ERROR ANALYSIS OF CONJUNCTION IN EXPOSITORY ESSAY WRITING BY JORDANIAN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS STUDYING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (EFL)

Academic writing is used a lot in the academic field and general writing as a distinct genre discourse in the linguistic and socio-cultural fields. Good writers generally use well-formed sentences; they often establish connections between sentences. Writing an essay is still a critical problem for most EFL undergraduate students since they are still not able to establish connections between sentences. The purpose of this study is to investigate the usage of conjunctions as cohesive devices in expository essays produced by EFL fourth-year undergraduate students majoring in the English language at the Department of English language and literature, Hashemite University in Jordan. A corpus of 30 expository essays was collected by using a simple purposive sampling technique to answer the questions of the study based on the theory of cohesion analysis by refining the grammatical cohesive related aspect based on Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy of conjunction. The results of this study confirm earlier studies showing English learners as a foreign language are having difficulty in using conjunctions in their writing. This study contributes to the written discourse and pedagogy within the field of teaching English for academic writing. The study recommends that grammatical cohesive devices and their function should be explained to the students through explicit teaching, not as separated grammatical items but as discourse semantic resources of text creation.

THE ROLE OF GRAMMATICAL COHESION IN THE TEXT QUALITY AMONG JORDANIAN EFL STUDENTS IN EXPOSITORY ESSAYS

The present paper shares interest that many scholars and linguists have highlighted in investigating the relationship between writing quality and grammatical cohesion devices. The aim of this study is to find out the relationship between the use of grammatical cohesive devices on the overall quality of expository essays produced by EFL fourth-year undergraduate students majoring in the English language at the Department of English language and literature Hashemite University in Jordan. It seeks to determine the efficacy of academic writing by Jordanian EFL students. Thirty purposive samples of compositions were collected and analyzed by the researcher to measure the relationship between the score of the writing quality and the grammatical cohesion devices in students' writing based on (1) analytical scale Jacob et al., (1981), and (2) Halliday and Hasan (1976) taxonomy of grammatical cohesion. The results showed that grammatical cohesive devices did not constitute a statistically significant correlation with the score of writing quality. It also revealed that the EFL students' written compositions were not successful due to their incapability to utilize the different forms of grammatical cohesive devices and their lack of knowledge about effectively using these devices in their academic writing.

PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING: ITS EFFECTS ON STUDENTS’ ABILITY IN WRITING EXPOSITORY ESSAYS

Having the ability to think critically is prominent to aid students in dealing with academic life, filtering any information, and solving problems. This study investigates the effects of Problem-Based Learning on students’ ability in writing expository essays. It employed a quantitative approach with a quasi-experimental design by utilizing intact classes of advanced writing. The study utilized a writing test and a scoring rubric as the instruments to collect the data. The experimental group was taught by using PBL with group works whereas the control group was taught by using individual guided problem-solving. The findings on the t-test conveyed that the null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, there is a significant difference in the mean score of the students in the experimental group and those in the control group. Moreover, the analysis of each component of writing revealed that the implementation of PBL gives a significant effect on the components of content and organization. Hence, small group discussion for problem-solving tasks is recommended to develop students’ critical thinking skills, social skills, and writing skills particularly in writing expository essays of problem-solution.

University practitioners’ critical reflections from the collaboritive model

This investigation aimed to report University practitioners' critical reflections generated from Gosling's third POT model to raise awareness of institutional authorities and educationalists on the importance of consolidating POT programs on a regular basis. This qualitative case study was conducted with a sample of fourteen instructors currently working in a Public University situated in the Ecuadorian highlands. This group of academic practitioners was divided into pairs so that seven subgroups resulted from this division. Each subgroup worked firstly on the collaborative model process, which contemplated observation forms; then, they executed critical reflections; this data was gathered in collaborative expository essays and encapsulated in this manuscript. The obtained results disclose a high proclivity towards ongoing professional development, said differently; there is a considerable desire on the part of our participants to cultivate a teaching evaluation philosophy on a rolling basis. In general, this study had a positive repercussion on those involved due to its substantial interchangeable reflections.

Rhetoric Construction of Chinese Expository Essays: Implications for EFL Composition Instruction

Recent scholarship on Chinese students’ English expository essays tends to blur or mitigate the differences between English and Chinese writings. This alleged convergence of English and Chinese rhetorical norms gives rise to a view that rhetorical aspects in second language writing instruction and research in China should be de-emphasized. Drawing on data from full-score Chinese compositions of College Entrance Examination, this study examines how Chinese expository paragraphs are developed. Results show great disparities between English and Chinese expository writing at paragraph level such as non-English rhetorical mode, reliance on authorities, rhetorical paragraph, and figurative language in topic sentence. We argue that Chinese rhetorical strategies are likely to be transferred to English writing if English rhetoric is not taught and reinforced in college.

Indonesian university students’ self-regulated writing (SRW) strategies in writing expository essays

This research is carried out to investigate Indonesian EFL students’ use of self-regulated writing (SRW) strategies and to identify the SRW strategies applied, particularly by proficient students in writing. The research involved 45 students who have passed an essay writing course focusing on expository essays. Data on the students’ use of SRW strategies came from a Self-Regulated Learning Strategy Questionnaire (SRLSQ) adopted from Abadikhah et al. (2018). The students’ use of SRW strategies were categorized into six dimensions: motive, method, time, performance, physical environment, and social environment. Out of the total number of respondents, four proficient students were involved in a semi-structured interview. The interview was aimed at knowing the students’ use of SRW strategies in the planning, execution, and evaluation (PLEE) cyclical model of process writing. The result of the questionnaire data analysis showed that the students use all of the six dimensions of SRW strategies, with the highest mean for the social environment dimension and the lowest mean for the motive dimension. The result of the interview data analysis revealed that the proficient students also use the six dimensions of SRW strategies. Still, they dominantly apply the method, performance, and social environment dimensions of SRW strategies.