A Joint Construction Practice in an Academic Writing Course in an Indonesian University Context

Abstract

This research aims to explore the students' writing and critical thinking capacity in a joint construction practice in an academic writing course. The course applied a genre-based approach in teaching academic writing and critical thinking to first-year English as a Foreign Language students of a private university in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. A combination of explicit teaching, group discussion, and online review sessions was employed in the joint construction practice for three meetings. The source for the data collection was a jointly constructed text. The text was selected from thirty-six students who worked in groups. Every group consisted of low achievers, medium achievers, and high achievers in writing. The text was analyzed using functional grammar. The analysis shows that the students had gained a good control of the exposition genre with its linguistic features. Thematic progression and logical connectors at the text level and circumstances (adverbs) at the clause level had realized critical thinking skills and dispositions. Several grammatical mistakes and improper lexical choices were identified but did not interfere with the purpose of the text. The findings suggest that having more classroom meetings will make explicit teaching and group discussion work effectively before the students begin to write independently. Moreover, online review sessions can support the students' learning but with limitations.

The Current Issues of Indonesian EFL Students’ Writing Skills: Ability, Problem, and Reason in Writing Comparison and Contrast Essay

“…Moreover, the studies of Rasyidah & Antoni (2014), Cahyono et al (2016), and Irwan et al (2018), similarly reported that the Indonesian EFL students' academic essay writing ability was satisfied. However, the result of this current study was irrelevant found by the studies of Eliwarti & Maarof (2014), Wigati (2014), Nugraha (2015), Aunurrahman, Hamied & Emilia (2016), and Ariyanti & Fitriana (2017) reported that the writing ability of Indonesian university EFL students was poor quality in essay academic writing performance. Highlighting the findings of these previous studies and this current study, it could be stated that there was any improvement of the Indonesian EFL students' essay writing ability.…”

“…Seeing the differences research findings concerning the Indonesian EFL students' essay writing performance i.e. studies from Eliwarti & Maarof (2014); Aunurrahman, Hamied & Emilia (2016); and Ariyanti & Fitriana, (2017), they revealed low writing ability. Meanwhile, the studies from Rasyidah & Antoni (2014); Cahyono et al (2016); Sanu (2016); Husin & Nurbayani (2017); and Irwan et al (2018) highlighted high writing ability, indeed it could be said that the essay writing ability of EFL students in Indonesia is still debatable issues in research communities.…”

“…Eliwarti & Maarof (2014) who conducted their study in Pekanbaru, Riau, reported that the university students' ability in essay writing was low because of teaching essay writing, writing material, complexity of writing skill and writing strategy employed by lecturer and students in the classroom. Then, in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Aunurrahman, Hamied & Emilia (2016) pointed out that the EFL students' writing control related to the structures and linguistic features in argumentative essay writing was still limited, especially in developing of critical thinking. Ariyanti & Fitriana (2017) did their study in private university in Samarinda-East Kalimantan, asserted the quality of EFL students' essay writing ability was poor categorized.…”

Teaching English using a genre pedagogy to Islamic junior high school students

“…The second principle is explicit teaching. Here, teaching a language must be explicit where a teacher provides explanations and resources for the students to learn the social functions, schematic structures, and linguistic features of the genres (Aunurrahman et al, 2017a;Emilia & Hamied, 2015). Examples of the daily life texts used in this study are provided in Tables 1, 2 and 3.…”

“…Without grammar, the students will not be able to create a meaningful text (Alsaawi, 2016;Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014). In this study, grammar includes using accurate spelling punctuation, capitalization, lexical choices, and cohesive devices that are useful to build a meaningful text (Alsaawi, 2016;Aunurrahman et al, 2017a). A reply to the response Great, I will see you tomorrow then Well, that is all right.…”