Author:
Menik Winiharti
Affiliation:
Bina Nusantara University, Indonesia
Keyword(s):
Outline, outlining stage, outlining process, pre-writing, writing, academic writing, essay.
Abstract:
To produce a good piece of writing, learners are suggested to follow a pre-writing stage, one of which is outlining. It is believed that by writing an outline, a student can improve their writing quality since the ideas will be organized and they can focus on a certain topics more clearly. In terms of academic writing, the organization of the composition must be strictly followed and clearly observed (Folse, Muchmore-Vokoun, & Solomon, 2014; Zemach & Ghulldu, 2011). This study aims to find the extent to which an outlining stage improves students’ quality of writing. This qualitative study involved 20 English Department students’ essays are assessed through their pre-writing activity (outlining stage) and writing activity. In the outlining stage, and their outline is checked and revised twice before they finally compose an essay. Then, their outlines and essays are compared specifically based on the organization of the essay, i.e. introduction, body and conclusion, and the unity as wel
l. The comparison is also done to see whether their essays consistently follow the outlines. The results show that to a certain extent students improve significantly in writing essays after developing outlines. It is also found that teachers feedback and time allocation to develop outlines are quite crucial.
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