PROBLEMS FACED BY INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS IN WRITING ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY
Abstract
Abstract: This study aims to find out problems in writing argumentative essay faced by Indonesian EFL learners. It is carried out in a qualitative research design as it attempted to describe the problems and their ways out. The data were taken from university students’ writing task and interview. The participants are the second year of university Indonesia students who enrol their study in English Department. Results of the data indicated that Indonesian EFL learners faced the problems in three categories, those are linguistics problems, cognitive problems, and psychological problems. Mostly, students faced problems in linguistics related to the grammatical structure (23.2%), formatting words (30.2%), words classes (16.3%), error in using words (9.3%), and the use of article (21%). Second, cognitive problems are related to organizing paragraph, difficulties in remaining word classes, getting lost the generic structure, making a conclusion, and putting punctuation. Last, psychological problems which included laziness, egoism, bad mood, and difficulties to start writing also faced by Indonesian EFL learners. Data analysis also indicated the problem solving which hopefully will be beneficial for EFL teachers in writing class. It is strongly recommended that the EFL class should strengthen all the language skills in general and writing in particular, motivate the students to use English with the teachers, introduce pair work, peer-correction, and use dictionaries frequently etc.
Keywords: argumentative essay, linguistics problems, cognitive problems, psychological problems
References
Al-Khasawneh, F. (2010). Writing for academic purposes: Problems faced by Arab postgraduate students of the college of business, UUM. ESL World, 9 (2).
Bakir. (2013). Writing difficulties and new solutions: Blended learning as an approach to improve writing abilities. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 3(9).
Bazerman, C. (1985). The informed writer: Using source in discipline. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Byrne, D. (1995). Teaching writing skills. Singapore: Longman Publisher.
Creswell, J. W. (1994). Research design qualitative and quantitative approaches. London: Sage Publisher.
Daly, B. (1997). Writing argumentative essay. Retrieved from http://www.eslplanet.com/teachertools/argueweb/preface
Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching. Malaysia: Pearson Education Limited.
Hyland, K. (2002). Teaching and researching writing. London: Pearson Education.
Krappels. (1999). An overview of second language writing process research. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kroll, B. (1990). Second language writing. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Murray, R. & Moore, S. (2006). The handbook of academic writing. New York: Open University Press.
Osborne, R. J., & Freyberg, P. S. (1985) Learning in science: The implications of children's science. Auckland: Heinemann.
Punch, K. F. (2001) Introduction to social research quantitative and qualitative approaches. London: Sage Publications.
Rababah, G. (2003). Communication problems facing Arab learners of English: A personal perspective. TEFL Web Journal, 2(1).
Saito, S. (2010). An analysis of argumentative essay of Thai third-year English majors instructed by integrated process-genre based approach. A Thesis: Bangkok.
Taylor, G. (2009). A student’s writing guides. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zhu, W. (2001). Performing argumentative writing in English: Difficulties, processes, and strategies. TESL Canada Journal 19 (1).
All articles published in English Review: Journal of English Education (ERJEE) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Copyright Ownership
Authors retain the copyright of their articles and grant ERJEE the right of first publication. The journal is granted a non-exclusive license to publish, reproduce, and distribute the article in any format, medium, or platform, provided that proper credit is given to the original authors.
License Terms – CC BY 4.0
Under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, others are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially
As long as they:
- Provide appropriate credit to the original author(s) and source
- Provide a link to the license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
- Indicate if any changes were made
There are no restrictions on the reuse, reproduction, or adaptation of published articles as long as attribution is properly given.
Author Warranties
By submitting a manuscript to ERJEE, authors confirm that:
- The work is original and does not infringe any existing copyright.
- The manuscript has not been previously published and is not under consideration elsewhere.
- All sources and references are appropriately acknowledged.
- Necessary permissions have been obtained for any copyrighted materials used.
