Using Environmental Issues for Essay Writing Class: The Students’ Views and Challenges

Abstract

Environmental degradation is real and presents threats to all living habitat on earth. Thus, the inclusion of environmental issues for a language class is close to a must. This paper is intended to describe 1) the students’ perspective on using environmental topics for essay writing class, and 2) their problems when writing essay. The study uses a case study design. There were 17 students participated in the research. The instruments were interview and chat documentations. The data were collected in June 2021. All data are in the form of words and sentences. The result shows that 1) most of the students said that the environmental issues are informative, important, useful, needed, effective, real, and educative. The use of environmental issues helps them to enhance their environmental awareness; 2) almost all students have psychological problems when writing an essay, such as anxiety, nervousness, the feeling of pressure in timed writing, self- demand of perfect work, and low self-confidence. Yet, the psychological problems might be triggered by the demand of more readings about environmental issues to make the essay convincing. The result implies that content-based material discussing environmental topic should be incorporated into EFL writing class.
 Keywords: environment, essay, issues, problems, views