Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia p�ISSN: 2541-0849 e-ISSN: 2548-1398

Vol. 8, No. 8, Agustus 2023

COMMUNICATION SKILL-BASED WRITING INSTRUCTION (CSBWI) TO PROMOTE STUDENTS WRITING ABILITY

Ayu Andriyaningsih¹, Vike Aprilianin Marwintaria Saputri², Burmansah³, Komang Sutawan⁴, Susanto⁵

¹³⁴⁵Buddhist Education Department, STIAB Jinarakkhita, Lampung, Indonesia

²Buddhist Communication Science Department, STIAB Jinarakkhita, Lampung, Indonesia

E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract

This study examined the effect of communication skill-based writing instruction on the student writing ability. The researcher used a pretest-posttest experimental group design. The research was conducted from April to May 2023 in the Jinarakkhita Buddhist College Bandar Lampung. The researchers used the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 25 program to analyze the data. A rubric score was used to analyze and measure the students' narrative text writing ability before and after treatment. The student's writing ability improved from 49.9 to 65.1. In addition, the researcher found that students who previously struggled to write now have a growing understanding of how to gather information and confidently use CSBWI in their writing. Therefore, it is critical to use a suitable and effective method to assist students in overcoming the difficulty of their writing achievement.

Keywords: Writing Instruction; Writing Ability; Communication Skill-Based Writing Instruction.

Introduction

Language is the most crucial aspect of all beings' lives. Some people use language to express their inner thoughts and emotions, to make sense of complex and abstract ideas, to learn how to communicate with others, and to fulfil their wants and needs. In this world, many different languages are spoken. Almost every country uses English as an international language to communicate. As a global language, it is widely used in many aspects of life, including culture, business, politics, education, etc. Especially in education, English is taught and studied at every level of education, from kindergarten to university (Nabila & Wibowo, 2022). Ayu Indrawati (2019) stated that English has been considered a foreign language in Indonesia.

Teaching English in Indonesia focuses on students' communication skills. Communication can take both oral and written forms. One of the goals of English instruction is to help students improve their oral and written communication skills. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing are the four skills that must be mastered by the learner during the English teaching and learning process. The four basic English language skills are divided into two categories: receptive skills and productive skills. Reading and listening are receptive skills, whereas speaking and writing are productive (Javed et al., 2013).

Writing is one of the four basic skills. It is widely regarded as one of the most challenging skills for foreign language students to master. Writing is the transformation of thoughts into language; we must first consider the content of our writing and then organize the ideas using appropriate language (e.g., grammar and vocabulary). Kanar Zirak Haseeb Chicho (2022) states that writing is the ability to express opinion, and the writer delivers messages and opinions through it. For that reason, learners need to pay attention to linking and connecting ideas to write clearly. Therefore, writing is a predictor of academic success in the context of education. Writing is beneficial for expressing ideas, feelings, and thoughts and developing critical thinking skills.

Many efforts have been made to solve the problems that students face when learning to write. Writing is essential for students to express their knowledge, thoughts, and experiences. It can be an essay, a paragraph, a letter, a short story, or anything else. In reconstructing a text, a writer sometimes needs help outlining ideas or topics that will be thrown into the writing. A writer needs a strategy to direct the writing outcome to create coherence and cohesiveness within a text. Farida Nova Kurniawati (2019) states that teachers must be creative in choosing the instructional model the students will implement. Therefore, in the study, the researchers used communication-based writing instruction to promote students' writing abilities.

Communication skills play an essential role in the teaching and learning process (Rawat, 2015). Learning goals can only be adequately achieved if the communication between teachers and students is synergized and connected well (Jafar et al., 2019). Furthermore, verbal communication skills are divided into oral and written communication skills. Oral communication is the process of delivering thoughts, messages or feelings by using language (Ruben & Stewart, 2013). Oral communication in learning involves interaction between teacher and students, students and teachers, or students and students (Namaziandost & Nasri, 2019).

Written communication is the process of conveying thoughts, messages or feelings from someone to others by using writing (Ruben & Stewart, 2013). Writing conveys ideas to readers by arranging or organizing sentences (Irmawati, 2010). A writer needs communicative skills in writing to enable communication of ideas and thoughts in meaningful form by giving arguments or comments in a way that can be received and easily understood. These skills are reflected in how writers express their thoughts clearly (Fadilah et al., 2020). However, writing skills need help expressing ideas, organizing sentences and vocabulary, and writing rules. For several EFL learners, English writing appears challenging (Tuan, 2010).

Based on the explanation above, it is critical to use a suitable and effective method to assist students in overcoming the difficulty of their writing achievement. As a result, this study focused on using communication skill-based writing instruction as a writing teaching method. Therefore, the study's primary purpose was to examine the effect of communication skill-based writing instruction on student writing ability.

Research Methods

The researcher employs a quantitative approach as a research method in this study. According to Apuke (2017), quantitative research quantifies and analyses variables to obtain results. The researcher adopted a pretest-posttest experimental group design. The participants in this study were students from Jinarakkhita Buddhist College Lampung, which consisted of 23 students. The researcher used the second-semester Buddhist Education Department students in the academic year 2022-2023 as a sample.

The research was conducted from April to May 2023 in the Jinarakkhita Buddhist College Bandar Lampung. In each treatment, the students were taught in the same classroom for one hundred minutes. The researcher used a writing test to collect the data. The item of the test was valid, as evidenced by the sign: tailed 0.05 and the reliability of the analysis result of 0.896. The researcher used the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 25 program to analyze the data. The data is derived from a writing test to assess students' writing abilities before and after treatment.

The Repeated Measures T-test was used to compare the means of the pretest and post-test scores. It was used to compare two types of data or mean from the same sample in this study because it dealt with the effect of communication skill-based writing instruction on students' writing achievement. This was done to see if there was a difference in the students' writing achievement after communication skill-based writing instruction was implemented. In addition, after the post-test, the researcher conducted an interview. This case aimed to learn about the students' reactions to communication skill-based writing instruction during writing class.

Results and Discussion

A. The Students� Writing Ability

The researcher used a rubric score in this study to analyze and measure the students' narrative text writing ability. The researcher used the J.B. Heaton rubric score to determine students' narrative text writing ability. J.B. Heaton's (1983) rubric score included content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. The treatment of the content refers to the relevant information on how to develop the idea and think creatively.

The organization deals with the ability to construct ideas into sentences logically, in sequence, cohesive, and well organized. Vocabulary refers to the mastery of word collection to comprehend the text. Language use deals with practical, complex construction, few errors of agreement, tense, number, word order/function, articles, pronouns, and prepositions. While mechanics refers to the mastery of construction, there are few spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing errors.

The scores from the two inter-raters in this study were combined, and these were the final and average scores. The highest final score of the writing pretest was 65, and the lowest final score was 38. The researcher had not given any treatments to the students at the time. As a result, it was unsurprising that their score still needed to be higher. The students worked for ninety minutes on the writing pretest. The students wrote what they knew based on their own experiences for the semester.

They did, however, need to pay attention to the instructions in the pretest paper provided by the researcher. In this type of situation, the students struggled because they had assumed that writing was a difficult and tedious subject. They were unsure how to begin writing something. Although the students had many ideas to write about, they needed help organizing their thoughts and choosing adequate words/idioms. Aside from that, the students needed help understanding the tenses used. Even with the mechanics' issues, they were still irregular. However, they continued to try to write down what they knew in this pretest section.

In the pretest, the students completed their task on writing. The students' writing pretest results for each aspect of writing were as follows: content 15.4, organization 11.1, vocabulary 10.2, language use 10.6, and mechanics 2.5. Inter-rating was used in scoring the students' writing post-test, just as it was in scoring the writing pretest. The results were as follows: the highest final score of the writing post-test was 73, and the lowest final score was 57. The researcher had given the students treatments based on communication skill-based writing instruction. They completed the writing post-test in ninety minutes. The students also used all of the steps in the writing process. These are pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing:

Table 1 Stage of The Writing Process

No.	Stages of The Writing Process
1.	Stage 1: Pre � Writing a. Students choose a topic. b. Students gather ideas. 1. Brainstorming (diagram (clustering) or randomly listing ideas) 2. Reading 3. Interviewing c. Students organize ideas. d. Students define a topic sentence. e. Students write an outline for their writing.
2.	Stage 2: Drafting a. Students write a rough draft. b. Students emphasize content rather than mechanics.
3.	Stage 3: Revising a. Students re�read their writing. b. Students share their writing with the teacher. c. Students participate constructively in discussions about their writing with the teacher. d. Students change their compositions to reflect the reactions and comments of the teacher. Besides that, students make substantive rather than only minor changes.
4.	Stage 4: Editing a. Students proofread their writing. b. Students increasingly identify and correct their mechanical errors.
5.	Stage 5: Publishing a. Students make the final copy of their writing. b. Students publish their writing in appropriate forms. c. Students share their finished writing with the teacher.

Finally, the students completed their post-test on writing. The following were the results of the students' writing post-tests: content 19.1, organization 16.1, vocabulary 13.1, language use 13.5, and mechanics 3.0. Furthermore, by comparing the average scores of the pre - and post-test, students' writing ability improved from 49.9 to 65.1. As a result, there was a 15.2% improvement. The result was as follows:

Table 2 The Students� Writing Improvement Paired Samples Statistic

Mean

Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

Pair1Writing_Pretest

�� Writing_Posttest

49.9000

65.1000

6.19001

3.46353

1.29071

0.72220

The t-test was used to determine whether the improvement was significant or not. The result was as follows:

Table 3 Paired Samples Test

	Paired Differences					T	df	Sig.(2-tailed)
	Mean	Std.Deviation	Std. Error Mean	95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
				Lower	Upper
Pair1 Posttest-Pretest	25.82609	7.81404	1.62934	22.44704	29.20513	15.851	22	.000

The researcher compared the t-value to the t-table using the table above. The t-value in this case was 15.851, while the t-table was 2.074. If t-value > t-table, the current study's result was significant. This could imply that communication skill-based writing instruction could significantly improve students' writing abilities over traditional methods. The table above shows a significant difference in the students' writing pretest and post-test scores. According to the Paired Sample T-Test, the treatment significantly impacted the students' scores, as indicated by the sig. (2-tailed) value of .000. Furthermore, with a mean score of 5.0, the treatment had the most significant positive impact on the "organization" aspect of writing.

This part explained how communication skill-based writing instruction could promote students� writing ability in the writing classroom.

B. Communication Skill-Based Writing Instruction and Students� Writing Ability

Communication skill-based writing instruction in the classroom was a process in which a teacher provided students with a temporary framework for learning. Students were encouraged to develop their creativity, motivation, and resourcefulness when correct communication skill-based writing instruction was done. Communication skill-based writing instruction occurs during the stages of instruction in the context of teaching writing.

Teaching writing, on the other hand, allows students to observe the writing process. The researcher attempts to incorporate communication skills into the writing process in this study. To combine those two, the researcher will use the five stages of the writing process, as cited in (Faraj, 2015).

The procedures of communication skill-based writing instruction are as follows. (1) Students focus on the text type. In this case, the text type is narrative text. (2) Students discuss the social function or purpose of the narrative text. (3) Students discuss the schematic structure of the narrative text. (4) Students discuss the language features of the narrative text. (5) Students choose a topic. (6) Students gather ideas. (7) Students explore cultural similarities and differences in the topic or ideas. (8) Students organize ideas. (9) Students define a topic sentence. (10) Students practice grammatical patterns relevant to the narrative text. (11) Students build and extend vocabulary relevant to the narrative text. (12) Students and teacher work together to construct a narrative text. (13) The teacher provides guidance and support to the students. (14) Students write an outline for their writing. (15) Students write a rough draft. (16) Students re�read their writing. (17) Students proofread their writing. (18) Students increasingly identify and correct their mechanical errors. (19) Students pay attention to the aspects of writing, such as content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. (20) Students share their writing with the teacher. (21) Students participate constructively in discussions about their writing with the teacher. (22) Students incorporate knowledge of the schematic structure and grammatical features from their teacher into their writing. (23) Students change their compositions to reflect the reactions and comments of the teacher. Besides that, students make substantive rather than only minor changes. (24) Students produce the final copy of their writing. (25) Students publish their writing in appropriate forms. (26) Students share their finished writing with the teacher. (27) Students feel confident and comfortable writing a narrative text in writing class. Moreover, it happens in a context outside the classroom.

As a result, the current study found that communication skill-based writing instruction aided students' writing processes. In this case, the students stated that communication skill-based writing instruction enabled them to communicate their ideas in written form, after which they could edit their work. They then published their work in appropriate formats. In other words, the student's writing skills could improve in content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. They also wrote a narrative text in and outside the writing class, and the students felt confident and at ease.

To support the result above, the researcher interviewed students towards the result of communication skill-based writing instruction in writing class. In this case, the students provided the researcher with additional feedback, stating that they were comfortable during the learning process, starting from determining the topic, drafting the idea, and revising the writing result. Based on the narrative text, the students believed that their writing had changed throughout this session, particularly in terms of text substance and text arrangement due to the brainstorming idea in the writing instruction. Apart from that, they could use suitable words for the substance of the text. They may employ language appropriate for the type of writing: narrative text.

Conclusion

Following the previous section's analysis of the data obtained during the research, the findings, and the outcome of this current study, the researcher comes to the following conclusions: The first was the implementation of communication skill-based writing instruction in the second-semester students at Jinarakkhita Buddhist College Lampung which resulted in improvements in the students' writing ability due to they tend to be more active in constructing the sentence by listing the idea and find something excitingly and creatively. In this case, students who previously struggled to write now have a growing understanding of how to gather and confidently use information in their writing.

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Ayu Andriyaningsih, Vike Aprilianin Marwintaria Saputri, Burmansah, Komang Sutawan, Susanto (2023)

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Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia

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