Essay Writing Research Articles

The Use of Google Translate in EFL Essay Writing: Is It a Cheating?

During the process of writing an essay, many students are utilizing online translation tools like Google Translate due to the widespread availability of computing technology and the internet. Online translation programming is strong, yet it is inclined to over-exacting interpretation, and cannot represent the setting similar to a human interpreter. As a result, students are left to rely on a tool that promises to "do the hard work" for them by allowing them to only think and write in their native language. This study is aimed to determine the extent to which students at the University of Bengkulu, Indonesia, rely on technology in writing essays and whether they consider its use to be cheating or not. The data was obtained by conducting mixed-method research through survey with a closed-ended questionnaire and interview to the English Department students of Universitas Bengkulu who are currently taking a Critical Writing course. The results discovered that all of the participants have utilized GT as a translation tool for writing essays particularly to translate word from their first language into English. Moreover, they considered using GT for essay writing as cheating depending on how it is used; for graded assignments or writing test.

Open Response Essay Writing (Public Domain) Based on SPM Scoring Rubric among Non-Native Students in Negeri Sembilan

The highest level of language skill is essay writing, and to achieve it, a student must comprehend numerous language sub-skills in the first place. Writing skills represent a high value of marks in the secondary school Malay language subject, especially at the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination level. As a result, non-native speaker students always experience challenges since they are unable to acquire the aspects of Malay language essay writing effectively. Therefore, to analyse the relevance of the ideas raised by the students toward the title of open-response essay writing provided by the teacher, this qualitative research has been carried out by using the document analysis method. Besides, the researchers also aimed to analyse students' language difficulties when they presented ideas for essay titles based on the SPM scoring rubrics set by the Malaysia Examinations Council 2022. Purposive sampling was used to select 10 essay scripts among non-native speaker students that in a medium level of achievement in several secondary schools in Negeri Sembilan. The results found that most participants (80%) did not achieve an excellent level in terms of the relevance of ideas because they did not meet the task requirements (30%), had irrelevant and unclear descriptions, and did not match the title of the task (30%), non-grammatical sentences (80%), general, limited, and inaccurate vocabulary (80%), and uninteresting and ineffective essays (30%). The findings also indicate that the most noticeable and dominant language errors were incorrect use of terms and vocabulary (80%), followed by spelling errors (75%) and incorrect use of affixes (75%). Due to the poor performance of non-native speaker students in essay writing, the researchers suggested conducting a study on how to write essays in Malay language subjects by creating a step-by-step composing module that is simple but systematic, fun, informative, meaningful, and effective also the approach can ensure a long-lasting understanding for the students.

Strategies in Teaching Academic Essay Writing, Level of Effectiveness, and Instructional Barriers: The Case of Filipino Learners

This study about academic essay writing strategies was conducted in order to propose teachers' lesson guide based on the effective strategies that were ascertained after the investigation. The study used the descriptive-quantitative method of research. The University-approved questionnaire was used to identify the frequency of use of the strategies utilized in students' essay writing activities. There were 126 students and 20 English teachers in Cebu City, Philippines, used as the respondents of the study. It was discovered that the three academic essay writing strategies investigated in the study were always used in both argumentative and informative essay writing, as perceived by the respondents. The first two strategies, traffic light color coding, and planning using informal outline, were found to be very effective in both writing the argumentative and informative essays, while the third strategy, framed paragraph, was also effective to use in both writing the two types of essays. The strategies used, and the students' performance showed a significant relationship. The top barriers in teaching academic essay writing were as follows: teaching essay writing to second language learners, lack of time for explicit instruction, no strategies in place for the part of the students, lack of parental support, and lack of essay structures on the part of the teachers. It was concluded that there were various effective pedagogical strategies that teachers could utilize in teaching academic essay writing. Based on the findings, this study further presents its recommendations.

Designing The English Argumentative Essay Writing Test Based on Critical Thinking Skills

Designing the argumentative essay test instrument based on critical thinking skills is the step to produce the writing test instrument used for measuring the students’ performance in writing the argumentative essay with critical thinking skills. This study aimed at measuring the validity and reliability of the argumentative essay writing instrument test with critical thinking skills. The procedure to create the writing test instrument credible was conducted by testing the instrument valid and reliable. The process of validating is through content validity and expert validation. The process of making the instrument reliable was done by checking the score of the students tested in trying out. The result of validating and making the instrument reliable was stated effective for use to get the data collection. Either pretest or posttest of the instrument in each component is stated reliable and it affirms the reliability of the instrument. The notes from the validator of the instrument are in line with the statistics stating that the instrument can be used for collecting the data. As a result, the writing test instrument was ready to use for the research. It is suggested that this instrument can be used for other relevant issues and studied more deeply for the next relevant studies.

ANALISIS KATA SENDI NAMA “DI” DAN “DALAM” DALAM PENULISAN KARANGAN PELAJAR TINGKATAN 4

Good command of grammar skills can help students produce quality, critical and creative writing. The teaching of Malay grammar should follow the correct principles to avoid confusion in the use of prepositions. Most students are not proficient and lack knowledge in using prepositions correctly. This study focuses on the prepositions “di” and “dalam” in the essay writings of form 4 students. The current study applies a qualitative research method conducted on 30 essays written by form 4 students. The objective of this research is to identify, describe and analyse the forms of prepositions used in the production of form 4 students' essays. The researcher uses the Transformative Generative Theory introduced by Noam Chomsky in 1957 to explain the research objectives. The correct use of prepositions in essays is analysed using percentages. The result of the investigation shows that the percentage of correct use of the preposition “di” is 83% and the incorrect use is 17%. For the use of the preposition “dalam”, the percentage of correct answers is 65% and the incorrect answers is 35%. Conclusively, there are students who are still confused on the accurate use of prepositions according to the correct preposition formula. This situation can be seen through the dominant errors in the use of the preposition “dalam” in comparison with the preposition “di”. This investigation can further enhance the correct use of prepositions in students' essay writing and Malay language teachers need to take proactive measures to address this problem. Some of the suggestions for further studies that can be done by the researchers is to investigate grammatical mistakes using different corpora such as newspapers, magazines, speech texts, short stories, and others.

Use of Discourse Markers in ESL Undergraduates’ Expository Essay Writing among Undergraduates in a Nigerian University

Discourse markers (DMs) enhance unhindered flow of ideas and their relatedness in sentences and paragraphs. However, lack or misuse of DMs could lead to misinterpretation of ideas and information. This study therefore assessed the use of discourse makers as used in expository essay among undergraduates in a Nigerian university. The study employed survey research design using quantitative method. The paper examined i) the DMs used in expository essay by the participants ii) the variants of DMs frequently used in expository essay among the participants and iii) the constraints to students’ use of DMs in expository essay. The sample of the study consisted of 182 undergraduates selected through purposive sampling technique. Two instruments were used for the study: a close-ended questionnaire and an expository essay test were used in gathering data. The data were analysed quantitatively using frequency of occurrence of DMs and percentages. Findings revealed that in total, 41 DMs were used. Elaborative Markers (“and” and “also”) followed by Temporal Markers (“firstly”, “secondly” and “thirdly”) are the most frequently used DMs. Among other constraints to the use of DMs in expository essay were lack of knowledge of broad pool of the varieties of DMs/inadequate linguistic repertoire of DMs; confusion about the appropriate DMs to convey idea; and lack of knowledge on the importance of DMs in essays. The study concludes that students experienced certain constraints in the use of DMs that placed limitations on their use of DMs. This study recommended that the problems could be tackled by creating awareness among the students on the contents and application of DMs and that various texts and contexts where linguistic items like DMs are used should be discussed in the classroom to see how they are used.

Experiences of enlightenment. On Anna Markina’s Lightening Up [Osvetlenie

The review by the literary critic S. Batalov concerns the poet and essay writer Anna Markina’s new book of poetry. The collection, entitled Lightening Up [Osvetlenie] (2021), consists of five chapters — according to the blurb, each corresponds to one of the book’s central themes: ‘Cracks’ [‘Treshchiny’] is about loneliness; ‘In place of the sun’ [‘Vmesto solntsa’] — about love; ‘Along the perch’ [‘Po zherdochke’] — about the native country; and ‘Music’ [‘Muzyka’] — about creative work. The theme of loneliness constitutes the book’s leitmotif. However, Batalov points out that, by the end of the book, it is nearly overcome, or at least ‘lightened up’ by the peaceful tone of the lyrical heroine. Like the collection itself, each of the chapters has its inner dramatics: the first poem will be partially developed and partially disproved by the last one, meaning that, together with the poet, we are progressing from darkness to light. The critic not only analyses the book’s plot and motifs but also cites other critical responses to Markina’s oeuvre and considers the key elements of her poetic world, such as childhood, home, and music, among others.

Students’ essay writing anxiety: A narrative study of Indonesian tertiary EFL learners

Recent years, numerous studies across the world have examined EFL learners’ writing anxiety through their writing test. Yet, there is limited study on investigating learners’ anxiety in essay writing, particularly contextualized in Indonesia. Viewed from the lens of narrative study, this article explores the lived-experience of the university students’ essay writing anxiety situated in a private university in the eastern Java, Indonesia. Two students enrolled in “Critical Essay Writing” Course (KBI112) volunteered to be involved in the study. Grounded in the thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) as an analytic lens, findings indicate that the major factors significantly contribute to learners’ essay writing anxiety include: low level writing skill and confidence; learners’ self-efficacy; self-esteem; lack of grammatical knowledge; gender; instructor’s negative feedback; and writing motivation level. Empirical data also reveals that the students with higher writing anxiety level tend to produce low quality writing products and vice versa. This empirical evidence suggests that both teachers and students are highly required to intensify their efforts to create positive learning environment that can make the students to manage their feelings so that they can produce the better quality of essay writing products. This article also discusses pedagogical implications for classrooms and further research, limitations and recommendations.

Students' Grammatical Cohesion in Essay Writing

Students' Grammatical Cohesion in Essay Writing

Saudi EFL University Learners’ Perspectives on Using Task-Based Language Teaching in Promoting Opinion Essay Writing

The fundamental aim of this study is to investigate Saudi EFL university learners’ perspectives on using the task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach to improve opinion essay writing in the College of Science and Arts in Tanumah, King Khalid University. The study was conducted during the second semester of the academic year 2021-2022. To collect data, the study uses a questionnaire and tests as primary tools. The population of the study covers all third-level EFL university students in the aforementioned college. Thirty students are randomly chosen and then they are divided into the control group (CG) and the experimental group (EG), each of which consists of 15 students. The participants in the CG learned how to write an opinion essay by employing traditional teaching methods based on the structure of the textbook. In contrast, the participants in the EG learned how to write an opinion essay by implementing the task-based language teaching approach, which is based on the TBLT framed by Wills (1996). The post-test analysis reveals that the implementation of TBLT has significantly improved the opinion essay writing of Saudi EFL university learners. In addition, the analysis of questionnaires of the experimental group shows that most Saudi EFL university learners hold positive perspectives towards implementing TBLT to improve their opinion essay writing.

Reflecting on love and sexual discourses and becoming knowledge contributors: Chinese women’s critical reading on The Ladies’ Journal

ABSTRACT With the growth of women’s periodicals in China during the early twentieth century, women started to assume an unprecedentedly conspicuous role in print culture as both readers and essay writers. Targeting well-educated young women of the new era, the leading women’s periodical, The Ladies’ Journal (Funü zazhi 婦女雜誌), can function as the precious prism to examine the critical reading practice of young urban women of the time. This paper investigates how women’s critical reading reflections on heterosexual love and gender relations that were manifested in the journal facilitated the formation of female subjectivity through women readers’ engagement with new gender norms and knowledge. It argues that the introduction and promulgation of literary works and feminist ideologies concerning women’s individuality embodied male editors’ concern on women’s empowerment, while also serving as their normative configurations of new knowledge surrounding womanhood and social progress. But women were not deprived of subjectivity when encountering these prescriptive knowledge. The public reading of texts that inspired young educated women to reflect on love and marriage displayed female readers’ feminist consciousness, conceptualizing women’s agency in providing alternatives for male intellectuals’ vision and contributing to the construction of public knowledge through their own discursive efforts.

Depth-Perception-Based Representation in Holistic Rating on ESL Essay Writing

This paper proposes to use depth perception to represent raters’ decision in holistic evaluation of ESL essays, as an alternative medium to conventional form of numerical scores. The researchers verified the new method’s accuracy and inter/intra-rater reliability by inviting 24 ESL teachers to perform different representations when rating 60 essays written by Chinese ESL learners. During numerical representation, the raters expressed their evaluation in the form of numbers, while with the DP-based method, the raters expressed their evaluation by marking distances with nail tags on a wood ruler with hidden scale marks. Then the researchers translated the distance results into numbers and compared the accuracy and inter/intra-rater consistency of the two approaches by referring to these essays’ criteria scores from eight expert raters. The results showed that DP-based method could improve raters’ performance, producing more similar results to experts’ scores, with higher consistency both among different raters and within the same individual rater.

The Impact of Proposed Online Problem-Based Learning Activities on Developing University EFL Students’ Expository Essay Writing

The current study aimed at investigating the impact of using proposed online problem-based learning activities on developing university EFL students’ expository essay writing skills. The sample of the study comprised 74 English majors from the World Islamic Sciences and Education University in Amman. The students were randomly assigned into two groups, experimental and control. To achieve the purpose of the study, the researcher designed a checklist to identify the expository essay writing skills that university EFL students need and a pre/post expository essay writing test. The validity and reliability of the instruments were guaranteed through implementing scientific approaches. The results of the study showed a significant statistical difference at (α=0.05) between the two groups in the post expository essay writing test in favor of the experimental group that was taught by using the online problem-based learning activities. The experimental group outperformed the control group in different essay writing areas including content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and conventions. Keywords: EFL, Expository Essay, Problem-Based Activities.

Final Results of IEEJ Essay Writing Contest for High School Students, 2022

Final Results of IEEJ Essay Writing Contest for High School Students, 2022

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTRODUCTION TO ESSAY WRITING COURSE’S TEXTBOOK BASED ON HOTS-TECH INTEGRATED WITH CM-PBL (CASE METHOD-PROJECT BASED LEARNING)

Despite many studies focusing on writing materials, few developed e-book writing materials for university students. This study aims to 1) analyze the students' and lecturers' needs related to the development of the Introduction to Essay Writing Course's textbook based on HOTS-Tech (Higher Order Thinking Skill-Technology) integrated with CM-PBL (Case Method-Project Based Learning) and 2) to develop an Introduction to Essay Writing Course's textbook based on HOTS-Tech integrated with CM-PBL. This study employs R &D with the ADDIE model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate). Participants in the current study are 35 university students and four lecturers. We employed instruments such as questionnaires, interviews, and observations. Data collection traces the ADDIE model, while the data analysis employs non-parametric statistics with a descriptive quantitative model. The result shows that the book adheres contents of the book, material presentation, presentation order, the balance of the chapter, language use, and layout. The activities should cover higher-order thinking skills (HOTs) under main categories; analyzing, evaluating, and creating. The current study implies that EFL university teachers embed technology and HOTs in the Essay Writing e-book to promote the techno-skill of the current generation.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF LEARNING COMMUNITY TECHNIQUE ON ENGLISH ESSAY WRITING SKILLS

This research is designed to measure the effectiveness of learning community technique on English Essay Writing skills, based on the result of preliminary observation which showed that students had some problems that related to the result of their writing skill which still have not achieved the expected aims. This research used classroom action research method involving 30 students as sample of the research. For the data collecting technique, this research used quantitative data and qualitative data. Quantitative data was taken from the results of the pre-test and post-test, while qualitative data was taken during the process of observation and action. Then the results of the research showed that the percentage value of student activity in attending lectures had increased, the result of the percentage increase in student activity seen from the percentage of students who were very active and active in cycle 1 was only 36.7%, then increased in cycle 2 to 63.3%. Then the results of learning to write English essays for students also increased, with an average score in cycle 1 of 60.17 and cycle 2 there was an increase in the average score of 9.96 to 70.13. The use of the learning community technique to improve students' English abilities has a favourable effect, particularly on the growth of students' ability to write English essays.

The Effectiveness of Communicative Language Teaching towards Students’ Ability in Essay Writing

This study discusses the effectiveness of using Communicative Language Teaching in essay writing. The research method used experimental quantitative method. The design of research was a quasi-experimental research using a one group pretest-posttest model. Written test was an instrument that was applied in research to obtain research data. In analyzing the data, the steps taken consisted of 1) counting mean of pretest and posttest, 2) counting standard deviation of the pretest and posttest, 3) counting normality of the pretest and posttest, 4) counting the homogeneity of the pretest and posttest, and 5) testing the hypothesis. The result of the study shown that the using of Communicative Language Teaching was effective to be implemented in essay writing. This is proved by the value of tcount > ttable = 4.30> 1.70329. That means Ha is accepted and Ho is rejected. In this case, all students are more enjoyable in learning essay writing in class and they are motivated to improve their skill especially in writing essay

An Error Analysis of Coordinating Conjunction Misuse in Chinese ESL Learners’ Writings: A Corpus-based Approach

Coordinating conjunctions, which are more recurrently used words than the other words in English, are not as easily well-acquired by Chinese students as they are intuitively used by native speakers. Yet, insufficient attention has been drawn to the study of coordinating conjunctions, which often leads to great difficulties in the acquisition of coordinating conjunctions for Chinese English as a second language learners. The present thesis has selected the three coordinating conjunctions of higher frequency, and, but and or as the target words in the research to analyze the misuse of these words in Chinese ESL learners’ writings of English under the theory of Error Analysis.The thesis established two corpora: Learner Corpus with 21 theses of Chinese graduate students of English major, downloaded from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI); Control Corpus with 22 theses from Proquest-PQDT. All the dissertations were essay writings about linguistics and were randomly selected. It was shown that there existed a minor gap in the frequency usage of coordinating conjunctions and, but and or between Chinese students of English major and native English speakers. However, the usages of SIA (Sentence-initial And) and SIB (Sentence-initial But) were strongly different between Chinese ESL learners and native English speakers. The conclusions above could serve as pedagogical references for English teachers in China so that Chinese ESL learners could come close to native speakers in terms of the usages of the three coordinating conjunctions and, but and or.

The Effect of Using Concept Mapping as a Pre-Writing Stage Strategy on Iraqi EFL College Students’ Achievement in Essay Writing

This study is an attempt to investigate the effect of using concept mapping as a prewriting strategy on Iraqi EFL college students’ achievement in essay writing. To fulfill the aims of the study, the researcher has adopted two null hypotheses. The first states that there is no statistically significant difference between the achievement mean scores of the students who are taught essay writing through concept mapping as a pre-writing strategy and those who are taught essay writing through the conventional way. The second hypothesis states that there is no statistically significant difference between the experimental group students’ achievement mean scores in the organization, content and quality of expressions in the pre and posttests. To achieve the aim of the study, a ten-week experiment was conducted using the pretest-posttest non-equivalent groups design. Two groups of 105 students were selected from the population of third year students/College of Education for Women-Department of English during the academic year (2013-2014). One group was selected as the experimental group (namely section B) and another group was selected as the control group (namely section C). Both students of the experimental and control groups were exposed to pre and posttests. Using the t-test for two independent samples, it is found that there is a statistically significant difference in favour of the experimental group; whereas, by using t-test for two dependent samples, it is found out that there is a significant development in the experimental group students’ achievement in organization, content and style and quality of expression. This indicates that using concept mapping as a prewriting strategy is more effective than the presentation- practice- production teaching or the Lecture Method teaching. Conclusions, recommendations and suggestions for further studies are put forward.

A Contract Learning-Based Strategy for Developing Essay Writing and Attitudes towards English Language Writing among Pre-Master Degree in Education Students

A Contract Learning-Based Strategy for Developing Essay Writing and Attitudes towards English Language Writing among Pre-Master Degree in Education Students