Paragraph Unity Research Articles

Maintaining Unity in the Descriptive Paragraph Writing of Saudi EFL University Students: Challenges and Remedies

The study analyzes unity in descriptive paragraphs written by Saudi EFL learners at King Khalid University to find out the causes of unity errors in descriptive paragraphs. Paragraph writing is one of the most essential aspects of second language learning writing because it allows students to put their knowledge into practice and systematically convey their ideas. A random sample of fourteen English language teachers and ten EFL students is selected. The study employs testing and structured interviews for data collection. Sample paragraph analysis shows that 70 % of the learners do not compose unified descriptive paragraphs, whereas 30 % of the students write unified paragraphs that discuss only one topic. The interview analysis demonstrates that the lack of unity in the student’s writing is a result of various factors, including the impact of the EFL university learners’ mother tongue on target language writing, as well as a lack of activities and practice of basic writing techniques. Most EFL instructors believe that the challenges significantly impede students writing proficiency and influence their ability to construct unified descriptive paragraphs. The study concludes with several recommendations for both EFL teachers and students, hoping that they address the students’ challenges in the descriptive paragraph unity.

An Appraisal of Paragraph Unity and Coherence in Writing

An Appraisal of Paragraph Unity and Coherence in Writing

Paragraph Organization Errors in the Writing of Pakistani College-Going Students: An Error Analysis Study

Writing something worthy of reading in a foreign language is a challenging task. Students learning English as a foreign or a second language suffer most in writing especially in paragraph writing. Although studies have been conducted to explore language errors in English composition of Pakistani students, paragraph organization errors have received little attention. Therefore, this study investigated errors in the unity, development, and coherence in the paragraphs written by Pakistani college students. Besides, the study also explored the factors that cause errors in the paragraphs. In this regard, writing samples of purposively selected 20 college participants were analyzed using error analysis classification by Liu and Wang (2011). Thereafter, five participants were interviewed individually through semi-structured interviews to explore factors that cause errors in the paragraphs of college students. The findings revealed that the students made most errors in paragraph unity, followed by paragraph development, and then paragraph coherence. Besides, the thematic analysis of the interviews revealed that cramming culture, excessive attention given to grammar and lack of quality feedback were the key factors that had affected the paragraph organization skills of these students. The study discusses implications for students and teachers.

STUDENT’S PROBLEM IN WRITING UNITY OF PARAGRAPH IN ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM AT MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF BENGKULU

The objective of this research was to identify the Student’s Problem in Writing Unity of Paragraph in English Education Program at Muhammadiyah University of Bengkulu who have followed writing II subject. This study use qualitative research, and used descriptive qualitative method. The subject of this research was consisted of 28 students fourt semester. In this research, the researcher used scoring criteria Unity of Paragraphs as instrument and using three different topic get the data. The data were collected by: Asking students to write paragraph descriptive with different topics. In identified and classified the students problem in writing unity of paragraphs to gave the score based on Oshima and Hogue (1983) criteria. The result of this research, the Student’s Problem in Writing Unity of Paragraph in English Education Program at Muhammadiyah University of Bengkulu still poor in write: the use of Trasition Signal (TS), Supporting Sentences (SS), and Concluding Sentences (CS). This research suggested the students to study and practice more in the use of transition signal, Supporting Sentences, Concluding Sentences therefore the students could write good unity of paragraph.
 
 Keywords: Writng, Unity, Paragraph.

Paragraph and Its Development Pattern On The Essay Writing Of Elementary School Students

This study aimed to describe the quality of the paragraph and its development pattern in the essay writing of elementary school (Sekolah Dasar – SD) students in Jambi City (Kota Jambi – KJ) (SD-KJ). This study utilized a "quantitative descriptive" design. The population was all essays written by the fifth-grade students of SD-KJ. The sample of this research was 35 paragraphs from the essay writing of the fifth-grade students of SD-KJ. The data analysis steps were searching for frequency distribution of paragraph quality and development pattern; grouping the paragraph frequency distribution according to their quality; counting the percentage of each paragraph quality and type of development pattern; and presenting the results. Regarding to paragraph quality, the results are: (1) paragraph completeness, good (5.71%), poor (68.57%), and bad (25.70%); (2) paragraph unity, good (34.58%); poor (51.42%); and bad (14.28%); (3) paragraph order, good (28.57%); poor (51.42%); and bad (20%); and (4) paragraph coherence, good (54.28%); poor (34.28%); and bad (11.42%). Reffering to the implementation of the paragraph development pattern, the results are paragraph development pattern of comparison and contradiction: 20%, analogy: 5.71%, giving examples: 8.57%, cause and effect: 48.57%; general-specific or specific-general: 11.42%, and classification: 5.71%.

ERRORS OF UNITY AND COHERENCE IN SAUDI ARABIAN EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ WRITTEN PARAGRAPH - A CASE STUDY OF COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & ARTS, TANUMAH, KING KHALID UNIVERSITY, KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA

This study investigates errors of unity and coherence in a paragraph written by the Fourth - Level students at the College of Science and Arts in Tanumah, King Khalid University. The purposes behind this study are to investigate, identify and analyze errors of unity and coherence committed by EFL university students in paragraph writing, moreover to identify the possible causes of these errors and to suggest ways of overcoming these problems. Furthermore, to provide suggestions for teaching and learning English paragraph writing to EFL university students. The study uses both testing and interview as primary sources for data collection. The findings indicate that students commit errors in unity and coherence, and that is their written performance is characterized by ineffective organization of the ideas, lack of transitional markers and the misuses of cohesive markers, the students’ written paragraphs, in general, are characterized by an inconsistency in tense, faulty parallelism, omission of linking words and wrong selection of pronouns. The study concludes that students' problems with writing coherent and unified paragraph are attributed to many factors such as EFL students’ insufficient knowledge about techniques of coherence and unity of paragraph writing in addition to their lack of motivation. Besides interference of EFL learners’ mother tongue in EFL learning process and inappropriate teaching strategies and techniques employed by teachers in teaching coherence and unity of English paragraph writing. It is recommended that EFL university instructors should focus on giving ample practice on the elements of achieving unity and coherence of paragraph writing in addition to that they should give immediate feedback to students and encourage them to read a lot. Article visualizations:

Common Paragraph Writing Errors Made by Saudi EFL Students: Error Analysis

Relying on Error Analysis, this article presents an empirical study that scrutinizes comprehensively the types and frequencies of errors in paragraph compositions made by 80 EFL students, Preparatory Year Deanship, at Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University. In addition, it aims at exploring the differences between male and female students in regards to these errors as well as investigating whether or not native and non-native English teachers affect significantly the types and frequencies of errors committed in writing. After analyzing 80 paragraphs at the sentence-level and the paragraph-level based on a particular rubric, the results reveal that the 80 students committed 1580 errors in total. At the sentence level, the subjects made 1316 errors in grammar (42.15%), Punctuation (16.14%), spelling (14.81%) and capitalization (10.19%). At the paragraph -level, the participants produced 264 errors illustrated in the following order: Errors in paragraph development (5.13%), Errors in paragraph coherence (4.87%), Errors in paragraph unity (3.80%) and Errors in inconsistency of point of view (2.91%). The results found that except for errors of grammar, there are no statistically significant differences between male and female students at the preparatory Year in Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University in the types of errors in paragraph writing. Moreover, the statistical analysis showed that there are statistically significant differences between university students taught by English native-speaker instructors and university students taught by non-native English instructors in some types of errors in paragraph writing i.e. errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Analysing Cohesion Device of Monologue Texts in Students’ Text Book for Eight Grade in Academic Year 2017/2018

Cohesive term deals with the unity of paragraph or passage that relates between sections of a text or speech. This study aimed to describe the types of cohesive devices that were mostly used and also to find out which one is the most cohesive text among students’ texts book (When English Rings a Bell) for Junior High School at Eight grade in the academic year of 2017/2018. The primary data of this study was monologue texts that are found in students’ texts book for Junior High School at Eight grade in the academic year of 2017/2018. This study used a qualitative approach; First, the data were analyzed by to divide and numbering sentences into clauses; The second, to put the number of cohesive devices into tables based on types; The third, to put the number of cohesive devices into the form of percentage; The last, to make an interpretation based on the result. The objective findings are three kinds of cohesive; those were reference, ellipsis, and conjunction. Then, most of the cohesive device was a reference, personal reference, which mostly realized in every single clause, then followed by the conjunction "additive and adversative." This study was practically implicated to teaching and learning which can introduce functions and samples of cohesive to their students in order that students knew and then utilized its concept in their writing.

KEMAMPUAN MENULIS PARAGRAF ARGUMENTASI PADA SISWA KELAS X A SMANEGERI 1 MENYUKE

Writing skill for Argumentation Paragraph for students in SMA N 1 Menyuke, regency on the tenth grade in secondA semeste. The purpose of this research was described students writing skill for argumentation paragraph based on the aspect observation from the unity of paragraph, coherence of paragraph, development of paragraph. This research used descriptive in qualitative method. The instrument of this research was written test for argumentation paragraph. The result of this research were 95% for the unity of paragraph, 44,37% for coherence of paragraph, 51,87%.The general conclusion of this research showed students writing skill in argumentation paragraph for students on the tenth grade in SMA N 1 Menyuke Landak regency in second semester 2014/2015 achieved the score 63,54% with ranges 56%-65% categorized poor to average, whether there are some aspect must be increase.

Supporting ESL Writing by Prompting Crowdsourced Structural Feedback

Writing is challenging, especially for non-native speakers. To support English as a Second Language (ESL) writing, we propose StructFeed, which allows native speakers to annotate topic sentence and relevant keywords in texts and generate writing hints based on the principle of paragraph unity. First, we compared our crowd-based method with three naive machine learning (ML) methods and got the best performance on the identification of topic sentence and irrelevant sentence in the article. Next, we evaluated the StructFeed system with two feedback-generation mechanisms including feedback generated by one expert and by one crowd worker. The results showed that people who received feedback by StructFeed got the highest improvement after revision.

The Structural Parts of Paragraph Writing by Indonesian EFL Learners

This research is aimed at describing the structural part types of paragraph writing made by the undergraduate students at University of Kutai Kartanegara. This study used content analysis as the design, focusing on the structural parts and the unity of paragraph writing in developing English academic essays written in English language. The study assigned 9 students as a subject of the study. Data of this study included English essays using different topics. This study revealed that not all students understand how to write a good and unified paragraph. The fact is that some students tend to having problem in writing structural parts of paragraph such as topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence. In this case, appropriate structural parts of a paragraph leads to the unity of the paragraph. Furthermore, failures of the students in producing unified paragraph dominantly caused inappropriate supporting sentences. The mistake done by the students in developing supporting idea of a paragraph is caused by their lack knowledge of the function of topic sentence.

Investigating Paragraph Writing Skills among Polytechnic Students: The Case of Kumasi Polytechnic

Paragraphs are the building blocks of essays. A sound knowledge of paragraph structuring leads to well-written and readable essays. On the contrary, a lack of paragraph writing skills culminates into a farrago of ideas scattered haphazardly in the essay, thereby affecting paragraph unity and coherence, which in turn impacts negatively on the packaging of ideas in the essay. This study has been prompted by my observation over the years of paragraph construction difficulties polytechnic students face in their academic writing, and also the paucity of research in polytechnic writing. As a result, this paper set to investigate how students structure their paragraphs in terms of topic sentence use and support sentences. A corpus of 120 essays was collected from four departments in Kumasi Polytechnic, Kumasi, Ghana and using Bain’s paragraph principles as a benchmark to analyse them, the results revealed that 66% of the essays employed definite paragraph format. The study also found numerous one-sentence paragraphs leading to the creation of indentations, with reckless abandon. The results of the study have implications for the teaching of writing skills in polytechnics.

Effectiveness of Task-Based Instructional Materials in Developing Writing Skills of BS Fisheries Freshmen

The study generally aimed to enhance the writing skills of the Bachelor of Science in Fisheries freshman students enrolled in English 102 (Writing in the Discipline) at Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University (DMMMSU)-Institute of Fisheries (IF). Specifically, it aimed to: 1) determine the writing competency level of the students; 2) identify the learning strategies frequently used by the students; 3) develop task-based instructional materials based on the writing competency level of the students and their frequency of use of learning strategies; 4) determine the effectiveness of the task-based instructional materials in enhancing the writing performance of the students; and 5) determine the relationship between the effectiveness of the task-based instructional materials and the frequency of use of learning strategies. The first year BSF students had low level of competence in writing four types of texts (explanation of a process, recount, essay and paraphrase) and in nine writing skill areas (sentence unity, ability to carry out the task with minimal support, sentence emphasis, paragraph coherence, paragraph unity, paragraph emphasis, accuracy, sentence structure, and language features). The students’ frequency of use of learning strategies was “Medium” or “Sometimes Used” for both direct and indirect strategies. The use of the task-based instructional materials significantly increased the posttest scores of the students in paragraph unity, paragraph coherence, paragraph emphasis, methods of beginning and ending compositions and mechanics. Frequency of use of learning strategies is significantly and positively related with the pretest and posttest scores of the students. Based on the findings, the task-based instructional materials are recommended for use in order to improve students’ writing skills particularly to students who frequently use their learning strategies. Likewise, the development of task-based instructional materials is encouraged in other subjects or disciplines.

Paragraph-level Errors in Chinese Undergraduate EFL Learners‘ Compositions: A Cohort Study

The present study investigated the paragraph-level errors in 90 English compositions produced by 30 Chinese undergraduate non-English majors on three tasks during eight weeks. Analyses of these errors and the survey data yielded the following main findings: (1) Among the four categories of paragraph-level errors, errors in paragraph development accounted for the largest percentage, followed by errors in paragraph coherence, errors in paragraph unity, and inconsistency in point of view. This pattern was generally observed for the distribution of the errors in each individual task; (2) the errors generally tended to increase across tasks. Errors in paragraph development in particular increased statistically significantly in the last two tasks; (3) the errors of all categories were generally inversely correlated with the students’ writing performance, among which errors in paragraph development were significantly inversely related to the latter, and (4) several reasons were identified for the errors such as the lack of writing practice and the influence of Chinese. Thus, it can be concluded that paragraph-level errors are often persistent in students’ English writing and are closely related to the quality of the writing. They hence deserve further research.