scholarly journals Aspects of writing knowledge and EFL students' writing quality

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Rofiqoh Rofiqoh ◽  
Yazid Basthomi ◽  
Utami Widiati ◽  
Yunita Puspitasari ◽  
Saiful Marhaban ◽  
...  

Writing knowledge pertaining to process, system, content, and genre plays an essential role to produce an intelligible composition. The purpose of the present study is twofold – to investigate the correlation between aspects of writing knowledge and quality of writing, and to investigate the contribution of the overall and individual aspects of writing knowledge to writing quality. The participants were 54 second-year ELT undergraduate students of a university in Indonesia. A writing test and multiple-choice test on writing knowledge were used as the instruments of data collection. The analysis employed Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regressions. The result revealed a significant positive correlation between writing knowledge and writing quality. As a unit, the knowledge of process, system, content, and genre, indicates a significant contribution to the writing quality. Individually, however, only process knowledge significantly contributes to the writing quality. It provides additional pieces of evidence that process knowledge be given special attention, thus writing instruction should allow students to learn writing knowledge explicitly and implicitly.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khawater Fahad Alshalan

This study aims to investigate how frequently Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesive devices were used as well as their relationship with the writing quality of 100 Saudi EFL undergraduate students in Al Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It uses a mixed method approach, where the students’ essays were analyzed using systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in terms of the textual meta-function of cohesive devices. The five types of the cohesive devices are the following: lexical cohesion, reference, conjunction, substitutions, and ellipses. Moreover, each of their subcategories were analyzed in the students’ texts. The NVivo qualitative data analysis software and the corpus analysis (conducted using AntConc) were used to calculate the frequencies of each cohesive device found in the data. The IELTS writing assessment scale was also used to evaluate the students’ writing scores. The results show that the most frequently used device was lexical cohesion, specifically repetition. Saudi EFL undergraduate students tended to repeatedly stay focused on the central idea of the topic. Furthermore, Pearson’s correlation coefficient found a relationship between the students’ writing scores and length of their essays, the use of cohesive ties and the scores, and cohesive ties and the length of the students’ essays. This study recommends that EFL teachers provide Saudi EFL students several cohesive tools in order to help them improve their writing skills and connect their ideas smoothly.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rawhi Yousef Salman Al Shamalat ◽  
Che An Binti Abdul Ghani

The goal of this research was to investigate the effect of use conjunctions on the overall quality of argumentative writing of Jordanian English as foreign language (EFL) learners. This mixed-method research included sixty (n=60) undergraduate students at the Department. of English Language and Literature at Mu’tah University in Jordan. The participants of the research were selected using purposive sampling method. The data of the research were collected using written essays and interviews. The data was analyzed using SPSS. The data was collected using analytical scale Jacob et al., (1981) to measure the quality of argumentative essays. The result of this research showed that there was a weak negative but irrelevant correlation between writing quality and the frequency of conjunctions as cohesive devices. This correlation indicates that the frequent and general use of devices in the writing of Jordanian students did not contribute to the quality of the writing under any conditions. Also the finding revealed that there is an extremely negative but irrelevant correlation between the use of conjunctions devices by Jordanian EFL students and their writing quality. Therefore, the correlation was negative and insignificant for Jordanian EFL students. More specifically, the result shows that the frequencies of conjunctions were not found as an indicator of good writing quality for Jordanian EFL students. This research is significant for providing a considerable number of pedagogical implications for further research that will offer great contribution to the field of teaching writing in EFL setting in Jordan in particular and English as second language (ESL) context in general. Moreover, the research has shown a better understanding of cohesive devices / conjunctions by Jordanian EFL students at Mu’tah University.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-45
Author(s):  
Atikah Wati

Indriyani et al, (2013) stated that many students had dificulty in understanding the generic structure of analytical exposition text. Therefore, the present study tried to investigate the correlation between students understanding in writing generic structure of analytical exposition and the quality of students’ writing in second grade of senior hight school. Grounded in explanatory correlational research design by Creswell (2011), this study conducted over two weeks in one of senior high school in Indramayu. Close-ended questionnaire and writing test were instruments to collect the data and it was analyzed  by using SPSS 22. The statistical calculation from students understanding in writing generic stucture of the text and writing test indicated that the value of tcount was 3.23 and the value of ttable was 0.361. It can be concluded that the hypothesis was accepted because tcount 3.23 > ttable 0.361. The finding reveal that there was middle correlation or middle prediction in students understanding of generic structure of analytical exposition and students writing quality with the score 0,52.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Sependi Napitupulu

This study attempts to investigate errors in translating prepositions from English into Indonesian language by Undergraduate students at the Methodist University Indonesia, Medan. A total of 20 students in the Department of English Literature, Faculty of English Letters were involved in this study. Forty sentences containing English prepositions were translated by the students. The translations were then compared with the Indonesian equivalence in order to find out the quality of their translation. In order to measure the quality of preposition translation, three categories were referred to, namely: correct translation, correct with revision translation, and incorrect translation. Having analyzed the data, it revealed that most of the students failed to translate complex prepositions such as phrasal verbs. However, most students successfully translated simple prepositions such as noun prepositions and adjective prepositions. From 100% correct translation expected of students, only 44.37% of the total correct translation of prepositions committed by students. While correct with revision, from 100% correct translation with revision expected of students, only 41.75% of the total correct translation that need revision is produced by students. In the meantime, 13.75% of the total incorrect translation is produced by students. It was concluded that students tend to face problems in translating prepositional verbs as they are rarely used by and unfamiliar to students.   


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
Anis Handayani ◽  
Nur Arifah Drajati ◽  
N. Ngadiso

This study reports the use of engagement in high-rated and low-rated EFL undergraduate students’ argumentative essays. The engagement here refers to one of the aspects in interacting with the readers, which is called metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005a). The data in this study were ten highest-rated and ten lowest-rated argumentative essays written by first-year undergraduate students. The data were coded manually by two raters to maintain data validity. The results reveal that high-rated essays contain less engagement than low-rated ones. However, it also shows that the engagement in high-rated essays was more varied and grammatically sophisticated than those in low-rated essays. Furthermore, while this study reveals that the higher number of engagement used in argumentative essays does not always coincide with the improved quality of the writing, it implies that the writing quality and score do not depend on the number of engagement expressed but more on the ways students use the engagement effectively. Thus, the explicit teaching on how to use engagement effectively in persuasive writings may be useful for the students to build more persuasive arguments as well as to improve their writing quality.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorena Llosa ◽  
Margaret E. Malone

Investigating the comparability of students’ performance on TOEFL writing tasks and actual academic writing tasks is essential to provide backing for the extrapolation inference in the TOEFL validity argument (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2008). This study compared 103 international non-native-English-speaking undergraduate students’ performance on two TOEFL iBT® writing tasks with their performance in required writing courses in US universities as measured by instructors’ ratings of student proficiency, instructor-assigned grades on two course assignments, and five dimensions of writing quality of the first and final drafts of those course assignments: grammatical, cohesive, rhetorical, sociopragmatic, and content control. Also, the quality of the writing on the TOEFL writing tasks was compared with the first and final drafts of responses to written course assignments using a common analytic rubric along the five dimensions. Correlations of scores from TOEFL tasks (Independent, Integrated, and the total Writing section) with instructor ratings of students’ overall English proficiency and writing proficiency were moderate and significant. However, only scores on the Integrated task and the Writing section were correlated with instructor-assigned grades on course assignments. Correlations between scores on TOEFL tasks and all dimensions of writing quality were positive and significant, though of lower magnitude for final drafts than for first drafts. The TOEFL scores were most highly correlated with cohesive and grammatical control and had the lowest correlations with rhetorical organization. The quality of the writing on the TOEFL tasks was comparable to that of the first drafts of course assignment but not the final drafts. These findings provide backing for the extrapolation inference, suggesting that the construct of academic writing proficiency as assessed by TOEFL “accounts for the quality of linguistic performance in English-medium institutions of higher education” (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2008, p. 21).


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Ali Saukah ◽  
Desak Made Indah Dewanti ◽  
Ekaning Dewanti Laksmi

Written corrective feedback (WCF) in L2 writing classrooms has gained considerable attention in applied linguistics research over the past twenty years. WCF may take different forms of teacher’s responses to errors in students’ texts, among others Coded-Correction Feedback (CCF) and Non-Coded Correction Feedback (NCCF). A number of research studies on the effectiveness of various types of corrective feedback have been undertaken; however the effect of CCF and NCCF on the quality of students’ writing in Indonesian context has not yet been explored. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of Coded Correction Feedback and Non-Coded Correction Feedback on senior high school students’ writing quality. This study investigated the effect of Coded-Correction Feedback (CCF) and Non-Coded Correction Feedback (NCCF) on the quality of Indonesian EFL students’ writing. It involved 53 senior high school students of 11th Grade. Each student was exposed to two different treatments (CCF and NCCF) and the students’ writing quality, after receiving each type of treatments or WCF, was then measured. The effect of each feedback was estimated by comparing the individual students’ scores in writing composition after receiving CCF with their scores after receiving NCCF. The result of this study revealed that the quality of the students’ writing with CCF was better than that with NCCF. The findings of this study showed that the quality of the students’ writing receiving CCF was better than that receiving NCCF because CCF promotes awareness with noticing as well as understanding. Hence, the use of CCF can be considered more effective than NCCF.  Therefore, it is suggested that CCF be employed in giving corrective feedback to the students’ compositions to improve the quality of their writing, and that teachers employ CCF when giving WCF to improve the quality of students’ writing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Arimuliani Ahmad ◽  
Estika Satriani ◽  
Fauzul Etfita ◽  
Alber Alber

In the industry revolution 4.0 era, the Indonesian government also strives to socialize the education change to increase the quality and effort to build up the students of higher education learning style more autonomously. One of many ways to be increased is e-learning. This research aimed to explore the effectiveness of using Learn Social Platform toward students’ writing skills and explore students’ perspectives of using this platform in one of the private universities in Riau, Indonesia. This research was a mixed-method approach. There are 38 undergraduate students as a sample of this research. To collect the data, the researcher used two kinds of instruments such as writing test for analyzing quantitative data and interview for qualitative data. The result showed that the use of this platform can give a significant effect on students’ writing skill which was revealed by students’ post-test was higher than pre-test. In addition, interview data reveal that students felt enthusiastic to use this platform because it is very helpful to increase their English skills which complete material and tasks. Even though it gave advantages, they also face some difficulties such as internet connection and limitation of study group enrollment. Then, the students have some advantages to be improved for this platform such as additional video conference, additional aspects of test, not only focus on grammar, vocabulary and language use but also reading, speaking, writing, and listening. In a practical case, the students expected to get feedback as soon as possible on the same day from their lecturer.


Author(s):  
Zainab Khalifa Khalafallah Khalifa

Theme is the element which a speaker or writer chooses as a point of departure for a clause. Theme is of different types; each of which has a certain function in the overall discourse. Choosing the appropriate theme is important to deliver the intended message of the discourse. Many EFL students encounter problems in their theme choice which might decrease the quality of their written products. The current study investigated the frequency of the different types of themes to find out the most dominantly used theme types. For data collection, 15 academic essays written by advanced semesters' students were utilized to fulfill the purpose of the study. In analyzing the written texts, the Halladian Analysis System was followed to categorize the type of themes used in the students' writings. According to the study findings, the Topical Unmarked theme was highly dominant in the students' writing. The Textual themes occupied the second place in the frequency of use. Not surprisingly, the Interpersonal theme was very rare in the students' essays. The results of the study were interpreted and contextualized within the existing body of literature. Finally, the implications and limitations of the study were discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Dian Fajrina ◽  
John Everatt ◽  
Amir Sadeghi

The present study investigates the writing strategies used by 135 Indonesian English Foreign Language undergraduate students with different English proficiency and the relationship between their English proficiency, indicated by students’ receptive vocabulary knowledge, and the quality of text they produced. The writing strategies questionnaire by Petrić and Czárl (2003) was used to analyze participants’ use of strategies in the three stages of writing: pre-writing, drafting, and revising. Each item in the questionnaire was rated on a 5-point Likert scale. The Vocabulary Size Test (Nation & Beglar, 2007) was used as an indicator of participants’ proficiency in English. The participants were also asked to write an essay in English, which was assessed using the ESL Composition Profile of Jacob et al. (1981). The results of the data analysis showed that most of the students applied 15 of the 38 strategies referred to in the questionnaire. Results also indicate no significant differences in the choice of strategies between students with high versus low English proficiency levels. However, participants’ vocabulary size had only a weak positive correlation with their writing quality. The findings aim primarily to inform Writing courses in English Education majors in Indonesia, though they may also be useful for other English learning contexts.


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