspectives for forthcoming needs of the course. Data were collected through a five scaled questionnaire of need analysis distributed to thirty-four EFL students from a private university, and a focus group interview involving nine participants. Results indicate 61% (Mdifficulties=3.05) of students faced difficulties in both general skills and language problems of academic writing and a new course was expected to provide moves/steps for writing the sections in a research article. The present study then suggests that e-database resources are needed for academic papers models and references hence its efficiency and flexibility in prospective academic writing.

scholarly journals The Teaching and Learning of Academic Writing Involving Critical Thinking in Higher Education

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 975-981
Author(s):  
Fahmy Imaniar ◽  
Lies Amin Lestari ◽  
Ahmad Munir
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Writing Class ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Almost All

Academic writing and critical thinking are two things which strongly deal with higher education context, especially for EFL students. Unfortunately, the process of the teaching and learning which deals with the two aforementioned things was rarely researched. Hence, this current study aimed at revealing the process of teaching and learning of academic writing which involves critical thinking in higher education level. It was carried out through qualitative approach with non-participatory observation and interview as the data collection techniques. The participants were the subject teacher as the one who taught academic writing and also the students in the academic writing class. The result shows that the process of teaching and learning of academic writing consisted of several phases united into a set prevailing for each type of academic writing. Furthermore, critical thinking is engaged within almost all phases with different way of its existence. This study is expected to open eyes towards what occurs in the field, rather than to only value and judge.

scholarly journals Iraqi EFL Students’ Difficulties in Writing Composition: An Experimental Study (University of Baghdad)

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 178
Author(s):  
Sura Muttlak Nasser
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
College Of Education ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Composition ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Efl Students

Iraqi EFL students face difficulties in writing composition, especially academic writing, which affects negatively their exam results. This study has been conducted in the Department of English at College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad, in order to identify first year EFL students’ incompetence in writing. This may enhance their achievement by some weekly writing activities. It deals with Iraqi EFL students’ difficulties in writing paragraphs such as descriptive, process, opinion, and factual paragraphs. The study aims to identify these difficulties and to suggest suitable solutions for them. The researcher perceives that it is necessary to enhance students’ skills in writing because it is an important tool in their education progress. The study proved that the distinction is considerable. However, the researcher had a group sitting for pre and post- test to assess the output of the means of students’ results.

scholarly journals Corpus-Based Research in Vocabulary Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-216
Author(s):  
Rizka Safriyani
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
First Year ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University

n the university, corpus-based research is commonly done for writing a thesis. However, corpus-based research can also be introduced for the first year of EFL students to build their critical thinking and vocabulary mastery.  Less research discusses the practice of corpus-based research for the first year EFL student.  Therefore, it is essential to investigate the benefit and the challenges of corpus-based research in the Indonesian EFL Setting. This study aims to examine the benefits and the challenges of corpus-based research in the Indonesian EFL Setting. Students did corpus-based research in English for the Islamic Studies course. Students tried to structure an English glossary from online Islamic articles, Islamic journals, and Islamic blogs. Forty-four students were chosen as the subject of the research. The survey was done to the students to gather the data about the benefits and the challenges of corpus-based research. The results showed that corpus-based research benefits increase vocabulary, increase students' understanding of research, improve students' accuracy in writing, develop critical thinking, and develop collaboration. Students faced several challenges in implementing corpus-based research. The finding shows students have difficulties in understanding new vocabulary. Besides, they have problems classifying data into specific topics, allocating time, and writing their reports.  

scholarly journals How English Foreign Language Students’ Autonomy and Digital Competence Relate to Their Writing Achievement

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Diah Maya Andina ◽  
Bambang Yudi Cahyono ◽  
Utami Widiati
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Learner Autonomy ◽  
First Year ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Writing Achievement ◽  
State University ◽  
Digital Competence ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Intensive Course

This study aimed to examine the correlation between learner autonomy, digital competence, and writing achievement. It involved 92 first-year English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students who were enrolled in an intensive course (IC) program of the English department of a state university in Indonesia. This study used three types of data: learner autonomy level elicited by using a questionnaire, digital competence level elicited by using a questionnaire, writing scores that were obtained from the coordinator of the IC program. The research methodology used in this study was quantitative research. The bivariate Spearman correlation was applied to know the correlations between learner autonomy and writing achievement and the correlation between digital competence and writing achievement. The multiple linear regression was computed to examine the correlation of the combination of learner autonomy and digital competence towards writing achievement. The results of the study confirmed that learner autonomy was strongly correlated with writing achievement and digital competence was moderately correlated with writing achievement. The result also showed that there is a statistically significant correlation between a combination of learner autonomy and digital competence towards writing achievement. Therefore, pedagogically, teachers of EFL writing are suggested to promote autonomous learning and at the same time, use technology to foster EFL students' writing achievement.

scholarly journals ANALYSIS OF EFL STUDENTS’ CITATION PRACTICES AND PROBLEMS IN ACADEMIC WRITING

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Yanti Sri Rezeki
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Education ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
State University ◽  
Education Department ◽  
West Kalimantan ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Problems ◽  
Citation Practices

Abstract: Citing sources correctly is vital in academic writing including research proposals. Despite its significance, students seem to perform it poorly due to lack of knowledge and awareness of its role in their writing. As the result, they are often accused of committing plagiarism. One of the ways to prevent students from committing plagiarism is by providing them with sufficient knowledge and skills related to proper citations. This study is a preliminary effort to identify student citation practices within the English Education department of a state university in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Employing qualitative content analysis, the researcher examined samples of students’ proposals to describe the ways in which citations were written and the common problems that occurred. The findings suggest that students mostly cited as non-integral/non-reporting. The study also reveals that students’ most common mistakes in the citation are found in language and content. The study concludes with the need to provide students with clear guidelines for citation and strong remarks on plagiarism.

Fostering EFL College Students’ Register Awareness

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ching-Fen Chang
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Complex Sentence ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Online Writing ◽  
Essay Writing ◽  
Rigorous Approach ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Efl College Students

This study explores 19 Taiwanese students’ writing in weekly online forum posts and traditional essays. Results drawn from discourse analysis of students’ writing in both types of writing tasks showed that the semester-long online writing accompanied by explicit instruction on essays and basic academic writing conventions appeared to help raise EFL students’ consciousness of register in the two writing contexts and help them make appropriate linguistic adjustments. Quantitative analysis using three measures of syntactic complexity revealed that the students tended to use syntactically more complex sentence structures in essays than in online forums. A number of typical informal or online linguistic features characterize the students’ online forums more frequently than in essays. Finally, although most of these EFL college students seemed able to take different approaches to online writing and essay writing at the end of the semester, some students adopted the same rigorous approach to both types of writing as a result of a strategic response to avoid losing face or being misunderstood when writing in a public domain. The results suggest that providing EFL learners a forum where they can express themselves in less formal language is beneficial.

BEYOND CRITICAL THINKING IN ACADEMIC WRITING: A DISCOURSE PERSPECTIVE

JURNAL BASIS ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Misdi Misdi
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Education ◽  
Private University ◽  
Research Proposal ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Critical Writing ◽  
Research Journal ◽  
Proposal Writing

The phenomenon of critical thinking, as one aspect of learning experiences, is challenging. Yet, it reflects students’ ideas and understanding of particular matters, especially in academic writing among the English education institutions. Thus, this study was aimed to investigate how undergraduate students fashioned their understanding of being self-driven in writing research proposal relating to reading skills. The research questions drop into two big areas: 1) How is critical thinking reflected in research proposal writing, 2) What are evidences of being critical in addressing research proposal? Having three sessions of in-depth interview, fifty seven students of English department of a private university in West Java, Indonesia were involved in the reflection of their writing and reading experiences during the study. The data were collected through interview and document observation. The findings suggest that first, the critical writing is reflected by such citation and elaborative sentences as the distinctive writing features of academic writing. Second, the extended description and elaboration are made due to reading constraint. Books are mainly the sources, whereas research journal articles are still less appreciated. Thus, reading is defines as the evidence of being critical. The results of the study play significant contribution in building critical thinking, critical reading, and critical writing as self-awareness manifesto among the students of English education.

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