A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE TEACHING OF WRITING TO INDONESIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS UNDER TWO INSTRUCTIONAL MODELS

Abstract

This study compared students' writing performance under two instructional modes - Individual and Pair Work. It also investigated students' perceptions of the two modes of instruction. A total of ninety pre-intermediate English majors students, 31 males and 59 females, from one writing class (Writing 4) at the University of Haluoleo Kendari in Indonesia participated in this study. Their ages ranged from 21-23. They were multiethnic, with L1s including Butonese, Tolakinese, Javanese, Makasarese, and Buginese. They were in year three of their university studies. They were randomly assigned to one of two groups: Class A, the individual condition, consisting of 30 students (10 male and 20 female); and class B, the group work condition consisting of 60 students/30 dyads (21 male and 39 female) The data were collected over a period of seven weeks. Three topics to be written on using the personal recount genre were used. The first two topics were used as classroom written exercises. The third topic was used for data analysis. The two groups wrote essays under the same condition, namely, the same topic, the same length of composition (200-250 words), and the same writing duration (150 minutes). In the individual condition, the students worked alone to write the assigned text. They could only discuss the task with the teacher. In the pair work condition, the group members worked individually studying the model of the personal recount genre and generating their own ideas about the topic. Then, they paired up to discuss their ideas with their partner and combined their ideas to write a rough draft. Each member of the group had an assigned role: drafter or editor. The drafter had the functions of making a rough draft based on the ideas or main points on which they agreed. The editor had the functions of praiser, time keeper, and checker (who checked the draft in such areas as fidelity to the model) in order to help their partner write the draft. Questionnaires and interview for the two conditions were used to gain further information on the students' perceptions of the two instructional modes. Classroom observation was conducted for pair work condition only in order to identify the collaborative skills applied during paired writing activity. A two-tailed t-tests result showed that students in the group condition (pair work) wrote essays that were significantly better overall than those written by students in the individual condition. The efficacy of group writing was also supported by data from the questionnaire and interviews in which students' appeared to have more positive perceptions of writing in groups compared to writing alone. They indicated that writing in pairs was good because they could share ideas and provide other forms of help to each other.