WRITING III (ESSAY WRITING) ACHIEVEMENT AND ACADEMIC WRITING

COMPREHENSION. A CORRELATIONAL STUDY AT THE FOURTH AND FIFTH

FINAL ASSIGNMENT

KARTIKO TRI ROMDANI

E1DOO7O41

VIB

ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT

FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

MATARAM UNIVERSITY

2010
 Chapter I

Introduction

1.1 Background of study

English as an international language plays its role in establishing social communication or

relationship. It is easy for us to conduct the international relation with all nations in the world if

we have good command of English.

In Indonesia, English is thought from elementary school. But most students claim that

English is difficult to learn. It is different in structures or grammatical from their mother tongue.

They learn English because they have to, not because they are interested to learn it. That’s why

English seems difficult for some of them. Mulyasa (2004:78) state that English is not pra-

qualification lesson but more oriented to the student’s interest towards English study. Thus, the

teachers have to know the students interest towards English and why this lessons seems boring

for some students. English is relatively older language compared to other language. English has

developed through all these years and modern English is almost perfect in terms of grammar.

In 2002 Depdiknas has introduce the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC) as a barometer

of education development. Mulyasa (2004:5) states four purposes of learning, they are: learning

to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be. To realize these purposes it

is important to conduct the Competency Based Curriculum in teaching learning activity.

Some terms used in Based Competence of English lessons is the kind of text (genre) being

use. For example, transactional/interpersonal, narrative, descriptive, recount, report, anecdote,

should be able to communicate both orally or written.

In writing skill we often find the students have difficulties when they have to write a simple

sentence or even to construct a simple paragraph. It just because they tend to point out what to do

first or what grammar to use. Writing is one of language skill that everyone should have beside

listening, reading, and speaking. By writing, students can explore an idea and opinion

systematically and effectively in their own language. Writing is the most difficult skill compares

the others, because when we write we must aware with grammatical rules; perform word order,

spelling, punctuation and vocabulary. It is easier to understand what we write by the reader.

Therefore, in teaching learning process, teacher should able to use simple and effective

instruction for guiding classroom activities. Unfortunately, as one of those skills writing often

seems to be in the last position.

Writing is necessary for all students in higher education. It is a process. It starts from

understanding student task. It then goes on to doing the research and reading. The next stage is

planning and writing various drafts. This is followed by proof-reading and editing. All this

should lead to the final text.

In this paper writer will focus on the writing part in writing activity. Arifuddin (2007:

162) stated that the main areas of the writing skill are grammatical control, stylistic skill,

treatment of content, and judgment skill. Essay writing is a subject thought in English

department at fourth semester. In English, an essay is a piece of argumentative writing several

paragraphs long written about one topic, usually based on your reading. The aim of the essay

should be deduced strictly from the wording of the title or question, and needs to be defined at
the beginning. The purpose of an essay is for students to say something using the ideas of the

subject, to present ideas learned in their own way. The emphasis should be on working with

other people's ideas, rather than reproducing their words, but our own voice should show clearly.

The ideas and people that refer to need to made explicit by a system of referencing.

At the advance level the teaching of academic writing is developed as the sequence of

essay writing. The Academic Writing Course focuses on development of academic writing skills

of college students of English Department, by raising awareness of practicing and reflecting

upon the conventions of written texts. In addition the course will help the students become

familiar with genres of and enhance skills related to critique, argumentation and research-based

writing.

The students’ ability in writing at the level of academic writing should have get an

improvement since they have got the knowledge of writing in the previous semester on essay

writing subject. Otherwise, the students’ achievement in academic writing did not increase. As a

matter of fact there is a significant gap between their achievement of essay writing and academic

writing.

1.2 Statement of Problems

Based on the background discussed in previous pages, this research formulates the problems

as the following:

1. Does essay writing achievement correlate positively with academic writing

comprehension?

2. Will writing achievement improve academic writing?

The general purpose of study is to find out whether there is correlation between essay writing

achievement and academic writing comprehension employed by the fourth and the fifth semester

of English Department FKIP UNRAM. The aim of this research is to prove the hypothesis that

the essay writing achievement correlate with academic writing comprehension.

1.4 Scope of study

This study is focused on the correlation between the achievement of essay writing and the

comprehension of academic writing. The writer limited the scope of this study at the fourth and

fifth semester students of FKIP UNRAM especially at department of English.

1.5 Formulation of Hypothesis

The alternative hypothesis

Based on the problems stated above, the writer hypothesizes that:

“The essay writing achievement correlated with academic writing comprehension positively,”

The Null Hypothesis

The null hypothesis for research is:

“The essay writing achievement does not correlated with academic writing comprehension

positively”
1.6 Operational Key Term

This study is engaged by several operational key terms conveyed in the title. Such term may

cause confusion to the readers hence those need to be clarified in order to avoid miss perception

about the study. Here are the terms with the meaning:

1.7 Significant of the study

The writer expects that the result of this study can be used as additional information for the

following people:

a. People who are interested in analyzing correlation between essay writing subject and

academic writing course.

b. Lecturer who are responsible to both essay writing and academic writing course.

c. Students who take both this course.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1. An Overview of writing skill

As what has been recognized that among the four language skills in English, writing is quite

difficult to be mastered since writing depends upon the progress on the other skill such as

speaking, reading and listening. Lado (1961) as quoted in Ummah (2003:8) defined that writing

in a foreign language requires the writer to use the vocabularies and the grammar of the target

language well.

Academic writing is a social practice. By a social practice that it is what people do together.

This means that people always write with a readership in mind. They always write with a

purpose: to explain, to persuade etc. It also means that what is right and wrong, appropriate or

inappropriate is defined by the users in the social community. There is nothing natural about the

organization and the way language is used in a scientific report, for example. It is as it is because

that is the way it has developed through centuries of use by practitioners. For that reason it has to

be learned.

Writing skill covers two aspects: Organization and style. Since each paragraph contains only

one main idea, so the paragraph should be arranged logically. With regards to this case,

organization is an important aspect in writing for many reasons; it creates logical sequences of

idea for the reader to follow, it makes the process of writing essay and can help the writer to

develop his or her idea successfully, Schefer (1975) as quoted in Bafadal (2008). He said that

writing was much more than an orthographic symbolization of speech, it is more important for a

purposefully selection and organization of experiences. Consequently, learning to write does not
just involve orthographic symbol but primarily how to select and organize experiences based on

a certain purpose. A purposeful selection and organization of experiences requires an active

thought.

Hamidsyukri (2003:2) states “writing is closely related to reading skill and used indirect

communication term. When we write, we use graphics, symbols or spelling. Writing can also be

said as an act of performing these symbols. However, writing is not simply mark, but it is clearly

much more than the production of graphic symbols or spellings. The symbol must be attained in

certain conversation to form words, and those words must be arranged to form sentences but the

sentences must be arranged in sentence order to make the writing cohesive”.

Writing is different from talking in both origin and practice. Writing the symbolic

representation of language in storable graphic form, is a comparatively recent cultural

development, having occurred only the past five thousand Years. As Chomsky (1989) in

O’Grady (1989:187) state “the contrast between talking and writing comes into sharper focus

when we consider that any normal child acquires spoken language without specific formal

instruction, while writing must be taught and learned through deliberate effort”.

2.1.1The function of writing

Writing is a verbal communication involves encoding the massage or communication.

The massage transmitted in a writing form by the graphics or symbols, so people read the

graphics or symbols as they know become a language. According to Logan and Peterson (1972)

(in Muhammad, 2000) stated that the verbal communication is the most superior resource for

simulating thought, ideas and concept. The highest purpose of the language is meaningful

communication.
 Moreover, in teaching-learning process, the students need much reading to have large

knowledge in order to have mastery in conversation or writing skill. As Bets (1975) (in Saputra,

2004) stated that reading should be stimulated when the students need to create the sense

condition in other words. The students are given several questions in order to be interested in the

topic or reading material”.

Beside as language skill, reading and writing are also means of communication. The

writing language or communication is done through one way intercourse. It mean that the writer

as communicator directly transmitted the message to the receiver, the writer putting down the

graphic symbols into the media than read by the reader.

2.1.2 Type of Writing

Narrative writing

Narrative writing refers to the story describe the related experience. The experience may

in the past or present. Mc Crimon (1984: 160) suggest that if you write a narration, you need to

choose a point or a view to establish the person and position of the narration. Whether in the first

singular and first plural person ( I or we) or third singular plural person (she, he or they).

Arriving at an effective narration, it depends on plot, pace and purpose. Plot is arranged

according to meaningful and dramatic sequence which may follow the order in which event

actually happen. Usually a narration focuses on same tension or conflicts within the character

and environment.

2. Expository Writing
 The basic characteristic of good expository writing as Hair Stone (in Saputra, 2004) states

that an expository always take palace in a specific situation, someone writes for a specific

purpose. Moreover, he states that a good expository writing should contain three elements:

-the purpose

-audience

-topic

3. Argumentative writing

Argumentative writing is the type writing that we should observe something and draw

conclusion from the topic that we write. The relation between the observation and the conclusion

is sound, and argumentative writing is used to persuade others. Argument is used to avoid

disorder. On the other hand, the purpose of the argument is to support an opinion about some

ideas, position or price of information you have in your writing, (Prijamba, in Saputra 2004:15)

In argumentative writing, we should keep in mind the fundamental assumption of argument:

a. Variety of choices

b. Individual worth

c. Freedom to test ideas against each other

d. Intellectual emotional basis of believe

4. Descriptive writing

Descriptive writing is a way of picturing image by the words. Tompkins, Gail E

(1994;107) stated that descriptive writing is picturing some things by the words.
In the process of writing description, the art of description resolves itself into three processes:

a. Catching vivid impression

It means that our approach to describe should begin with a direct observation of

something we know and understand.

b. Selecting right details

It means that in order to get desire effect, select details which appeal to as many the

physical sense as possible but avoid catching the picture unnecessarily.

c. Using exact language or figurative language to convey our ideas requires skill and

practice.

There are some components or main areas of writing skill such as cited by Arifuddin

(2007: 162-163) from Heaton (1991) and Allison (1999):

“Components or main in writing skills:

- Language use grammatical control:: the ability to write correct and appropriate sentences.

- Mechanical skills or accuracy: the ability to use correctly those conventions peculiar to

the written language: e.g. punctuations, spelling.

- Treatment of content: the ability to think sentences and paragraph, excluding all

irrelevant information.

- Stylistic skills:: the ability to manipulate sentences and paragraphs, including unity and

coherence, and use language collectively.

- Organization and topic development.

- Range and appropriateness of vocabulary selection (diction)

with a particular audience in mind, together with an ability to select, organize and order

relevant information.

- Overall impressions of text coherence.

Research Methodology

3.1. Research Method

This research is categorized as a correlation research which tries to find the correlation

between two independent variables namely essay writing and academic writing achievement. In

this study the writer chooses quantitative approach to analyze the data. This data is analyzed in

the form of statistics as shown in chapter VI.

3.2. Population and Sample

3.2.1. Population

The population of this research is all the students of English Department, the faculty of

Teachers Training and Education Mataram University fourth and fifth semester academic year

2008/2009.

3.2.2. Sample

This writer chooses the purposive sampling technique in this research. The students of

English department taken as the sample of this study are the students of fourth and fifth grade in

academic year 2008/2009. English department students in this academic year are divided into

two classes, class A which is consists of 38 students and class B which is also consists of 38

students. The writer takes the whole students as the sample because according to Arikunto, if the

number of samples is less than 100, all samples should be included.

3.3. Research Variable

in the correlation study there is no dependent variable, both essay writing and academic writing

is as independent variables which means one variable did not give any effect on another.

3.4. Data Collecting Procedure

The data for this study is secondary data since it is taken from subbag akademik in the form

of students’ achievement record (KHS).

3.5. Method of Data Analysis

3.5.1. Computation of Rho (ρ) Coefficient

After the individual score of all students gathered, the formula will be used to calculate the ρ

coefficient. Here is the formula:

6 ƩD ²
ρ= 1- N ( N −1)2

Where: ρ = coefficient of spearman rho

6ƩD²= the total sum of deviation in rank

N = number of case

3.5.2 Comparison of Rho (ρ) Coefficient and Rho Table

After the rho coefficient calculated, the value obtained from the calculation will be compared

with the rho table at the significant level of .05 and .01.
3.5.3. Testing Hypothesis

If the score of rho coefficient obtained is lower than the value of rho table of the significant level

of .05 and .01, the null hypothesis is failed to be rejected which means there is no correlation

between essay writing and academic writing comprehension. Otherwise, if the score of rho

coefficient is higher than rho table, the null hypothesis (Ho) will be rejected which means there

should be altered to alternative hypothesis (Ha) that stated there is correlation between essay

writing and academic writing comprehension.

Arifuddin. 2007. Language Assessment: A competency-Based Approach.

Mataram: Arga Puji Press.

Arifuddin. 2010. Neuropsikolinguistik. Jakarta: Rajawali Pers.

Hamidsyukri. 2003. Writing paragraph (second edition). English Department FKIP university of

Mataram

Mc. Crimo 1984. Wiriting with a purpose. New York. Horghton Mifflin Company insc.