Analysis of Students Writing As EFL Learners in Electrical Engineering Department

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Abstract:

This article attempts to highlight the analysis and the important of learning writing in Electrical Engineering Department as EFL learners. Writing is one of the most important skills in English that students must master. It is the basic of learning English. It is also very needed in every English lesson. It is applicable to all of the college students in every program in the university including the Electrical Engineering Department. They need to know this skills, especially for their future job. But in fact, in the implementation of learning writing in that study program face some difficulties. The cause of it is the lack of vocabulary and their difficulties in grammar.

Keywords: Writing, English, Electrical Engineering, Job, EFL

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Introduction

1.1 Background of The Study

Nowadays in the global era communication has become one of the most crucial elements. Without good communication people from different nations will not be able to understand each other. English is now a global lingua franca. The study was under taken to understand the importance of English language in present scenario. English is very important for us. For example in business, education, getting job, information, media, and entertainment. English language is widely used in official communication. It may not be the most spoken language in the world, but it is the official language in a large number of countries. English is also the dominant business language and it has become almost a necessity for people to speak English if they are to enter a global workforce, research from all over the world shows that cross-border business communication is most often conducted in English.

English as an international language has had a great impact on science and technology and of course on the field of Engineering. English and engineering education have become just like nail and flesh. The reason why English has remained so intact and integral part of engineering education is not because the experts involved in designing curriculum for engineering intended to include it as one of the compulsory subjects just as a show piece or an ornament but because they felt the necessity of the English language for engineering communication. English serves as one of the most indispensable tools for acquiring scientific and technological information and skills.

One of the important skill in English is writing. Writing is very important for Electrical Engineering students. Based on the findings of the self-assessed English needs of Electrical Engineering students and graduates in different tasks of the four English macro-skills, it can be concluded that both Electrical Engineering students and graduates consider ‘writing journal or conference articles’ and ‘writing formal emails’ as important, while the findings of interview with Electrical Engineering employers show that Electrical Engineering companies are looking for engineers who can not only write formal emails but also write the minutes, project reports and Electrical standards in English. Based on the result of description, the researcher interested to analyze the students writing by taking the title of study: “Analysis of Students Writing as EFL Learners in Electrical Engineering Department”

1.2 Identification of The Study

Based on our observation, the identification of the study can be identified as follows:

  1. Lack of vocabulary
  2. Pronunciation error
  3. Lack of grammar skill in writing

1.3 Limitation of The Study

The limitation of this study is focus on writing skill in the Electrical Engineering Department of Tidar University. The researcher focuse on the important of speaking for their future job and their difficulties in writing English.

1.4 Problem Formulation

In accordance with the title of this article “Analysis of Students Writing as EFL Learners in Electrical Engineering Department” in relation to the important of writing in English lesson. In connection with that title, then the problem can be identified as follows:

  1. How does the situation of writing activity in Electrical Engineering class?
  2. How is the important of writing in the Electrical Engineering field?
  3. How is the difficulties in learn writing process?

1.5 Objective of The Study

Based on the problem formulation above, the objective of this study can be identified as follows:

  1. To identify the implementation of writing activity in Electrical Engineering class.
  2. To identify the important of writing in the Electrical Engineering field.
  3. To find out the difficulties in learn writing process in Electrical Engineering class

1.6 Significance of The Study

The result of this study is expected to be useful for the teachers and students to give the information about analysis of Students Writing as EFL Learners in the Electrical Engineering Department.

  1. For teachers, the result of this study can be used to identify the needs of their students especially in the Electrical Engineering Department related to the writing skills in order to applying their future jobs.
  2. For students, the result of this study can be used to be their information about the important of mastering writing skills and the difficulties that must be faced when they learn about writing.

Conceptual framework

2.1 Writing Skills in EFL Context

Writing is the process of using symbols (letters of the alphabet, punctuation, and spaces) to communicate thoughs and ideas in a readable form. In writing, many of learners express their ideas, feelings, thoughts, desires, and experiences written to the readers and the listeners. There are several elements of writing, including grammar, paragraph organization, and vocabulary. Writing is potentially the most difficult skill for Foreign Language (FL) learners to master. It motivates thinking, it can help learners to organise their ideas, and develop their critical thinking skills to summarise, analyze, and criticize.

Writing has commonly been viewed as a support skill, used to reinforce the acquisition of grammar, as in the grammar-translation method, or to support the memorization of CO1TeCt language structures, as in the audio-lingual method. Until recently, even the communicative approaches, with their emphasis on oral proficiency, have tended to de-emphasize writing. But ideas from writing-to-learn, writing across the curriculum, and writing for academic purposes movements in composition and English as a Second Language (ESL) have all had an impact on thinking about the place of writing in second language education.

In most of the EFL situations, non-native speakers of English begin to learn to write English words and sentences much later as compared to their L1 writing skills. Due to its relevance as a medium of communication in the local context, L1 writing skills often gain more prominence during the early stages of school education. Historically, the development of writing skills has been of secondary interest in foreign language classes. Most of the research on second language writing has been conducted by ESL professionals, and to call for a more active engagement of foreign language educators in this area.

2.2 The Important of Writing Skill in Learning English

The written languange has nowdays an important social and educational function and its status has a high social prestige. In the Czech cultural environment knowledge and skills of writing are still neglected because writing is perceived as a linguistic skill which is taught mainly at elementary scools and achieved through the mastering of gramatical and spelling rules. Writing is important because it is used extensively in higher education and in the workplace. If students do not know how to express themselves in writing, they will not be able to communicate well with professors, employers, peers, or just about anyone else. Musch professional communication is done in writing: proposals, memos, reports, applications, preliminary, interviews, e-mails, and more are part of the daily life of a college student or successful graduate. Writing is essential. It brings about a lot of advantages since it helps to :

  1. Express one’s personality
  2. Foster communication
  3. Develop thinking skills
  4. Make logical and persuasive arguments
  5. Give a person a chance to later reflect on his or her ideas and re-evaluate them
  6. Provide and receive feedback
  7. Prepare for school and employment

Writing has unique position in language teaching since its acquisition involves a practice and knowledge of other three language skills, such as listening, reading, and speaking. One of the best ways to attract students to writing is to let them write at the beginning of the learning process as freely as possible and evoke in them the feeling of creativity. Creative writing abviously can play a crucial role in the development of writing skills.

2.3 Student’s Difficulties in Writing

One of the major weeknesses in student writing is poor of proficiency of the English language, poor of sentence skills, core content, structure of writing, academic writing conventions, analysis of writing topics; ability to conduct research, and apply knowledge across different context. Such weeknesses can be observed among students who study subjects such as engineering in which some students regard academic writing not important compared to the core content. As such writing is ignored as it is considered not beneficial for their future career. It is not surprising to find many of them stuggle to produce good academic writing.

Investigation have shown that reason for the poor writing proficiency are (1) problems related to the teachers themselves for example poor attitude, insufficient pedagogical skills and knowledge (2) technical aspects needed in specific skills (3) the teaching and learning processes utilized the wrong teaching strategies and (4) unsuitable assessment. Usually, the problem is related to either the teacher or the teaching process. Some of the problems are partly related to the teacher as well as the teaching and learning processes and some also due to the students themselves. The teachers or the lecturers cannot be totally blamed for the student’s weaknesses as some of the students are not motivated and do not pay attention in the classroom. Some of the teachers are very dedicated and they made a lot of effort to improve their teaching methods. The teacher also have to handle many students such they cannot pay attention to each student.

There are mechanics of writing which are necessary in making a good writing. Those are punctuation, capitalization, spelling, cohesion, unity, and organization. These things are very important to be mastered in supporting our writing to be a good writing. Considering those elements of writing, there are several obstacles in making a good writing. Those obstacles are they lack of material or knowledge to write, they lack of vocabulary in making writing, they lack of ability to organize paragraph, they lack of confidence for choosing a topic and developing their ideas. As a result, they get stuck in the process of writing.

2.4 Developing Writing Skill

To overcome the students’ problem in writing, there are many techniques that can be used to create a good class atmosphere and to guide the students to the material that being taught. Gerlach & Ely (1980:187) argue “The effective teacher has a multitude of techniques and must be prepared to select the ones which will be most efficient in leading the learner to desire terminal behavior”. This statement is supported by Elbow (1998), he states that the best way to improve our writing is to do free writing exercises routinely. It might do about three times a week for ten minutes later on perhaps fifteen or twenty.

The findings of the study reveal that students make efforts to use translation as a strategy to create language expressions for a given writing task. A frequent use of translation strategies can be a hindrance to the development of writing skills. In order to quickly progress in everyday classroom writing activities, teachers might also encourage students to rely on translation strategies. Due to L1 interference, students often make errors while writing spellings and so the EFL teachers need to incorporate dictionary skills instruction to overcome the orthographical obstacles. Through dictionary skills instruction, undergraduates can overcome vocabulary deficiencies as well as confusions in the use of homophones. . The findings of the study also revealed that EFL undergraduates are unable to progress in their writing skills because they are confined to the use of translation and therefore need more exposure to vocabulary input as well as grammatical competence. Task-based writing activities which are currently followed in EFL classrooms, though student-centered, often poses difficulty to undergraduates because it tests their creativity in the use of higher-order syntactic structures. EFL students should be able to differentiate academic writing from non-academic and also be trained to present the content in an appropriate language that is relevant to a particular type of audience.

Methods

3.1 Type of The Research

The type of the research that used in this study is survey and observation research. Survey research is defined as the process of conducting research using surveys that are sent to survey respondents. The data collected from surveys is then statically analyzed to draw meaningful research conclusion. Observational research (or field research) is a type of correlational (i.e., non-experimental) research in which a researcher observes ongoing behavior.

3.2 Subject of The Research

The subject of the research is a person who participates in human subject research by being the target of observation by researchers. The subject of the research are the first semester students of Electrical Engineering Department class2 in Tidar University totaling 30 students.

3.3 Data Collection

In data collection, researcher used non-test forms such as observation and questionnaires. First observation, an observation made by the researcher to see students’ interest in speaking English with friends and teacher during the learning process. Second is the questionnaire. The data collection method that used in this research was the combination of an open-ended questionnaire and a dichotomous questionnaire. The open ended questionnaire use questins thet allow the target audience to voice their feelings and notions freely. The dichotomous questionnaire use type of question that give two options to respondents – yes or no, to choose from.

3.4 Data Analysis

Data analysis is defined as a process of cleaning, transforming, and modeling data to discover useful information for business decision-making. The purposes of Data Analysis is to extract useful information from data and taking the decision based upon the data analysis. This research uses a qualitative research model. Qualitative research is a type of social science research that collect and works with non-numerical data and that seeks to interpret meaning from these data that help understand social life through the study of targeted populations or places. Qualitative research is a process of natura;istic inquiry that seeks in-depth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting. It focuses on the “why” rather than “what” of social phenomena and relies on the direct experiences of human beings as meaning-making agents in their every day lives.

References

  1. http://ijar.org.in/stuff/issues/v3-i4(2)/v3-i4(2)-a021.pdf
  2. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bd4a/1801abff75c754c2c3f8bc50e580c0045cdf.pdf
  3. file:///C:/Users/x441n/Downloads/16906-Article%20Text-55680-1-10-20170305.pdf
  4. https://www.academia.edu/38440293/How_to_develop_writing_skills
  5. http://writing.umn.edu/isw/assets/pdf/publications/Homstad_Thorson94.pdf
  6. https://media.neliti.com/media/publications/244122-none-f2abc9ca.pdf
  7. http://www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJALEL/article/download/3803/3061

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