Strengthening the Outlining Process to Improve EFL Students’

Academic Writing Competence

Menik Winiharti

English Department, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia

menikwin@gmail.com

Keywords: 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 well. 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.

1 INTRODUCTION

Academic writing is generally one compulsory

subject for college students who learn English as their

second or foreign language (possibly other languages

as well). The course is aimed at facilitating students

to be able to produce academic essays, whose rules

are quite different from other kinds of writing –

creative writing for example. Moreover, to some

extent they are required to have an ability to “write

high quality papers for their academic coursework.”

(Zúñiga & Macías, 2006)

According to a number of authors of essay writing

textbooks (Folse et al., 2014; Zemach & Ghulldu,

2011), there are some strategies that should be

followed to produce a good essay. The strategies

generally can be divided into three stages: prewriting,

writing, and reviewing and revising. Thus, prewriting

is considered one important stage in essay writing.

They believe that by following such strategies,

learners can produce an essay in a better quality

(compared to those who do not follow the strategy).

This is confirmed by Munoz-luna (2015) whose some

of her respondents always use a pre-writing strategy

which includes planning, outlining and proof-

reading. She points out that for producing a

composition of any academic text, the strategy and

planning is believed to be an important stage.

Likewise, Abdollahzade and Taak (2014) suggest that

learners can perform better in expository writing task

for they spend a certain amount of time before

producing the essay. This strategy has facilitated the

learners to be more engaged in the task. The result of

their findings also suggests that “a more coherent and

organized text with a richer range of vocabulary” has

been produced.

Even though a number of studies on prewriting

activity have been conducted, the effects of this

activity toward L2 writing have not been examined

much. (Joaquin, Kim, & Shin, 2013) They have found

that learners who apply prewriting strategies

generally perform better than those who do not do it.

However, this is not applied to a particular strategy

since outlining and listing are not the most effective

strategy. They further propose that allocating more

time in prewriting stage does facilitate the producing

of a better essay.

Furthermore, Andrew (2016) compares the

attitude of L2 learners toward traditional outlining

and the use of multimodal in outlining. The learners

250

Winiharti, M.

Strengthening the Outlining Process to Improve EFL Students’ Academic Writing Competence.

DOI: 10.5220/0007165402500253

In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference

on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 250-253

ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2

view positively toward the outlining activity as it is

considered useful to develop content and organize

information in their writing. Other findings also

encourage teachers to provide more time in the stage

of prewriting, including outlining. (Andrew, 2016;

Zúñiga & Macías, 2006)

This paper explores how the prewriting stage –

specifically outlining – influences L2 learners in

producing better academic essays. It also investigated

how far the students can apply unity in their writing.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

According to Zemach & Ghulldu (2011) pre-writing

stage is when students plan what they will write. This

stage includes choosing a topic, gathering ideas, and

organizing ideas. Outlining can be classified into the

final step, which is organizing ideas. Joaquin, Kim, &

Shin (2013) suggest that an outline is “an organized

list of main ideas, in which subordination occurs

representing supporting examples or ideas that the

writer may intend to follow for the final product.” The

outline should follow a certain structure of

organization which is developed similar according to

a number of authors. (Folse et al., 2014; Oshima &

Hague, 2014; Zemach & Ghulldu, 2011) It consists

of:

 Introductory paragraph: in which the thesis

statement is presented. By stating the thesis

clearly, the writers can show the specific topics

and controlling ideas they want to discuss.

 Body paragraphs (the number of paragraphs

may vary): the development of the topics stated

in the introductory paragraph.

 Concluding paragraph: the restatement of the

thesis, summary or review of the main points

discussed in the body. It can also present the

writer’s concluding remarks about the topic.

These three parts are basic and important parts of

an essay. All ideas among paragraphs must be well

connected to the thesis statement, and the supporting

ideas in a body paragraph. This is called “unity”.

(Zemach & Ghulldu, 2011)

3 METHODS

This is action research which has recorded the

activities in an Academic Writing class. The

participants were 20 second semester students

majoring in English. The stages applied in this course

included prewriting, writing, and post-writing

activities. However, due to the limited time and

energy, the study focuses only on the prewriting –

specifically outlining – and writing activities.

There were several steps taken. First, the teacher

provided explanation about how to write in an

academic context, including the organization of the

essay and the use of proper vocabulary in academic

context. Then the students were asked to brainstorm

a certain topic which was provided by the teacher. In

this stage, the students could freely write what they

knew about the topic. Afterwards, they were asked to

write the first draft of the outline. In this activity, they

must follow the organization of academic essays:

introduction, body, and conclusion. The writing of the

thesis statement was considered highly important in

the introduction part since it comprised the whole

idea of the essay. The writing of the thesis statement

was evaluated based on the topics and controlling

ideas.

Next the teacher checked the first draft of the

outline to see whether the students follow the

organization of the essay. In this stage, the teacher

provided feedback for the students to revise their first

outline. Then when the outlines were confirmed

correct, the students could write their first draft of the

essay. In this stage, the essay were mainly assessed

based on the organization, whether it followed the

outline. Thus, the outline and the essay were

compared whether they were in line or not. The unity

among paragraphs is also assessed to find whether the

ideas in the paragraphs are well developed.

4 RESULTS

The discussion in this section mainly deals with

whether the students accurately wrote their outlines

and essays. The topic that the teacher provided was

“traditional market vs modern market in your

neighborhood.”

The following is the summary of first outlining

activity in terms of the number of students.

Table 1: Summary results of first outlining.

Accurate

thesis

statement

Thesis

stateme

nt needs

revision

Accurate

outline

(follow the

organizatio

Less or not

accurate (not

follow the

organization;

need revision)

In the first activity, after the teacher provided

some explanation about academic writing, the

students were asked to brainstorm about a certain

Strengthening the Outlining Process to Improve EFL Students’ Academic Writing Competence

251

topic provided. Then they were asked to write the first

draft of the outlines. The writing of the thesis

statement is highly concerned in this activity. The

results indicate that only one student wrote an

accurate thesis, which means that this student was

able to present the topic and controlling ideas clearly.

Her outline was also accurate. Thus, there were 19

students who had to revise their thesis and outlines.

For these students, the teacher provided feedback

dealing with thesis statement, organization, and how

to develop unity among paragraphs. Thus, the next

activity was revising the first draft of the outlines.

This table shows the summary result from the

second outlining.

Table 2: Summary results of second outlining.

Accurate

thesis

statement

thesis

statemen

t needs

revision

Accurate

outline

(follow the

organizatio

Less or not

accurate (not

follow the

organization;

need revision)

After revising the first draft of the outline, several

students showed improvement in writing the thesis

and outlines. It could be clearly seen that 13 students

improved in writing their outlines. However, there

were only 7 students who did better in writing the

thesis statement. It means that there were 6 students

who had more accurate outlines but their thesis

statement needed to be revised in some ways. Their

thesis was not yet accurate due to one of these factors:

the sentence structure was not correct; the topics and

controlling ideas were not clear. Therefore, they must

revise their thesis statement and outlines once again.

Certainly the teacher still provided feedback for the

students.

Table 3 shows the summary result of the third

outlining.

Table 3: Summary results of third outlining

Accurate

thesis

statement

thesis

statemen

t needs

revision

Accurate

outline

(follow the

organizatio

Less or not

accurate (not

follow the

organization;

need revision)

As it can be indicated by the table above that

improvement was made by 10 students in terms of

thesis statement writing, and 4 students in terms of

accurate outline. In other words, 2 students still

needed guidance to write the thesis statement and

outline more accurately. However, after experiencing

3 stages for outlining, all students could continue to

write the first draft of the essay. They must develop

their outlines into an essay with a certain organization

and unified ideas.

The following table summarizes the result of first

draft of essay writing.

Table 4: Summary result of first essay drafting.

Accurate

essay

organization

Less accurate

essay

organization

Accurate

unity

Less

accurate

unity

After revising the outlines twice and acquiring

more accurate ones, the students were assigned to

write the first draft of the essay. Table 4 shows that in

terms of organization, 16 students wrote the essay

accurately while 4 of them wrote less accurately. In

other words, there were 16 students who had written

the essay which was in line with the outlines they

produced. The body paragraphs showed development

of the thesis statement and the conclusion either

restated or summarized all discussions. However, 4

students were not able to write the essay accurately

since the body paragraphs were not developed quite

well. In addition, there were 13 students who had

applied unity accurately and 7 of them applied it less

accurately. Thus, there were 3 students who had

written the essay accurately (in terms of organization)

but the unity was not quite well developed. It means

that there were a few ideas which were unrelated one

another. For these cases, the teacher provided

feedback for them to revise their first draft of essays.

Table 5: Summary result of second essay drafting.

Accurate

essay

organization

Less accurate

essay

organization

Accurate

unity

Less

accurate

unity

The second drafting of essays showed much

improvement. 3 students had revised their essay and

the organization was much better. It means they were

able to develop the ideas in the body paragraphs in

line with the thesis statement. In addition, 6 students

improved by being able to apply unity in their essay;

It was much better developed.

5 CONCLUSION

The study generally shows that outlining process as

well as teacher’s feedback are crucial to produce a

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

252

better academic essay. The students have shown

improvement from the first step of writing outlines

until producing the essay. Indeed students and

teachers should provide much more time in the

outlining stage. Teachers must guide their students

step by step, especially when providing feedback for

them to acquire what the course requires. By writing

an outline before drafting, students will have a

structure in their mind about what to write and what

ideas to be developed.

6 LIMITATIONS AND

SUGGESTION FOR FURTHER

RESEARCH

The study is limited to discussing the process of

outlining and essay drafting in terms of organization

and unity. It does not specifically include

grammatical mistakes. Therefore, further research

may explore more about the grammatical aspects

involved in the writing.

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Andrew, M. 2016. L2 Writer’s Attitudes to Outlines in a

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