scholarly journals The Indonesian Undergraduate Students’ Competence in Writing Introduction of Thesis Proposals: A Discourse Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Setyo Karjono

Writing thesis proposal requires several competences. At the sentence level, it includes the control of word choice or diction and syntactic form. Beyond the sentence, it deals with the organization of the ideas and information into cohesive and coherent paragraphs. In practice, many students encounter difficulties in writing proposals especially the introduction section. The focus of this study was in the discourse analysis type, concerning the thesis writing which covered the organization, the unity, and coherence of paragraphs, and the syntactic form. Subjects of this research were students of a private university in Yogyakarta, Indonesia who were writing their theses as their final project. All data sources were from the undergraduate students' initial thesis writings especially the Introduction section proposed by the students from the three fields of study: English Language Teaching, Linguistics, and Literature. Findings show that: (a) Mostly the students’ proposals addressed well organization though using somewhat developed explanations, exemplifications, or details; (b)  They also displayed unity and coherence, though the connection of ideas was occasionally obscured; (c) The student’ proposals also  demonstrated inconsistent competence in syntactic structure and word choice; (d) Mostly, the student’ proposals accomplished the score level 3 for their academic writings because they did not fully meet some points of academic writing criteria. Considering the organization, unity and coherence are the most appropriate variety for the undergraduate students’ writings, the study suggests that students should be exposed to a more standard guidance or rubric of thesis writing

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anis Firdatul Rochma ◽  
Sulis Triyono

<em>As an effort to give contribution to the existing knowledge, it is expected for the undergraduate students to compose an engaging research article in order to convince the readers about the importance of the research article. However, there is only a little attention given to the articles written by the undergraduate students although it is considered very critical to examine whether the exposure of English academic writing has significantly enhances the writing competence of the students. Furthermore, as it is also very crucial to build a meaningful semantic meaning among the sentences in order to disclose the worthiness of the research article, it is essential to analyze the cohesion of the research article written by the undergraduate students. Henceforth, the present research is projected to investigate the cohesion of the research articles written by the undergraduate students of English Language Teaching. As the introduction section of research article is likely to be an area to portray the logical explanation of the research, the present research solely focuses on examining the cohesion of the introduction section of research article. By adopting a qualitative design and involving several steps to analyze the introduction section, it is revealed that the grammatical cohesion is considered to be the most utilized type of cohesion in writing the introduction section. Still, the lexical cohesion is also necessary to build an eloquent semantic meaning about the topic as well the importance of the research article.</em>


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-314
Author(s):  
Anis Firdatul Rochma ◽  
Anita Triastuti ◽  
A. Ashadi

Research articles have been considered as the primary media of knowledge production. Nevertheless, for some undergraduate students, writing a research article can be a challenging task since they need to be aware of its rhetorical styles. Even though previous studies have been conducted to reveal the rhetorical styles of scientific papers, yet tend to focus more on research articles obtained from well-established journals. Hence, this study aims to reveal the rhetorical styles and draw the rhetoric pattern from the introduction section of 73 research articles written by the undergraduate students of English Language Education (ELE) at a state university in Yogyakarta. This is a qualitative investigation whose data were collected by random sampling technique and went through Safnil’s (2013) four analysis stages. As the primary framework for analysis, the modified CARS (Create a Research Space) model (Swales Feak, 2004) was adopted. The results show that Step 2: Making topic generalization in Move 1 and Step 1B: Indicating a gap in Move 2 are the obligatory steps in writing the introduction section. Nevertheless, the results reveal that mostly undergraduate research papers lack 1 step in Move 1, 2 steps in Move 2, and 3 steps in Move 3. The omission of steps in the CARS model by these student-authors seems to happen due to two major factors, namely the scarcity of control over the writing process and linguistic resources, hence suggesting pedagogical implications for academic writing courses.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Wirada Amnuai

Errors in writing are unavoidable while students are trying to develop their writing skills. There have been several studies on identifying writing problems or errors in students’ writing. It is believed that identifying students’ written tasks is an effective tool to explore the difficulties involved in learning language. This helps teachers’ awareness of the serious problems which occur in students’ writing and allows them to pay closer attention to their errors. The aim of the present research study is to pinpoint writing errors in English abstracts written by Thai undergraduate students. Forty abstracts of research projects were collected and analysed. The error analysis was conducted at the sentence level, word level, and mechanics aspect. The five most frequent error types ranking from the most frequent to least frequent were word choice, preposition, sentence construction, singular or plural forms and quotation marks. The findings of the present study have shed light on the students’ writing ability and give an insight into what the problems students face when writing their abstracts. Also, the errors found in the abstracts in the present study have pedagogical implications concerning English language learning, particularly with writing courses. The findings will be helpful for teachers to develop teaching materials to assist their students from committing errors when writing English abstracts and to improve academic writing skills.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Ilham Ilham ◽  
Bachrudin Musthafa ◽  
Fazri Nur Yusuf

The aim of this study is to explore the target needs (i.e. necessities, lacks and wants) of the students to inform academic writing courses materials. A case study design was employed as this design to provide in-depth data information. To collect the data, questionnaire and interviews were used. Twenty-three undergraduate students of English department at a private university in Mataram West Nusa Tenggara who take academic writing course in the 2019-2020 academic year participated in the study. The result of the study showed that the students need to learn the types of writing texts, vocabulary and construct sentences into paragraph, have good skills in writing different genres since they are lack of grammar knowledge and vocabularies, and improvement on the aspect of teaching writing. This finding may promise implications for updating the current curriculum and materials as practiced for tertiary level English department students in an attempt to keep up with the latest changes in the methodologies of English language teaching. This study recommends that lecturers and universities should conduct a need analysis regularly and updated the curriculum with such insightful needs.


Author(s):  
Adrian Ting

Many Hong Kong undergraduate students have trouble following lectures in English. Academic writing is generally perceived as most challenging due to its complex nature. Yet, owing to various reasons, students do not seem too motivated in making much effort to improve their academic writing skills. In class, students appear to be reluctant to give useful feedback to their peers. They prefer to praise each other on the positive aspects of their writing and avoid talking about the negatives. This chapter first reviews the literature on technology and blended learning in relation to English language teaching in the Hong Kong context. It then reports on the current study of using Google Docs for the peer evaluation process in a blended learning environment. The chapter concludes that based on student feedback, Google Docs is a useful tool in facilitating the delivery of academic English in university settings. The integration of Google Docs provides opportunities for innovative teaching within higher education.


2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-239
Author(s):  
Paula Tatianne Carréra Szundy

ABSTRACT This article draws on constructs of the discursive dialogic analysis designed by the Circle of Bakhtin, on the notion of language ideologies and on a transgressive view of Applied Linguistics to interpret how undergraduate students majoring in English and Portuguese from a public university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, position themselves in relation to English, English Language Teaching and literacies in written learning autobiographical narratives. The learning autobiographies were produced by students in the beginning of their college education as future English and Portuguese teachers in an academic writing course. Parting from the assumption that what we come to identify as our thoughts, beliefs and “truths” is constructed in the interpersonal level before becoming “ours” (Voloshinov 1929 [1986]) and aligning myself with an ideological view of literacies (Street 1984, 1995 [2014], 2009), I analyze the ideologies about languages and literacies taking into consideration both the micro-context in which the autobiographies were produced and the macro societal levels that influenced how the selves and the others are positioned in the narratives.


Author(s):  
Cicih Nuraeni

<p>The purpose of this study was to describe the use of Total Physical Response (TPR) method on young learners English Language Teaching (ELT) at Panti Asuhan Yauma. The method of the research is descriptive qualitative. In this research the researcher describes the activities carried out by teachers and students by using TPR method. The data resources are from teacher and students in Panti Asuhan Yauma Jakarta. The class consists of 30 students which their ages were around 5 to 11 years old. The data collected through observation in learning activities. The instruments were pre-test and post-test with 2 (two) criterion being assessed, namely vocabulary and comprehension. They were divided into 5 (five) elements such as accuracy of word, understanding each word, word choice, understanding the meaning, and speaking easily. The results showed that there was an improvement in vocabulary score about 27.40 and comprehension score about 28.77. The research finding first showed that when using the TPR method children enjoyed and were also very active in learning English. The researcher hopes that the study contributes to the activities of teaching and learning English, especially teaching English for young learners. It was proved by the score from pre-test and post-test.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-149
Author(s):  
G. Akhmetova ◽  
◽  
A. Bizhkenova ◽  

The present research paper discusses the issues of identifying common lexical and semantic mistakes in Kazakh pre-intermediate EFL learners studying in homogeneous groups at university. Words are viewed as powerful tools and when used correctly, words may evoke different feelings and emotions and cause various actions. It’s important to learn how to spot difficult words, correct them timely, and master lexical competence teaching to use the words correctly. The data of the study were collected by learner’s EFL teacher from their final essays. Thirty-one essays were used as the instrument of the study to obtain real language from the participants. The authors of the study hope that the results of the conducted research would contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of lexical and semantic errors in English language teaching which will help teachers to elaborate the differentiated tasks and ways of explaining new vocabulary preventing students’ misunderstanding. Furthermore, the results of the presented research can serve as guidance and be used in compiling EFL textbooks for Kazakhstani students. As a result, researchers managed to classify lexical and semantic errors in English language teaching, identified frequent errors, and described their causes. The findings of the research illustrate that the participants of the study make errors of word choice and incorrect collocations the most. Moreover, incorrect usage of the preposition and literal translation from L1 are included in the frequent mistakes


2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 506-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Gilmore

Discourse studies is a vast, multidisciplinary, and rapidly expanding area of research, embracing a range of approaches including discourse analysis, corpus analysis, conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, genre analysis and multimodal discourse analysis. Each approach offers its own unique perspective on discourse, focusing variably on text, context or a range of semiotic modes. Together, they provide foreign language teachers and material designers with new insights into language, and are beginning to have an observable impact on published English Language Teaching (ELT) materials. This paper examines the ways in which the four approaches with the strongest links to the ELT profession (corpus analysis, conversation analysis, discourse analysis and genre analysis) have found their way into language learning materials, and offers some suggestions on how discourse studies may influence ELT classrooms in the future.


Author(s):  
Didem Koban Koç

The present study investigated gender differences in the use of linguistic features as well as the social meanings attached to those differences. Academic essays, written by 44 (22 male, 22 female) first-year undergraduate students enrolled in the English Language Teaching program at a government university were analyzed with respect to the use of linguistic features (adjectives, empty adjectives, intensifiers, linking adverbials) as well as the number of words and sentences used by the students. The results showed that, in comparison to males, females used more adjectives, intensifiers, and words. Males, on the other hand, used more empty adjectives and linking adverbials than females. Based on the results, pedagogical implications are discussed, and recommendations are provided in order to increase teachers' awareness of gender differences and improve students' writing skills.


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