COLLABORATIVE WRITING: WHAT DO EFL STUDENTS SAY?
SKRIPSI
BY
IKLILA UMMU SAM’AH NPM 21601073031
UNIVERSITAS ISLAM MALANG
FACULTY OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
JULY 2020
vi ABSTRACT
Sam’ah, Iklila Ummu. 2020. Collaborative Writing: What do EFL Students say?.
Skripsi, English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, University of Islam Malang. Advisors I: Eko Suhartoyo, S.Pd., M.Pd; Advisor II; Kurniasih, S.Pd., M.A.
Key words: writing, collaborative writing, EFL students
Writing is an ability to compose or communicate intended implication, idea, and purposes to the reader by using a clear, coherent, and well-organized paper through the process of thinking, studying, developing organizing, producing, revising, and editing the product. Writing is not an easy process; thus, many techniques are offered such as collaborative writing. The research is about the elaboration of EFL students’ perspective who have experienced collaborative writing in accomplishing article as the final task.
This research was conducted at Universitas Islam Malang with four English Department students. The participants are the high achiever of writing IV course. The data is analyzed qualitatively with open-ended interview which is divided into two sessions. The interview which conducted once has fourteen questions. The data is taken in eight days. To make the data valid, the researcher does triangulation.
The result showed that doing collaborative writing in accomplishing article writing task have numerous things which assist and hinder the participants.
Collaborative writing in article has positivity in helping the participants to exchange the ideas that they had, also learning the way to work in group. However, the
participants’ experience said that collaborative writing is complicated. The things that complicate the participants in doing this task are the irresponsibility and passive group members. In addition, the consultation time is the thing that hinder the participants.
From this study, there are things which must be improved from several aspects. For future researcher, it was suggested to have the instructor’s point of view about collaborative writing to understand the implementation of the technique from the instructor view point.
1 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This chapter discussed about background of the study, research questions, and objective of the study, significance of the study, scope and limitation and definition of key terms. Further parts were conferred in the next chapter.
1.1 Background of Study
Writing raises some problems since writing is a complex skill which involve many aspects. The organization of writing must be effective and it includes numerous aspects such as content, organization, the use of vocabulary, the use of grammar and mechanical consideration, like spelling and punctuation (Wahyuni 2017). As proposed by Jacobs et al. (1981), the first writing aspect is about content. Content paragraph conveys the ideas rather than fulfilling special function of transition, restatement, and emphasis. The second is organization which related to the order of the idea. The next is about vocabulary usage that include the chosen words which is used in writing. Also, the use of grammar which related to the use of correct grammatical form and synthetic
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pattern of separating, combining, and grouping ideas in words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in producing logical relationship in paragraph writing. The last is mechanic which includes arranging letters steps, knowledge of structure that used to words paragraphs, also some other related to one another.
Therefore, writing is not an easy process. The first problem is about grammar mastery. According to Fareed, Ashraf, and Bilal (2016) the main trouble of language in the learners writing are grammar and syntax. According to Ahmed (2016) grammar is dealing with the word structure and the way to pronounce correctly, while syntax is the structure which refers to the way that the parts of something are put together or organized. The faults belong to inappropriateness of the use of prepositions, articles, tenses, singular/plural, verbs, sentence structures, also the use of informal and oral expression (Ashraf & Bilal, 2016).
Writing individually also appear some problems. Casanave & Hubbard (1992) found evidence about writing problems in Not Native Speaker (NNS) from their questionnaire. It was said that Non-Native Speakers have difficulty on most features of writing. The correct punctuation/spelling, grammar accurateness, grammar appropriateness, and vocabulary appropriateness were the difficulties which felt by the students in writing. Another problem in writing individually were found by Adas and Bakir (2013) in their study, it was uttered such as run-on sentence, Arabish, punctuation and writing organization. In terms of English as Second Language (ESL) students, the problem of writing was the confusion between spoken and written style (Fadda, 2012).
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Collaborative writing can be believed as one of solutions to solve the problem in individual writing. It could give be an option to give the students opportunity to work together in writing (Soraya 2016). Collaborative writing means the students are required to write in a small group or peer. Based on the researcher’s experience, collaborative writing has its own positivity since it can increase others’ ability in writing, feedback also can be got from the group mates. The evidence was found by Vega (2016) that peer feedback was encouraged by collaborative writing. It was because the students that doing the assignment in peer were willing to solve their problem by asking their friends than their teacher.
However, negative things about collaborative writing also experienced by researcher such as it takes time to unite the idea with the group mates. Bakhshayesha (2016) found that every student owns their idea which would be expressed by them without other interfering. It was proven by where there is a different idea in one topic, there will be fight as follows. In addition, Sukirman (2016) proved that collaborative writing has many disadvantages such as enhancements of stress, logical matter, the use of target language, dispute of personal style of learning, and fairness issue. Also, lack of English skill can be a problem. As stated by Lin and Maarof (2013), the majority of participants revealed that lack of English proficiency was the problem when they collaborated with their members of the groups.
The evidence of the use of collaborative writing in argumentative essay was found by Ghufron (2018) with 75 fourth semester students. The research was done in
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classroom action research. The results proved that the appropriateness of argumentative content increase. The students also improved in good organization, the word diction, the use of grammar and the mechanics. It also made teaching and learning more effective. Thus, the use of collaborative writing worked well in argumentative text.
Another classroom action research was done by Utami (2012) about collaborative writing on recount text with seventh grade students. The data proved that collaborative writing increases students’ motivation since they could share their knowledge with their friends. The higher motivation was found because feedback from their mistakes could be corrected by their friends. The improvement of the students on recount text genre was seen by applying this technique.
Sipayung (2016) also conducted classroom action research about collaborative writing with descriptive text with eighth grade students. Based on the research, it was found that the students’ descriptive text had improved for every student since the first to the last test. Qualitative data explained that most of the students enjoy, enthusiast, also be active the process of collaborative writing. The students also gave their good response in the teaching learning process while using collaborative writing.
In this research, the researcher focuses on the experience of the students who have done collaborative writing to accomplish the writing article task in final assignment. The final task of the students which must be done was article writing, while in previous research was descriptive and argumentative texts (Ghufron 2018; Sipayung 2016; Utami 2012). The research was conducted to four third-year students at
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Universitas Islam Malang since they have experienced in collaborative writing in article writing. This research provided data about the experience of third-year EFL students at Universitas Islam Malang that have done collaborative writing in article.
1.2 Research Questions
From the background study above, the researcher raised this research questions:
1. How do EFL students perceive collaborative writing in accomplishing writing article task?
1.3 Objective of the Study
The objective of the study was to know the EFL students’ experience about collaborative writing in accomplishing writing article task in Writing IV course.
1.4 Significance of the Study
This research is probable to bring the usefulness to those who read this thesis.
It is hoped that it can bounce new notion about collaborative writing by doing this research. Consequently, the details of significant of study is explained as below:
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a. Students
This study will assist the students to get information about the experience of collaborative writing in academic writing particularly in article. In addition, it will motivate the students to always practice their writing skill.
b. Teachers
The information that is provided by the researcher aimed to be evaluation by the teacher who wants to apply this technique in their class.
1.5 Scope and Limitation
The scope of this study is only on academic writing in accomplishing article writing in the final task. Writing article was done to accomplish final project of Writing IV course at Universitas Islam Malang. At that time, the lecturers asked the third-year students to write in groups that consist of three students.
The limitation which appeared in this research is because the interview was only conducted once so the researcher could not explore more answer from the participants.
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1.6 Definition of Key Terms 1.6.1 Writing IV Course
Writing is one of courses that must be taken by English Department students in Universitas Islam Malang in case to finish their study. In this writing IV course session, the students were given material about references. Also, the lecturer recalled the students’ memories about the way paraphrasing, summarizing and synthesizing some statements that were pointed out or found by experts that had been studied in the previous writing course, before they were asked to write an article. The article itself was about the strategy of teaching English. The length of the article was required seven pages.
1.6.2 Collaborative writing
The first meeting discussed about the materials about paraphrasing, summarizing and citating. It was also discussed about the final task that could be the score in the final examination. In this meeting, the lecturer ordered the students the final assignment about writing collaboratively. Also, the division of the group was decided by the lecturer in this meeting. In the group, the students were asked to do the process of writing article together. They must support each other to have the best result in the end of the course. After the group was decided, the students were required to search some articles that related to their title of the article. If the article that had been
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looked for is proper to their title, they were allowed to start writing their own article.
After that, the students had to write the abstract of their article.
In the second meeting until the next meetings, the students were required to consult in the class, or even outside the schedule of Writing IV by appointment. The teacher let the students write collaboratively then. If there was something wrong in their writing, they must revise it until it was better. In the end of the course, the students sent their article to government agency of Indonesian journals named SINTA
After sending their article, they screenshotted it and gave it to the lecturer as the evidence that they had sent their article to SINTA. Besides, in the last two meeting session, they presented their result in front of the class, and they received three questions about their article, two from their classmates, also one question from the instructor itself.
1.6.3 EFL Students
EFL stands for English as Foreign Language. EFL students are the students who learn and study about their foreign language. In this case, the EFL students were the third-year students of Faculty of Teacher Training and Education at Universitas Islam Malang who take Writing IV course.
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1.6.4 Perception
Perception means psychological process of how a person perceives on an event.
In this study, the perception was the way the participants perceive collaborative writing based on their experience in accomplishing article writing in Writing IV
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33 CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
In this chapter, the researcher elaborated about the conclusion of the study, also the suggestion.
5.1 Conclusion
After doing interview that consist of fourteen questions, the result examined that collaborative writing in Writing IV course with article as the genre was complicated. There were some issues which hinder the participants in doing that assignment. First, it was about the attitude of the group members. They were irresponsible, passive and unresponsive. Secondly, the time management while doing the assignment. The participants were not be able to set the same schedule to gather easily since they had different schedule. After that, the instructor was not really sensitive to the things that happened in the students.
On the other hand, collaborative writing in article offered several benefits, such as the participants said that they could learn how to work in group together. In addition, they could exchange the idea with their group mates. The thing that made them proud
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of themselves was they got A score in the end of the course, since the instructor allowed them to give score to their group mates.
5.2 Suggestion
From the study that had done by the researcher, it was better for future researcher to add another instrument such as observation and questionnaire. Then, it would be better to have the teacher’s point of view about collaborative writing to understand about the implementation of the technique from the instructor view point.
For the instructor, it was suggested to be more sensitive about what the students deal while doing the collaborative writing. The instructor could be more detail in asking what was happening in the group in order to minimize cheating that could be done by the group members.
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