Student Essays Research Articles

The Analysis of Schematic Structure in Students’ Argumentative Essays

Argumentative essay is an important component in English writing for students in China. The present study investigated the schematic structure of a higher vocational college students’ argumentative writings and its pedagogical implementation in teaching and learning English writing in China context. This study utilized a descriptive qualitative approach to analyze fifteen English argumentative essays of students from a higher vocational college in Anhui, China. The schematic structure was analyzed based on Lee’s (2006) model under Systemic Functional Linguistics. The findings showed that when writing argumentative essays, higher vocational college students in China centered on giving ‘Thesis’, ‘Arguments’ and ‘Reinforcement’ stages. Some essays including high-graded essays did not present the ‘Identification’ stage and many essays ignored the ‘Recommendation’ stage. For the ‘Arguments’ stage, middle-graded and low-graded essays did not exhibit the ‘Point’ and ‘Elaboration’ steps clearly. As many students failed to write reasonable and persuasive argumentative essays, the pedagogical implication is that teachers should help students be conscious of the schematic structure of different writing genres, and give students more opportunities to practice writing.

A Synchronic and Diachronic Study of Students’ Essays in Italian High Schools: Trends in Length, Complexity, and Referencing

In this work, we explore the use of digital technologies and statistical analysis to monitor how Italian secondary school students’ writing changes over time and how comparisons can be made across different high school types. We analyzed more than 2,000 exam essays written by Italian high school students over 13 years and in five different school types. Four indicators of writing characteristics were considered—text length, text complexity, and two indicators of source use, all extracted using natural language processing tools—which provided insights into students’ citation practices over time and in different school contexts. In particular, we measured the portion of students’ essays that included text from source material as well as the amount of copied text that was not properly referenced. We found that student essays became shorter in length over time while also getting more complex. We also found that the tendency to copy uncited text in the essay decreased. High school curricula predict different writing strategies: essays written by students attending scientific and humanistic high schools are longer and less subject to incorrect citations. We argue that such text analysis enables the study of writing features in high school classes and supports the evaluation of curricula.

Development of Gender-Based Digital Modules As A Supplement to Learning Indonesian Language Level in Denpasar

Integrating gender-based modules in language learning is important for creating inclusive and equitable learning environments, valuing the diversity of gender experiences, reducing stereotypes and biases, increasing student engagement, and supporting gender equality and sensitivity in society. So this research aims to develop a gender-based digital module as a supplement to Indonesian language learning and describe the validity of the digital module as a supplement to Indonesian language learning. This research is a type of research and development (Research and Development) with the ADDIE model approach, namely Analyze, Design, Development, Implementation. Six expert validators, two teachers, twenty-five and seventy-five pupils from class X are the subjects of this study, which aims to evaluate the usefulness and efficacy of the designed module. In this study, questionnaires, student essays, interviews, and observation were all used as data gathering methods. Both qualitative and quantitative data analysis methodologies were used in this investigation. According to the study findings, the digital module's validity scored 4.08 in the very good category. Teachers' and students' practicality results also received a very good rating of 4.13, suggesting that gender-based digital modules can be used to enhance high school Indonesian language instruction. With a score of 71% on the N-Gain effectiveness test, it can be concluded that the gender-based digital module is beneficial for teaching Indonesian language proficiency. As a result, it is determined that the gender-based digital module is legitimate and useful for use as an addition to high school Indonesian language instruction.

Artificial Intelligence Based Essay Grading System

There are quite a number of challenges faced by teaching staff which if ameliorated can help reduce the quality of time spent on monotonous task associated with students essays grading More so, these days in Nigeria and other related parts of the world institutions deal with a large number of students. These however make grading time consuming and costly, therefore an automated system that can handle the tasks is highly desirable. The developed automated essay grading system in this research is restricted to grading of short and structured essay responses. Java programming language was used for the implementation and MySQL relational database system with WAMPSERVER as the back end. The results showed the user-friendly modules which enable users to navigate through various interfaces easily and work as required. The developed system has an Exact Agreement rate of 0.4 and a Pearson Correlation of 0.93 with human graders.

Exemplification in student essay writing: A study of learner corpus of essay writing (LCEW)

AbstractIn academic writing, exemplification plays a crucial role in contextualizing complex ideational material through instances the readers can understand. In addition to illustrating ideas through concrete instances, the act of providing examples serves the purpose of helping the readers grasp the writer's intentions. However, strategically performing exemplification to elaborate the propositional material seems to be a challenge for many novice student writers. Although some studies have mentioned that students use significantly less frequently the exemplification resources in their writing, fewer studies have probed into EFL student writing to determine the problems they face in elaborating the ideas. Using the marker approach, which examines the discourse functions bottom‐up from markers to moves, the learner corpus of essay writing (LCEW) was analyzed for three major forms of exemplification: representation, argumentation, and analogy. The results indicate that the examples are strictly limited to certain patterns like specifying concepts through a subcategory and illustrating the arguments through everyday experiences. Moreover, many examples deviate from the usual patterns of exemplification causing confusion. These findings have pedagogic implications for academic writing courses in the EFL context.

An Analysis of Japanese Verb Conjugation Errors Among Students at Universitas Harapan Medan

This study aims to identify and analyse the common verb conjugation errors among students in the Japanese Language Program at Universitas Harapan Medan. The research method utilised was the analysis of student essays, focusing on verb conjugation forms such as ~te, ~ta, ~nai, and ~nakatta. The collected data indicates that the most frequent errors occur in the ~te and ~ta forms, accounting for 43.37% and 42.17%, respectively. These findings suggest that students struggle with differentiating between positive and negative past forms. Errors in the negative forms ~nai and ~nakatta were also found at lower percentages. The results of this study indicate a need to improve the teaching methods of verb conjugation at the university.

Who is really an excellent university student and how to identify them? A development of a comprehensive framework of excellence in higher education

This paper addresses the need for a more comprehensive framework of excellence in higher education, which goes beyond academic achievement alone, placing emphasis on its integration with personal characteristics, and acknowledging the diversity in the student population. Two research studies were conducted to establish this comprehensive framework. The pilot study aimed to offer a conceptual definition of the excellent university student according to the perceptions of the academic community. The study, which involved 26 teachers and 159 students, was informed by teacher interviews, student essays, and focus group discussions. The established conceptual framework of excellence was based on a subset of essential attributes that could be embodied by a real student. The conceptual framework comprises facets of expertness, proactive learning, and being a good person organised within the dimensions of educational and personal excellence. It is complemented by academic achievement and underpinned by genuine study motivation. Building upon the findings of the pilot study, the main study aimed to develop and implement a systematic procedure for identifying excellent students. The study, which involved 53 teachers and 112 students, was based on a multisource assessment of multiple contextually relevant criteria of excellence. The identification procedure involved three phases: teacher nomination and assessment, academic achievement assessment, and peer assessment. As a result, 10 excellent students were identified who met all the conceptual criteria of excellence. In conclusion, this paper presents a comprehensive conceptual and methodological framework for defining and identifying excellent university students, grounded in both theoretical principles and empirical findings.

Can AI provide useful holistic essay scoring?

Researchers have sought for decades to automate holistic essay scoring. Over the years, these programs have improved significantly. However, accuracy requires significant amounts of training on human-scored texts—reducing the expediency and usefulness of such programs for routine uses by teachers across the nation on non-standardized prompts. This study analyzes the output of multiple versions of ChatGPT scoring of secondary student essays from three extant corpora and compares it to quality human ratings. We find that the current iteration of ChatGPT scoring is not statistically significantly different from human scoring; substantial agreement with humans is achievable and may be sufficient for low-stakes, formative assessment purposes. However, as large language models evolve additional research will be needed to continue to assess their aptitude for this task as well as determine whether their proximity to human scoring can be improved through prompting or training.

ОБРАЗ СТРАНЫ В ЯЗЫКОВОМ СОЗНАНИИ КАЗАХСТАНСКОЙ МОЛОДЕЖИ

The article attempts a psycholinguistic and cognitive-discursive assessment of the perception of the image of Kazakhstan by Kazakhstani youth. The relevance of the research is conditioned by the need to study the value orientation of young people, their ability to preserve national-cultural and personal self-identification in the context of expanding globalization and various internal and external processes taking place in the country. The novelty of the research lies in examining the country`s image through the prism of how the word “Kazakhstan” is perceived and through the analysis of essay texts. The results of the conducted research allowed for determining the attitude of Kazakhstani youth (with a focus on university students in this article) towards their country, assessing its significance in their lives, their readiness to associate their future with it, and to shape the trajectory of their personal and professional development. The data of the associative experiment and textual material in the form of student essays on a given topic are used in the work. During the data analysis process, MAXQDA software was used, which is designed for automated data analysis and provides qualitative, quantitative, and combined results of processed information. The research yielded cognitive models that reflect specific perceptions and evaluations of the country

Peningkatan Kemampuan Menulis Karangan Narasi dengan Menggunakan Model Pembelajaran Brain Based Learning Siswa Kelas VI SD Negeri pada Kecamatan Wangi-Wangi Kabupaten Wakatobi

The purpose of this research is to determine "Improving the Ability to Write Narrative Essays of Grade VI Students of Pada Pada State Elementary Schools Through the Application of the Brain Based Learning Model". The type of research used in this research is Classroom Action Research (PTK) which is carried out collaboratively between researchers and sixth grade teacher. The subjects in this research were 10 class VI students, with details of 3 boys and 7 girls. The data collection techniques in this research were tests of students' narrative essay writing abilities, observation and documentation. The data analysis technique uses quantitative analysis techniques and finds the average. The indicator of the success of this research is that if individual students get a KKM score of 70, then classically 80% of students achieve the KKM score out of all class VI students. The research results show that the ability to write narrative essays can be improved by using the Brain Based Learning learning model. This increase can be seen from the test results for each meeting carried out by researchers in cycle I. Meeting I was 53%, while at meeting II it increased to 62% and the test results in cycle II, meeting I obtained a score of 75% and at meeting II increased to 84%.

Utilizing large language models for EFL essay grading: An examination of reliability and validity in rubric‐based assessments

AbstractThis study investigates the validity and reliability of generative large language models (LLMs), specifically ChatGPT and Google's Bard, in grading student essays in higher education based on an analytical grading rubric. A total of 15 experienced English as a foreign language (EFL) instructors and two LLMs were asked to evaluate three student essays of varying quality. The grading scale comprised five domains: grammar, content, organization, style & expression and mechanics. The results revealed that fine‐tuned ChatGPT model demonstrated a very high level of reliability with an intraclass correlation (ICC) score of 0.972, Default ChatGPT model exhibited an ICC score of 0.947 and Bard showed a substantial level of reliability with an ICC score of 0.919. Additionally, a significant overlap was observed in certain domains when comparing the grades assigned by LLMs and human raters. In conclusion, the findings suggest that while LLMs demonstrated a notable consistency and potential for grading competency, further fine‐tuning and adjustment are needed for a more nuanced understanding of non‐objective essay criteria. The study not only offers insights into the potential use of LLMs in grading student essays but also highlights the need for continued development and research. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Large language models (LLMs), such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, are known for their ability to generate text that mimics human‐like conversation and writing. LLMs can perform various tasks, including essay grading. Intraclass correlation (ICC) is a statistical measure used to assess the reliability of ratings given by different raters (in this case, EFL instructors and LLMs). What this paper adds The study makes a unique contribution by directly comparing the grading performance of expert EFL instructors with two LLMs—ChatGPT and Bard—using an analytical grading scale. It provides robust empirical evidence showing high reliability of LLMs in grading essays, supported by high ICC scores. It specifically highlights that the overall efficacy of LLMs extends to certain domains of essay grading. Implications for practice and/or policyThe findings open up potential new avenues for utilizing LLMs in academic settings, particularly for grading student essays, thereby possibly alleviating workload of educators.The paper's insistence on the need for further fine‐tuning of LLMs underlines the continual interplay between technological advancement and its practical applications.The results lay down a footprint for future research in advancing the use of AI in essay grading.

Cross-Cultural and Cross-Proficiency Analysis of Selected Cohesion Indices in Student Essays

Cross-Cultural and Cross-Proficiency Analysis of Selected Cohesion Indices in Student Essays

Exploring College Purpose

Background: Upon returning to in-person teaching at Kingsborough Community College after the pandemic, I realized something profound had shifted in my students. The well-documented drop in community college enrollment attributed to the pandemic seemed to reflect deeper disjunctures that had led students to an existential questioning of the purpose and value of a college degree. Purpose, Objective, Research Question, or Focus of Study: This study explores 30 community college students’ evolving perceptions of the purpose of college as they navigate through a first-year composition course with a curriculum that explicitly engages them in reading, writing, and researching various perspectives on the purpose, value, and challenges of pursuing a college education. Research Design: This qualitative, exploratory study involved redesigning my Composition I and II curricula to engage students in reading, writing, and thinking about the purpose of college; researching the challenges they and other community college students face in pursuing a degree; and proposing student-generated solutions to the community college enrollment and retention crisis. Data collected include two semesters of student essays, discussion boards, annotations on course readings, class activities, and notes from in-class discussions. Data analysis for this essay centered on student writing and followed a grounded theory approach with a focus on identifying salient themes related to student beliefs around college purpose and the impact of academic momentum policies on their college experience. Conclusions or Recommendations: The data from this study show that (1) community college students’ understanding of the purpose of college is diverse and malleable and (2) academic momentum policies that press students to attend college full time, despite their many life exigencies, are undermining community college students’ passions and purpose in pursuing a college education.

RESEARCH ON THE USE OF NON-INFLECTIVE FORMS OF THE VERB BY THE STUDENTS OF GJAKOVA

We know that the Albanian language has simple forms of the verb, such as: participle, transitive, past participle, negative, which are then divided into two groups. What piqued our interest about the non-elaborated forms, are the syntactic functional forms of the use of the infinitive in particular (among others), in the essays of students at the Faculty of Education in Gjakova.If we look and analyze the first documents written in Albanian, it is noticeable that the infinitive was very commonly used, even when looking at its phonetic and morphological aspect. Therefore, this formal structure of the infinitive is quite disputable considering its antiquity in our language. In addition to the infinitive, we also have the participle, to which the auxiliary verbs “be” and “have” have been added, we also see that in the essays of our students the syncope is used in most of their writings, without overlooking the apocope. We also have the conjunctive, which shows an action that accompanies or follows the action shown by using another verb, which is also quite utilized in our students' essays. As well as the negative infinitive form, which is formed by placing the word with a negative meaning –pa, before the participle of the verb, which can also be expressed with the negative participle -nuk or -s'. We will present all of this in our research, where we will then show the changes that the formal structure has undergone, be it phonetic, morphological or syntactic, which leaves a lot of room to discuss their linguistic antiquity.

The Impact of Teacher’s Feedback on Students’ Writing Ability

Teacher feedback on students' essay writing is often an alternative for teachers to support the improvement of students' writing quality. This study has the main objective to find out the relationship between teacher’s feedback and student essay writing by looking at the difference in student essay scores before and after feedback. Methodology used in this research is descriptive quantitative by looking at the data of students' project scores in one class. The results showed that there was a good improvement in students' ability to write essays, this was shown through the average student score which had a significant difference between before and after being given feedback from the lecturer. The conclusion obtained through this research is that feedback from teachers is effective in improving the quality of student writing, especially in this research essay writing.

LLMs in Automated Essay Evaluation: A Case Study

This study delves into the application of large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT-4, for the automated evaluation of student essays, with a focus on a case study conducted at the Swiss Institute of Business Administration. It explores the effectiveness of LLMs in assessing German-language student transfer assignments, and contrasts their performance with traditional evaluations by human lecturers. The primary findings highlight the challenges faced by LLMs in terms of accurately grading complex texts according to predefined categories and providing detailed feedback. This research illuminates the gap between the capabilities of LLMs and the nuanced requirements of student essay evaluation. The conclusion emphasizes the necessity for ongoing research and development in the area of LLM technology to improve the accuracy, reliability, and consistency of automated essay assessments in educational contexts.

The Implementation of PAKEM Learning Method to Improve the Competence of the Students in Using Proverbs in Writing Among the Students of Grade V of Public Elementary School 104189 Datar City

The issues in this study is: How to improve the ability to use proverbs in the essays of fifth grade students of SD Negeri 104189 Kota Datar? The purpose of this study is to describe the improvement of the ability to use proverbs in the essays of the students of the fifth grade of SD Negeri 104189 Kota Datar. The type of research used is Classroom Action Research (PTK) using 3 cycles, namely cycle I, cycle II and cycle III, broadly speaking, there are four stages that are passed in carrying out Classroom Action Research (PTK), namely planning, implementing, observing and reflecting. The subjects in this study were fifth grade students of SD Negeri 104189 Kota Datar, a total of 39 people. The findings showed that the application of PAKEM method with proverbial teaching aids by the teachers of Grade V students of SD Negeri 104189 Kota Datar, as evidenced by the increase in student activity for each index. In the first indicator, the number of very active pupils rose from 4 in the first cycle to 10 in the second, and again to 21 in the third. The other indicators of student activity continued to increase in each cycle. The increase in the ability to use proverbs in the essays of fifth grade students of SD Negeri 104189 Kota Datar occurred significantly, this can be seen from the average value of the ability to use proverbs in cycles I, II and III. From cycle I to cycle II, the average ability to use proverbs increased from 48.84 to 69.23, an increase of 20.39, likewise from cycle II to cycle III increased from 69.23 to 75. 46 again increased by 6.23. Logically, from Cycle I to Cycle III it increased by 26.62.

Common syntactic errors in the writing skills of the 3rd year students at Van Lang University

This study aimed to analyze common syntactic errors found in the argumentative essays of third-year English major students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Van Lang University, Vietnam. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to obtain data in this study. The quantitative approach involved counting and calculating the frequency, percentage, and ranking of syntactic errors, while the qualitative method was adopted to explain these errors. The instrument for collecting data was argumentative essays written by 37 third-year English majors enrolling in Writing-5 at Van Lang University. Microsoft Word was used to collect and analyze syntactic errors and sentence structures, while Microsoft Excel was employed to calculate the frequency and rank of these errors and structures. The results found that the five most frequent errors in their essays were at the noun phrase and sentence levels. These errors included run-on sentences, preposition errors, article errors, sentence fragments, and pronoun errors. Through error analysis, it was indicated that the majority of errors made by students were due to the negative transfer from their first language and the literal translation. Based on the findings, language teachers and syllabus designers could use these results as guidance to design appropriate teaching methods and materials.

Enhancing students’ L2 writing skills online: a case study of an introductory English literature course for ESL students

Abstract This research paper is based on a case study of an introductory English literature course that is being offered at a community college in Hong Kong, China. The 2020–2021 cohort was unique as it had the entire course online using Zoom without any face-to-face or hybrid teaching, which was considered the “new normal” of higher education under the pandemic. This study employs narrative inquiry (Barkhuizen, G. (2014). Revisiting narrative frames: An instrument for investigating language teaching and learning. System, 47, 12–27; Clandinin, D. J. (2016). Engaging in narrative inquiry. Routledge), semi-structured interviews, and analysis of student essays to demonstrate that online essay consultations and collaborative writing are useful for enhancing the essay writing skills of second language learners. The paper specifically reports and highlights how individual Zoom essay consultations, together with collaborative writing on Padlet, scaffold and enhance students’ essay writing and critical thinking skills. Essentially, the paper argues that online technologies expand the dimension of literature education and empower it as a form of content-based ESL instruction for long-term use.

The Revival of Essay-Type Questions in Medical Education: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

To analyse and compare the assessment and grading of human-written and machine-written formative essays. Quasi-experimental, qualitative cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of the Study: Department of Science of Dental Materials, Hamdard College of Medicine & Dentistry, Hamdard University, Karachi, from February to April 2023. Ten short formative essays of final-year dental students were manually assessed and graded. These essays were then graded using ChatGPT version 3.5. The chatbot responses and prompts were recorded and matched with manually graded essays. Qualitative analysis of the chatbot responses was then performed. Four different prompts were given to the artificial intelligence (AI) driven platform of ChatGPT to grade the summative essays. These were the chatbot's initial responses without grading, the chatbot's response to grading against criteria, the chatbot's response to criteria-wise grading, and the chatbot's response to questions for the difference in grading. Based on the results, four innovative ways of using AI and machine learning (ML) have been proposed for medical educators: Automated grading, content analysis, plagiarism detection, and formative assessment. ChatGPT provided a comprehensive report with feedback on writing skills, as opposed to manual grading of essays. The chatbot's responses were fascinating and thought-provoking. AI and ML technologies can potentially supplement human grading in the assessment of essays. Medical educators need to embrace AI and ML technology to enhance the standards and quality of medical education, particularly when assessing long and short essay-type questions. Further empirical research and evaluation are needed to confirm their effectiveness. Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, Essays, ChatGPT, Formative assessment.