EFL Students’ Unity in Paragraph Development : a Matter of Controlling Idea

Authors

  • Yenni Arif Rahman Universitas Bina Sarana Informatika Jakarta, Indonesia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51278/aj.v4i1.221

Abstract

Explicit controlling idea with its related supporting details create unity in paragraph. On the contrary, the disunity occurs if supporting details does not support its controling idea. Then the purpose of the study are to explore the possibility of disunity occurs in the paragraph and what are the most frequent supporting details being used in paragraph. The samples are taken from 50 intermediate to advanced EFL’s compositions which consist of 70 paragraphs.  The study also employs critical reading and content analysis as the methodology by reading and then decontextualized the paragraph to identify the controlling idea and its supporting details. The finding reveals that the disunity does occur in paragraphs. There are 51 paragraph unities or 73 % of the 70 samples. There are also19 disunities out of 70 samples or 27 % of overall paragraph. The most frequent supporting detail is reasoning type suporting detail which take 35 times usage or 50 % of overall supporting details type in paragraph.

Keywords: Development Paragraph, Controling Idea, EFL Students’ Unity

References

Andersson, L. (2001). Scientific writing. Intermediate Skills Manual, 27(5), 327. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-9657.2011.01061.x
Bailey, S. (2011). Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.
Blass, L., & Vargo, M. (2018). Five Elements of Good Writing. In Pathways: Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking 3 (1st ed., pp. 40–56). National Geographic Learning. http://ngl.cengage.com/elt
Carrell, P. L. (1982). Cohesion Is Not Coherence. TESOL Quarterly, 16(4), 479. https://doi.org/10.2307/3586466
Jarman, M. (2011). The elements of style. In Hudson review (4th ed., Vol. 63, Issue 4). Pearson Education. https://doi.org/10.1145/3501337
Jordan, R. R. (2003). Academic Writing Course. London: Pearson Education Limited.
Karadeniz, A. (2017). Cohesion and Coherence in Written Texts of Students of Faculty of Education. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 5(2), 93. https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v5i2.1998
Krippendorff, K. (2013). Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Miller, R. T., & Pessoa, S. (2016). Where’s Your Thesis Statement and What Happened to Your Topic Sentences? Identifying Organizational Challenges in Undergraduate Student Argumentative Writing. TESOL Journal, 7(4), 847–873. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.248
Negari, G. M. (2011). A Study on Strategy Instruction and EFL Learners’ Writing Skill. International Journal of English Linguistics, 1(2), 299–307. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v1n2p299
Oshima, A. & A. H. (2006). Writing Academic English (4th ed.). London: Pearson Longman.
Peter Chin, Samuel Reid, Sean Wray, Y. Y. (2012). Academic Writing Skills 1 Teacher’s Manual. Cambridge University Press.
Rahman, Y. A. (2020). Investigating Paragraph of Indonesian EFL Student’s Essay: Effective or Ineffective. Akrab Juara, 4(1), 1–9.
Rahman, Z. A. A. A. (2013). The use of cohesive devices in descriptive writing by Omani student-teachers. SAGE Open, 3(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244013506715
Thi, D., & Anh, N. (2019). EFL Student ’ s Writing Skills?: Challenges and Remedies. 9(6), 74–84. https://doi.org/10.9790/7388-0906017484
Trzeciak, J. & S. E. M. (2003). Study Skills for Academic Writing. Hemel Hempstead: Phoenix Study Series. NY: Prentice Hall and Council of Europe 2003: Common European Framework of Reference for languages; levels B1-C2). (Issue 5).
Wood, jaime;Rosevear, Nicole;Pesznecker, Susan;Carol, Burnell; Babin, M. (2018). The Word on College reading and Writing. In OpenOregonPressBooks.pub. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/the-word-on-college-reading-and-writing
Zemach, D. E., & Rumisek, L. a. (2006). Academic Writing: From Paragraph to Essay. Macmillan Publishers Limited.

Downloads

Published

2022-03-18

How to Cite

Rahman, Y. A. (2022). EFL Students’ Unity in Paragraph Development : a Matter of Controlling Idea. Attractive : Innovative Education Journal, 4(1), 290–301. https://doi.org/10.51278/aj.v4i1.221

Most read articles by the same author(s)

Obs.: This plugin requires at least one statistics/report plugin to be enabled. If your statistics plugins provide more than one metric then please also select a main metric on the admin's site settings page and/or on the journal manager's settings pages.