Essay Writing Research Articles

EFL Students’ Use of Transition Signals in Essay Writing

This study is aimed to explore the use transition signals used by EFL students in essay writing in higher education level. Particularly, this essay will be conducted to English Language Education Study Program students at University of Widya Gama Mahakam Samarinda. This research is a qualitative study with content analysis research design where twenty-six comparison and contrast essays of the third semester students were analyzed by using coding which indicates transition signals used by students. Additionally, in-depth interview also applied to the students who are considered as less active users of transition signals in their writing in order to figure out deeper on what difficulties they found during writing the essay. The findings of this research reveal three major result i.e. most of students are succeed to use compare and contrast type of transition signals to compose their comparison and contrast essay, the students mostly use time order transition signals to make their essay coherent, and two out of twenty-six students have no transition signals to be used on their essays. Result from interview shows that the students still lack of understanding toward when, where, and what type of transition signals can be used for certain context. Pedagogical implication is discussed further in this research.

Academic Literacy: The Analysis Of First-Year Ukrainian University Students’ Errors In Essay Writing

Ukrainian undergraduate students face challenges in demonstrating high-level proficiency in most of their academic writing. As an integral part of academic achievement, writing skills are essential for success at the various levels of students’ future career paths. Thus, academic literacy has raised considerable attention to teaching English as a second language. This study explores the writing competence level of 90 first-year students of Computer Science and Cybernetics Faculty at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and analyzes essay errors that are identified, classified and explained. The study describes the main categories of errors and reveals the causes of their production. It is evaluated that the major types of errors committed in students’ writing are: word choice, word spelling, verb tense, articles, and prepositions. We consider that the main reasons for errors are the native language interference, the lack of English academic writing knowledge and insufficient English grammar and functional use practice. Focusing on the importance of encouraging students to develop their academic literacy, we defined the approaches and strategies that can help teachers and language learners to overcome difficulties in writing. After defining the essay errors, the students were given a set of tips on academic writing proficiency and presented with contrastive L1-L2 comparisons, which resulted in significant improvement of the required academic writing skills. Finally, we measured the impact value of error difference aimed at describing the relationships between pre-analysis and post-analysis writing. Learning academic writing literacy may be an appropriate way to arise overall disciplinary literacy with the students.

Using Mind Mapping Learning Methods for Children’s Language Skills

Language skills are significant predictors of early academic and social-emotional outcomes of children and are important predictors of school readiness. This study aims to improve children's language skills through the application of mind mapping learning methods. This classroom action research used Kemmis and Taggart's cycle model. The research subjects were 12 children in group B consisting of eight boys and four girls. The data was collected through observation, interviews, and documentation with the validity of the data using source triangulation and method triangulation. This research uses data analysis techniques in the form of data condensation, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results showed that the children's language skills through the application of the mind mapping method in the first cycle were 75%, and in the second cycle had increased to 92%. Based on the results of teacher observations in the implementation of cycle I, the children's language skills obtained a percentage value of 61.5%, and in cycle II increased to 92.3%. While the results of observations of children's activities in the implementation of the first cycle obtained a percentage of 54%, and in the second cycle, it increased to 85%. This study found that the teacher's assessment of this mind mapping method was an easy method to understand so that it was easy to apply in classroom learning. The implication of this research is that it is necessary to carry out further research on the application of the mind mapping method for other aspects of development.
 Keywords: Early Childhood, language Skills, Mind Mapping Learning Methods

The Syntactic Errors on Verbs Usage in Essay Writing by Students of Mahasaraswati Denpasar

This study aims to find out the types of errors and to analyze the syntactic errors committed by third-semester students of the English Education Study Program at Mahasaraswati University Denpasar. This study is classified into a qualitative research design. To analyze the data, theory types of errors proposed by Dulay et al. (1982) and sources of error from Richards (1974) were applied. The data were sentences on argumentative essay writing containing errors taken from final assignments of the third-semester students of the English Education Study Program at Mahasaraswati Denpasar University. There are 25 data containing omission, 5 data containing addition, 35 data containing misformation, and 1 data containing misordering. Meanwhile, the sources of syntactic error that the researchers found are 12 errors caused by interlingual transfer and 33 caused by the intralingual transfer.

A Review on Primary School Students’ Narrative Essay Writing Skills: A Focus on an Intervention Based on Thinking Maps

In this study, the researchers reviewed the current literature of Malay essay writing that highlighted most students were lacking the essential skills to write good narrative essays, with most of their works lacking depth, elaborations, strong contents, coherence, and grammatical integrity. Against this backdrop, the researchers proposed a teaching and learning intervention with the use of thinking maps as a learning tool for the teaching and learning process of Malay narrative essay writing based on the year-five Malay Language curriculum by focusing on three principles of the writing of children’s stories, namely curiosity, challenge, and suspense. With such a thinking tool, teachers can help their students to search for and organize ideas for their essays in a structured, systematic fashion, the infusion of which can help them create interesting, moving stories. From a grammatical standpoint, students’ essays will consist of cohesive sentences and coherent paragraphs, which makes reading a smooth, enjoyable experience to the reader.

EFL College Students’ Skill in Using Collocations in Writing Essays

Collocation is a natural order of words in which one word should be attached to another in a particular context. For students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL students), using collocations has been recognized to become a problem. This article is going to describe EFL college students’ skill in using collocations in writing essays. 42 students from the same class were selected. They were the 4th semester students of English Education Study Program at Teacher Training and Education Faculty of UMRAH who took Essay Writing course in the academic year 2019/ 2020. The students were given a take-home assignment to write essays. Then, the essays were analyzed to find out the students’ skill in using collocations. It was found that in using collocation in writing essays, 5 students had excellent skill, 14 students had good skill, and 23 students had low skill. The incorrect use of collocations consisted of lexical and grammatical collocations. Finally, it is hoped that these findings could be a useful input for future Essay Writing course.

The Effect of Using Flipped Classroom on Developing Essay Writing Skills and Attitude towards Writing in English for University Students

This research aimed at investigating the effect of using flipped classroom on developing most necessary essay writing skills and attitude towards writing in English for 1st year Cairo Higher Institute for Languages and Interpretation students. Participants of the research were randomly selected and divided into two groups (40) for the experimental group and (40) for the control group. The research prepared and employed an essay writing skills’ test and a writing attitude scale. The necessary essay writing skills for 1st year Cairo Higher Institute for Languages and Interpretation students were determined through the use of a checklist approved by a jury of specialists in teaching EFL. During the experiment, the experimental group received instruction through using flipped classroom, while the control group received regular instruction. The experiment lasted for two months. The quasi experimental design was followed. The statistical analysis of the obtained data from the administrations of the test confirmed the effect of flipped classroom on developing essay writing skills and attitude towards writing in English for 1st year Cairo Higher Institute for Languages and Interpretation students. Thus, the aim of the research was achieved as using flipped classroom showed a large effect size on developing the essay writing skills and attitude towards writing in English for the participants of the experimental group. Based on the results, it was recommended that instructors should give due attention to the development of essay writing skills and attitude towards writing in English for university students through flipped classroom. In addition, using flipped classroom in developing other language skills was suggested.

Perceived Effects of Computer-Based Examination (CBE) on Essay Writing Skills of Undergraduates in Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State

The study examined the perceived effects of Computer-Based Examination (CBE) on essay writing skills of undergraduates in Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State. One research question was raised and answered while the three hypotheses were formulated and tested in the study. The descriptive research design was adopted for the study. The population of this covered all the 27,388 regular undergraduate students in Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma. A sample size of 546 students were selected for the study. The proportional random sampling technique was used to select 2% of the total number of students across each of the faculties in the institution. The instrument used for the collection of data was developed by the researcher and titled: “Computer Based Examination Perception Questionnaire (CBEPQ)”. The instrument has a reliability alpha (α) of 0.78. The research question was analysed using the mean ( ) and standard deviation (S.D) while the t-test statistics for two independent samples was used to test hypothesis 1, 2 and 3 at 0.05 level of significance. Based on findings, it can be concluded that computer-based examination (CBE) has effect on their essay writing skills as undergraduates in Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State. Hence, it is concluded that undergraduate students of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma perceived that computer-based examination (CBE) has effect on their essay writing skills. Female undergraduates of Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State had higher perception on the effect of CBE on essay writing but their perception of CBE on essay writing did not differ by age and level of study.

Peer Instruction in a Flipped Learning Environment: Investigating ESL Students’ Critical Thinking Performance in Argumentative Essay Writing

Research shows that peer instruction and flipped learning help ESL/EFL students compensate for their shortcomings in their language, support the language learning process, and facilitate social interactions and collaboration between teachers and students in the class. Despite this, there has been little research into whether upper-intermediate ESL students can benefit from the use of peer instruction in a flipped learning environment in enhancing critical thinking performance in argumentative essay writing. This current study tests this hypothesis. A total of 120 English Proficiency 4 (EP4) students from a teacher education university in Malaysia were equally divided into two experimental groups (pair work and group work) and a control group (conventional teaching method). The experimental groups’ activities included a focus on different modes of peer instruction (pair work/group work) and flipped learning, while the control group’s did not. Two research instruments were employed in this study: pre- and post-tests and a holistic scoring rubric. The critical thinking aspect was adapted from Stapleton and Wu (2015) and Toulmin’s model of argumentation (2003). Descriptive and inferential statistics, namely, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was computed using IBM SPSS Statistics 26. Overall, compared to the control group, both experimental groups (pair work and group work) performed better in mean scores for critical thinking in the posttest. The result of the study suggests that the use of peer instruction in a flipped learning environment can be an alternative teaching method to enhance the students’ critical thinking in argumentative essay writing and offer implications for ESL students, language instructors, and researchers.

Humour Anarchie. Henri Roorda (1870-1925)

Ecrivain précoce et contrarié, pédagogue enthousiaste et enseignant désabusé, essayiste, dramaturge et humoriste sous le pseudonyme de Balthasar, Henri Roorda, qui est né en 1870, se définit tel qu’il a vécu : sur le fil précaire d’un « pessimisme joyeux », où l’écriture demeure la seule planche de salut.… Quand en mai 1926 paraît son ultime opus : Mon Suicide, il y a six mois que Roorda a mis fin à ses jours.Entre temps, d’articles en chroniques, Roorda a fait oeuvre. Depuis l’espace commun au professeur et à l’anarchiste : la marge. C’est un portrait de cet écrivain méconnu : ses années d’apprentissage, la découverte de l’anarchie, l’enseignement, l’écriture… que propose cet article.

Steps for Success: Making Instructional Decisions for Students’ Essay Writing

The process of analyzing student data to determine an appropriate instructional decision is crucial for student academic growth. This article details how teachers can make data-driven decisions to carefully design writing instruction. Steps are presented for teachers to follow throughout the data driven decision-making process in order to meet students’ specific needs when they are writing an essay. A case study is provided throughout the article to illustrate how students and teachers may navigate through this process while using a technology-based graphic organizer.

Ermolin, E. (2019). Resetting the obvious to zero. A crisis of reliable truths in 20th-c. lite¬rature and journalism: A monograph. Yaroslavl: Fakel. (In Russ.)

Evgeny Ermolin, a renowned critic, essay writer, cultural historian and blogger, sets out to retrace his verbal footprint in this world. In his book, he follows the changes in literary and literary-journalistic spaces over time. The main bulk of the material comes from articles printed in the journals Druzhba Narodov, Znamya, Kontinent, Neva, Noviy Mir, and Oktyabr, as well as hitherto unpublished pieces. Selecting his earlier written works for the book, Ermolin brings them up to date in order to create a panoramic overview from today's perspective. The book describes literary and journalistic transformations and paradoxes: the author would defend the living word as a means to record the truth, first against ideological exploitation, and then relativism. He notes the change in the word's status: a shift from signifying and expressing a revealed truth to a search tool and a means of its situational recording, often in an interaction.

Influence of Blog Media on Improving the Essay Writing Skills of S-1 Pharmacy Study Program Students of STIKES Borneo Lestari

Digital education forms a fundamental part of the industrial revolution 4.0 that integrates digital technology into education. This research can be an alternative, new breakthrough or innovation to improve students’ essay writing skills as an educational adaptation in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Blogs are a digital learning medium used for online writing that can help students in improving their essay writing skill. The current study is a quantitative research with a pseudo-experimental design. First, two classes were randomly selected to act as the experiment and control groups. Second, both groups were asked to take a preliminary test to find out their initial ability of mastering concepts and essay writing skills on topics with pharmaceutical materials nature and health theme. Third, both groups were given a learning model with different treatments: blog media was used to measure the essay writing skill in the experiment group, while in the control group, natural/conventional treatments were used. The results of this study showed significant differences at the beginning of learning (before the treatment) with the students’ understanding of essay writing between the experiment and control groups. The results of the final writing ability (after the treatment) were measured using a post-test understanding of essay writing. The result was a significant difference, in that, the ability to write essays in the experiment group was higher and many of them achieved the targeted competence. Therefore, we conclude that there was an influence of blog media use on the understanding ability of essay writing on the students of the Pharmacy Program of STIKES Borneo Lestari Banjarbaru.
 Keywords: blog, learning media, essay writing

Final Results of IEEJ Essay Writing Contest for High School Students, 2020

Final Results of IEEJ Essay Writing Contest for High School Students, 2020

Teaching material development of essay writing subject

This research belongs to research and development (R&D) type. The aim is to develop an essay writing teaching material for the third-semester students of the English Education Department. Essay writing is one of the compulsory subjects for the third-semester students of STKIP Muhammadiyah Kotabumi. Through an essay, students can express their ideas and thoughts. Meanwhile, good writing skills can help them to provide information more clearly to the readers. The method used in the research consists of ten steps, but the researcher limited it to seven. Those are preliminary study, data collecting, teaching material design, teaching material validation, teaching material revision, teaching material testing, and revising the teaching material product. The compiled teaching material consists of seven units. The materials refer to the course outline for the third semester of the English Education Department. The teaching material has been validated by two experts, as well as one expert for the design and one for the media. Three experts stated that the materials are in the very good category. From the trial conducted through an essay-writing test and questionnaire, it can be concluded that the teaching materials are effective to be used as the material for the subject Essay Writing. It is evident in the mean score of the 3A group, which is 74.4. Meanwhile, the questionnaire results show that three aspects of the teaching materials are in the very good category.

Exploring General Versus Academic English Proficiency as Predictors of Adolescent EFL Essay Writing

Language learning is context-dependent and requires learners to employ different sets of language skills to fulfill various tasks. Yet standardized English as a foreign language assessments tend to conceptualize English proficiency as a unidimensional construct. In order to distinguish English proficiency as separate context-driven constructs, I adopted a register-based approach to investigate academic English proficiency (i.e., specific set of language skills that support academic literacy) and general English proficiency (i.e., wide range of language skills undifferentiated by context that are measured by traditional assessments) as separate predictors of overall essay quality. In the study, students completed a general English proficiency assessment and an academic language proficiency assessment, and essays were coded for academic writing features at the lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels. Beyond the contribution of academic writing features and general English proficiency, academic English proficiency emerged as a significant contributor to essay quality. Findings suggest that academic English proficiency scores more precisely identified a subset of academic language skills that is relevant to essay writing. The article concludes by discussing implications for strategic writing instruction that articulates the key expectations of academic writing used in and beyond school contexts.

Designing an instructional unit on “argumentative essay” for prep year students: An action research in a state university in Turkey

Writing is one of the productive skills for language learners. This study was conducted to design a unit for language students who were enrolled in the School of Foreign Languages in one of the most prestigious Turkish state universities located in Istanbul. These learners had been taught different academic essay types in this educational institution for which the researcher designed an instructional unit on “Argumentative Essay Writing”, which was highly needed for the learners taking English-medium-instruction to pursue their academic studies. For the purpose of this study, one prep class was chosen to implement the designed unit so that the efficiency could be evaluated in the end. As for the data collection tools, interviews were arranged with three students in the class where the design was implemented. Three junior students in different departments who had previously had a prep school experience before they took their departmental courses in their faculties were also interviewed as well as the instructors who gave the “academic writing” course by teaching the essay types for several years in this research context. Additionally, the writing tasks given to the students of the class where the research was conducted as well as their mid-term papers were also included in the data. All through these stages, observation protocols were also used by the “on-site” researcher. Results showed that an efficient and applicable unit for an “Argumentative Essay” is possible considering the students’ needs, entry characteristics, goals and objectives, instructional strategy, assessment, implementation and evaluation of the whole process.

ANALISIS WACANA KRITIS PADA KUMPULAN ESAI MUSLIM TANPA MASJID KARYA KUNTOWIJOYO

This study aims to determine the use of socio-cultural texts and practices in the text of the essay collection of Muslim Tanpa Masjid. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method, which is presenting data and not numbers. The data in this study were taken from the essay collection book entitled Muslim Tanpa Masjid the inform of essay text. The data is the text and socio-cultural practices in the essay text of theessay collection Muslim Tanpa Masjid. Sources of data in this study were 17 essay titles consisting of 6 religious essays, 5 cultural essays, and 6 political essays fromcollection of essays on Muslim Tanpa Masjid Kuntowijoyo's 2001. Based on the results of the study, it is known that in the representation in the sentence there are 18 forms of process consisting of 5 forms of events, 8 forms of action, 2 forms of process, and 3 forms of circumstances, and found 18 forms of participants consisting of 11 actors described as perpetrators and 7 described as victims. In addition, 20 explicit meanings and 16 implicit meanings were also found in the text of the collection of essays on Muslim Tanpa Masjid as well as socio-cultural practices which can be identified by connecting the text to the situation. With the results of the research, further researchers can use the book collection of essays on Muslim Tanpa Masjid as an object of study using hegemony studies because there are many essays that show the power of power. In addition, essay writers must be good at relating the text to the situation to be written. The essay should be easy for the reader to understand.

РЕСПУБЛІКА КРАСНОПИСЬМЕНСТВА. КОМЕНТАР ДО ПЕРЕКЛАДІВ УКРАЇНСЬКОЮ МОВОЮ ТЕРМІНІВ З ПРАЦІ ДЕВІДА Г’ЮМА «ПРО ЕСЕЇСТИЧНЕ ПИСЬМЕНСТВО»

The article is a commentary to philosophical terms of David Hume’s “Of Essay Writing”, that became necessary in working on its Ukrainian translation. “Of Essay Writing” is an essay on conversation that was published in English in 1742 in the first edition of “Essays, Moral and Political” by D. Hume. The commentary focuses on two concepts that are important for understanding the content and cultural and historical context of an essay. First, the concept of “Republic of Letters” is considered. This Renaissance metaphor was in active use in the XV-XVIII centuries and described the conversational community of European intellectuals, formed by correspondent networks. In the age of Enlightenment, an alternative to correspondence was conversation in the newly formed public sphere of communication, concentrated in salons, clubs and other common social spaces. In his essay, D. Hume contrasts the concept of "Republic of Letters" with the concept of “Empire of Conversation”, emphasizing the difference between the worlds of “learned” and “conversible”, where “learned” use correspondence and “conversible” participate in public conversation. Secondly, this commentary examines the concept of "Belles Lettres" - a term of Renaissance origin, the part of humanists educational project “bonnae litterae”, which revealed the role of “studia humanitatis” (humanities) in shaping the aesthetics of writing (including letter writing). David Hume associate "Belles Lettres" with the concept of “taste”, which is a central category of his empiricist aesthetics. According to Hume, the taste comes from specific experience, the components of which are the humanities. At the same time, “Belles Lettres” requires the experience of conversation, and essay-writing is a means, which D. Hume proposes to use to spread the achievements of the “Republic of Letters” in the community of the “Empire of Conversation”.

A Pre-Experimental Study on a Process-Genre Approach for Teaching Essay Writing

This study explored the feasibility of using a process-genre approach (PGA) for teaching academic writing from the perspective of EFL undergraduates. The sample consisted of 15 students enrolled in a four-year English program at the College of Education in Socotra, Yemen during the academic year 2018-2019. The study followed a pre-experimental design in which a pretest was given to the sample, and an extensive 30-hours program was pursued using the PGA. Additionally, ten informants were singled out for interviews to explore their opinions about the PGA-based teaching they experienced during the experiment. A Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used to calculate the degree of significance in students’ improvement on opinion essay writing (Z=3.408, p < 0.05) between the pretest and posttest in favor of the latter. The findings also revealed that students had positive perceptions towards the PGA that was applied by their instructors. The findings suggest that applying such an approach in writing courses could engage learners in writing practices that they view positively.