Native Reader’s Expectations toward Indonesian Students’

Writing: Islamic Higher Education Context

Deny Efita Nur Rakhmawati

and Mira Shartika

Department of English Literature, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, Indonesia

Keywords: Native Reader’s Expectations, Indonesian College Students, Essay Writing

Abstract: This research, which aims to find out native reader’s expectations toward EFL students’ writing, employs a

descriptive qualitative design as it observes and analyses the Indonesians’ essay writings. In collecting the

data, the teacher asked the students to discuss the cultural topics given in the form of group discussion.

Then, each student’s essay writing was commented by the native speaker related to her expectation on the

writing based on the given topic. The result revealed that several students have the tendency to use their

native language pattern, although they wrote essays in English. Besides, grammatical mistakes and

inappropriate vocabularies usage were found in most essays, which mainly contributed to determining and

fulfilling the native reader’s expectation and resulted in native reader’s misunderstanding. The findings also

showed that most students had problems with the language use. Furthermore, the clarity of writing could not

be seen in the majority of the Indonesian essay writings. Nevertheless, there were several students who were

able to write essays using appropriate words and effective patterns.

1 INTRODUCTION

Language cannot be separated from culture

(Seidl, 1998). Thus, a number of studies have been

conducted to investigate the inextricable connection

of language and culture (Crozet & Liddicoat, 1997;

Kramsch, Cain, & Murphy-Lejeune, 1996; Seidl,

1998). Generally, in language class, a language

learner is required to learn the culture of that

language. This is sometimes difficult, considering

the fact that learners have their own culture or

subcultures to bring to the class. Another reason,

time can be the major problem to facilitate the

teaching of these cultures.

It is even more difficult in EFL writing class.

Students have to learn how to write compositions in

English. Bringing their cultures and subcultures,

students should be able to write compositions which

are “communicative” (Hinds, 1987). This is quite

challenging because the gaps between EFL students’

culture and English culture are high. In addition,

culture influences writing habits and appears not

only among cultures with major differences, but also

the minor ones (Ahmed, 2010). In is proven by the

clear differences of the texts produced by Finnish

and Anglo-Americans, caused by the influence of

their first cultures, resulting in the difference of

rhetorical preferences (Ahmed, 2010).

Taking the aforementioned example into

account, it is highly probable that the English texts

written by the EFL students in the Indonesian

Islamic higher education—who are Muslims—will

have a different rhetorical organization from those

written by native speakers. This might cause several

problems, especially for native English readers.

Several approaches to contrastive rhetoric have

explained that the differences in writing are derived

from “multiple sources, including L1 national

culture, L1 educational background, disciplinary

background, genre characteristics and mismatched

expectations between readers and writers” (Connor,

1996). This research is conducted to gain a better

understanding in such context in writing pedagogy.

Based on the above phenomenon, this study is

intended to find out how native reader’s expectations

toward EFL students’ writing and how their Islamic

cultural background influences their writing.

Nur Rakhmawati, D. and Shartika, M.

Native Reader’s Expectations toward Indonesian Students’ Writing: Islamic Higher Education Context.

DOI: 10.5220/0009927813711379

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2018), pages 1371-1379

ISBN: 978-989-758-458-9

1371

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Readers’ Expectation

English is a writer-responsible language,

tending to prefer specificity (Salies, 2013).

Consequently, the writers are required to meet the

expectations of literate readers of Standard English.

They are also expected to produce texts that have a

unique personality or voice. In line with this, writing

as readers or writers responsible rhetoric, according

to the degree to which readers are required to make

inferential bridges between propositions and to

deduce meaning from a text, as opposed to the

degree of the writer's duty to explicitly provide

explanations of propositions (Hinds, 1987). Thus, it

can be concluded that writers are fully responsible

for what they state in their compositions.

Furthermore, the structure of sentences favors a

description in which the grammatical relation

subject-predicate assumes primary importance

becomes one of the examples that writers becomes

subjects prominent in English. It can be seen from

the perceived subjectivity of the self of western

people in allowing individuals to have their own

perceptions, opinions, choices, and creativity. It is

reflected in how they implicitly accept their children

to make their own decisions, develop their own

opinions, solve their own problems, have their own

possessions, and learn to view the world from the

point of view of the self.

In contrast, Indonesians try to see themselves as

a part of the community by not trying to excel others

or showing off (Kuntjara, 2004). It is considered as a

low profile attitude that enhances harmony and has a

positive effect in communication. The best way to

show this is by concealing themselves in the we

group, especially when they write. Even when they

have ideas that they want to put forward, the safest

way is to state it in: we think or we believe

statements rather than an assertion of I think or I

believe. In one sense, they will look modest, but in

another sense they may lessen the responsibility of

proposing that statement as their own idea.

However, this is not what the native readers expect

since they like something specific and concern on

independence.

Western people also find clarity in language

usage better than ambiguity since precision leads to

practical action. If the message is understood, then

language and communication are good (Stewart &

Bennet, 2001). They tend to write deductively by

showing specificity in their writing. On the other

hand, Indonesians are very sensitive to other

people’s feelings so as not to hurt others. Many

people also think that stating things directly and

explicitly may sound too blunt or too aggressive and

it can be considered as impolite. One way to be

implicit is to use the inductive way of expressing

ideas. They may state things that are not at all

related to what they really want. Other persons

should figure out themselves what they mean

(Kuntjara, 2004). It truly does not meet the native

readers’ expectation since they will take more time

to get the main idea of that is actually can be stated

simply. They expect a deductive writing with the

values of explicitness, clarity and

straightforwardness.

Another issue is that English writing always asks

the writers to give facts and statistics since they are

considered to be the strongest method of support in

English and that when the writers make an assertion,

it must be supported with specific examples or

quantifiable measures. Other cultures may rely on

the hierarchical, rather than the scientific, model of

proof. It is not unusual, for example, to have EFL

students use quotes from religious books or

statements made by a political leader as evidence for

their assertions. Students will need practice in

identifying and supplying the kinds of support

expected in academic writing in English.

2.2 Rhetorical Organization

The different rhetorical styles in writing have been

studied by many researchers. The study of the

differences that occur between the discourses of

different languages and cultures as reflected in

foreign students' writing is called as contrastive

rhetoric. It is also an area of research in foreign

language learning focuses on the problems in

academic writing encountered by foreign language

writers by referring them to the rhetorical strategies

of the first language. Contrastive rhetoric is “an

investigation area that is directly relevant to a

pedagogically-oriented study of academic English”

because of the insights it offers into differences

between languages at the discourse level (Swales,

1990). Language and writing are cultural

phenomena, and, as a direct consequence, each

language has unique rhetorical conventions (Connor,

1996).

For Indonesians as foreign students, linguistic and

cultural patterns transfer to their writing in English

not only at the word and sentence level but also at

the discourse level (Moran, 1991) since their

original styles may not work with the new tasks

assigned by the teachers, they need to adapt to the

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new academic context which has its own

conventions (Jordan, 1997).

The organization, writing of native speakers of

English favors linearity, Arabic speakers parallelism,

Romance language speakers digressions in the way

they compose, and Asians indirection (Kaplan,

1966). He depicts the organization of paragraphs

written by native speakers of English as a straight,

vertical line to represent the linearity of the

organizational pattern. On the other hand, he

represented Semitic rhetorical patterns by a

zigzagged line and Oriental (Asian) rhetoric by a

spiral circle. It shows that each language has its own

thought pattern which are reflected in its rhetoric

styles of writing.

This knowledge can be applied in EFL writing

pedagogy by informing and educating EFL students

about the rhetorical traditions of both their native

and target languages (Leki, 1991), teaching them to

appreciate their own native rhetorical traditions, to

identify cross-cultural differences, and to make the

transition to the organizational patterns of the target

language (Mok, 1993).

Contrastive rhetoric focuses attention on seven types

of knowledge in the teaching of writing: (1)

knowledge of rhetorical patterns of arrangement and

the relative frequency of various patterns (e.g.

exposition/argument: classification, definition, etc.);

(2) knowledge of composing conventions and

strategies needed to generate text (e.g. pre-writing,

data-collection, revision, etc.); (3) knowledge of the

morphosyntax of the target language, particularly as

it applies to the intersentential level; (4) knowledge

of the coherence-creating mechanisms of the target

language; (5) knowledge of the writing conventions

of the target language in the sense of both frequency

and distribution of types and text appearance (e.g.

letter, essay, report); (6) knowledge of the audience

characteristics and expectations in the target culture;

and (7) knowledge of the subject to be discussed,

including both what everyone knows in the target

culture and specialist knowledge (Grabe & Kaplan,

1996).

2.3 Cultural Impact on Students’

Writing

As most Indonesian EFL learners in the Islamic

University, where the study was undertaken, were

graduated from Islamic Boarding house/schools, the

cultural impact of Islam was increasing. Their

writings were influenced by Arabic writing style,

rather than by western style. Consequently, they

would have some challenges in expressing their

ideas critically and creatively in the form of logical

essay writing, just like what we usually found from

an English text. Previous studies have been

conducted to know the cultural transfer of Islam into

English essays written by Arabian EFL students.

First, Rass (1994) shows that Arab students do

not consider readers when they are producing

English texts. Moreover, they also develop their

ideas in Arabic, their native language, and they

translate the development of ideas into English

(Khuwaileh & Shoumali, 2000). As the reflection of

their thought patterns, Arab produces long and

indirect English text, just like when they write their

personal letters (Al-Khatib, 2001).

In addition, growing in a collectivism culture,

Arab tends to be in groups rather than individuals

and it can be seen from the way they use pronouns

expressing collectiveness and togetherness, ‘we’ and

‘us’ (Feghali, 1997). As Muslim usually recites The

Holy Qur’an, he says that Arab uses repetition in

their English texts, which totally in contrast with the

concept of how usually native speakers write their

essays. They repeat words, phrases and sentences in

order to convince the readers. At last, Arabic

speakers tend to exaggerate and over-assert things to

convince and persuade the readers (Feghali, 1997).

3 METHOD

This research employed a descriptive qualitative

design as it observed and analyzed the Indonesians’

essay writings through non-numerical data but

accumulation of information analyzed descriptively.

The qualitative design was applied in order to obtain

information by questioning, engaging, observing,

and analysing the Indonesian students’ essay

writings. The subjects of this research were the

second year students of English department in an

Islamic university in Malang taking Writing II

course in 2016-2017 academic years.

The data of this study were the students’ essay

writings, which were narrative essays with the topic

of cultural bases. To analyse the data, essay writings

of fifteen students were selected randomly. During

the observation, any details relating to the students’

discussion on cultural topics were included in field

notes. Unstructured text data and the open-ended

questionnaires were also helpful to provide

supporting data and verify the information gained

from observations and field-note traces.

In collecting the data, the teacher asked the

students to discuss the cultural topics given in the

form of group discussion. They discussed how to

elaborate the topic into the draft of their essay

Native Reader’s Expectations toward Indonesian Students’ Writing: Islamic Higher Education Context

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writings. This topic was given to the students in

different meetings in about two months. After

discussing the topics and the drafts in the form of

groups, the students started writing and collected the

essays in the form of soft files. From several

meetings, there were about fifteen essay writings

chosen randomly for the data of this study. These

essay writings were sent via email to the English

native speaker who had been contacted previously

and agreed to help reading and analysing the

students’ essays writing related to her expectation.

In this study, the native speaker became the native

reader.

The analysis was done in several steps. First, the

native reader was requested to read the foreign

language students’ compositions. Then, each

composition was commented related to her

expectation on the writings based on the given topic.

A writing rubric was provided for her, so that she

could comment on the compositions based on their

writing structure, grammar, and chosen

vocabularies. Finally, the native reader was

requested to give overall comments, reviews, and

critics on the writings based on the easiness to

understand the essay content regarding students’

direct or indirectness in writing a narrative. The

native reader was also questioned about the cultural

values included in the narrative essays.

4 DISCUSSION

When EFL students write English compositions,

it is significant for them to know how native

speakers think when they do similar things. This

research, therefore, places this issue to discuss. To

answer the research problem, an English native

speaker was requested to be a native reader. She was

asked to score and comment the students’ essay

writings, which were narrative essays. The essays’

topics were western culture based on the movie they

had ever watched.

There were 15 narrative essay writings chosen

from three different categories: good, average, and

low levels of essay writings. The levels were based

on the score given by the native reader. Good score

means the composition’s structure is easy to follow

and contains very minimum grammatical mistakes

and inappropriate vocabularies. Low level is in the

other way round.

Then, the analysis was done on the basis of the

native reader’s expectations (Hinds, 1987; Stewart &

Bennett, 2011), which was related to four aspects:

easiness in following the flow of essay due to

grammatical mistakes and vocabularies

inappropriateness, perception in viewing the whole

essay due to grammatical mistakes and vocabulary

usage, understanding of the whole essay due to

direct or indirect way of expressing ideas, and

expectation on cultural values.

4.1 Easiness in Following the Flow of

Essay Due to Grammatical

Mistakes and Vocabularies

Inappropriateness

The first aspect to discuss is easiness in

following the flow of essay due to grammatical

mistakes and vocabularies usage. The essays that

would be analysed were under several titles covering

Christmas, Bonfire Night, Halloween Party,

Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, and Summer

Festival.

Most of the essays contained some grammatical

mistakes. The example of the mistake could be seen

from an essay entitled Christmas. The native reader

mentioned that the grammatical mistake was

apparent in the following sentence: “Some of

westerners dressed and act like Santa clause.” The

tense of ‘dressed’ and ‘act’ were not in a parallel

form. It should be ‘dress and act’ or ‘dressed and

acted’.

Another example of grammatical mistake could

be found in the essay writing entitled Halloween

Party. The composition contained major

grammatical mistakes. One of the grammatical

mistakes could be seen from the first sentence of the

essay. The native reader commented that this

sentence used clumsy and convoluted phrase. The

sentence was: “Halloween party is one of western

culture which is held every October 31

“. This

sentence was passively phrased.

Next example of grammatical mistake was

evident an essay about Thanksgiving. The mistaken

grammatical form could be seen from one of the

sentences produced by the students: “Based on the

movie that I watched, it talked about how the

westerners did some costumes for two days in

thanksgiving party, such as visited to their family

and friends, dinner together and went to shopping.”

The native reader says that this is a very awkward

sentence. There is no sentence agreement and it

takes a long time for her to realize that the student

must mean ‘customs’ not ‘costumes’.

There was only one essay that contained minor

grammatical mistakes. The essay entitled Bonfire

Night. Yet, several inappropriate vocabularies

appeared in the essay, which could be seen from:

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“Bonfire night is an annual festival which is

identical with firework, certain costume and food.”

Here the native reader was not sure what the use of

‘identical’ meant. She was not able to identify

whether the reader tried to express whether that

festival was always celebrated with firework, certain

costumes, and food or not.

Furthermore, the inappropriate vocabulary

could be identified from an essay about Valentine’s

Day. The incorrect vocabulary could be seen in the

following sentence: “…some people commonly

choose or decorate their date in such a romantic

setting, for example, putting love balloons in the

whole space and playing romantic songs.” The usage

of “decorate their date” implies the person is

decorating their lover, not the ‘date venue’. In this

case, the writer just chooses a word that is actually

giving different meaning. Here, the writer does not

aware that he just uses a word that can bring another

meaning to the sentence he just writes which makes

the native reader difficult to understand what the

writer means.

Moreover, the inappropriate vocabulary usage,

although just one vocabulary, would lead the native

reader into the different direction of understanding.

It could be found in the phrase of Summer Festival

essay: “on the acme of summer festival”. The native

reader does not understand the meaning of the word

‘acme’. She also thinks that the word does not exist

in English vocabulary.

According to the native reader, grammatical

mistakes involving the incorrect use of tense,

incorrect sentence structure, the missing articles and

long convolutes sentences, which interrupted the

flow of the essay, and frequent changing of tense,

which was used inappropriately, could be another

challenging factors to understand the flow of the

essay. Several essays that contained major

grammatical mistakes and inappropriate

vocabularies were not easy to read.

4.2 Perception in Viewing the Whole

Essay Due to Grammatical Mistake

and Vocabularies Usage

The second aspect of the native reader’s

expectation related to the perception in viewing the

whole essay due to grammatical mistakes and

vocabularies usage. This discussion is related to the

first discussion since it also deals with grammatical

mistakes and vocabularies inappropriateness in the

students’ essay writing. While the first discussion

focuses on the native reader’s easiness to follow the

flow of the essay, this second discussion relies on

the native reader’s perception on the whole essay.

First, the native reader said that the perception

of the whole essay would be influenced by several

confusing sentences in the essay. One of the essays

contained major grammatical mistakes that were

very fatal and unacceptable. The grammatical

mistakes in this essay could easily be forgiven if the

student was writing a narrative to a friend. However,

as an academic essay, the validity of the content

would be severely undermined by the method of

delivery which makes it very difficult to read.

Numerous confusing sentences made it impossible

to keep a ‘flow’ and frame a perception. In

particular, the sentence: “After they feel tired

because they are dancing, this are waited the most

by the participants” is considered as convoluting

sentences. These sentences are also felt out of place

and do not flow with the rest of the description of

events that occur at a Halloween party.

Another thing that could be initiated from this

part of the discussion is about the mistakes made by

the students. The mistakes would also influence the

strength of the essay. As it is said by the native

reader on one of the student’s essay writing, that

there are a few awkward sentences and instances of

inappropriate vocabulary that have a dramatic

impact on the overall strength and readability of the

essay, for example: “Most of western people

appreciate Christmas with luxury and great gift.”

Another impact on native reader’s perception is

exacerbated by frequent changing of tense. The

changing of tense from one paragraph to the other

paragraphs would totally impact on the perception of

the native reader. The tense inconsistency would

influence the meaning of the text, as in this essay,

that talks about a tradition that is celebrated every

year. Thus, It should use simple present tense rather

than past tense. The use of past tense here was

questioned by the native reader since she considers

that when the writer uses the past tense to describe

an event or tradition, this would mean that tradition

is no longer done nowadays. More importantly, there

is another essay that does not contain many

grammatical errors or instances of the inappropriate

vocabulary. In this sense, it is quite easy to read.

However, compared to many of the other essays, the

student has “played it safe” and avoided detailed,

long descriptions or varied vocab. Therefore, the

native reader’s perception is that while it is

“correct’, it is not as effective as some of the essays

with more grammatical errors but it also has more

developed content.

Despite the fatal grammatical errors made by

the students, there were few students who just did

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1375

great jobs in writing the essays. One of the students

made very few grammatical errors. They used

articles correctly (many students have been skipping

these) and created sentences with varying length.

The vocabulary used was effective and varied. With

the exception of a confusing sentence in the last

paragraph, this essay could have been written by an

English speaker. This comment clearly shows that

very few grammatical mistakes and vocabularies

inappropriateness makes the native reader easily

frame a perception from what she read.

On the other hand, another comment—a

positive one—was given by the native reader to one

of the students who made few grammatical mistakes

and used inappropriate vocabularies. She said that

overall, the grammatical errors do not heavily

influence her perception of the essay. Most mistakes

were fairly minor and did not change the meaning of

the text and did not impact upon the native reader’s

perception on the essay. The essay was also read

well and rarely tripped the reader up with its

wording. This could be said that minor mistakes on

tenses and vocabularies would make the native

reader easily understand the meaning of the text and

help a lot to have the perception of the whole essay.

4.3 Understanding of the Whole Essay

Due to Directness or Indirectness

Way of Writing the Text

Third aspect relates to native readers’

expectation is the understanding of the native reader

due to direct and indirectness way of writing the

text. General topic would take very important role in

forming the native reader’s perception on the essay

writing. Although there was some indirectness,

however, when dealing with a ‘safe’ and narrative

topic such as Christmas, she did not find that any

indirectness on behalf of the student negatively

impacted on her understanding of the essay. The

indirectness was influenced by the Indonesian

cultural background. By writing general topic like

this, it still could be tolerated. More importantly,

indirect way of writing could be easily found in the

ESL’s essay writing, which tends to occur during

pieces of writing that are supposed to be persuasive.

When students are trying to prove/explore a fact-

based hypothesis in their essays, a reluctance to be

direct could come across as a lack of knowledge

and/or lack of ability to back up their assertions.

This seriously undermines the credibility of these

pieces of work.

In fact, safe topic such as Christmas seems not

always working in helping the ESL students to deal

with indirectness. Another essay writing with the

same topic comes with the issues which is not only

caused simply by indirectness but also by the

student’s constant use of ambiguous pronouns

(they), which is confusing. In terms of essay

conventions, the students never mention that they

are drawing their information from a film. This

indirectness would give different perception and

lead the native reader to the wrong way. This would

not be a problem if they do not refer to the film

(without specifying a name) in the last paragraph.

Essay conventions state that you should never

introduce new information in the conclusion

paragraph. Giving new information in the

concluding paragraph would hang the information

and confuse the flow of the essay writing. The native

reader would trap with a dead end essay writing.

Directness and indirectness of the text could

also be seen from diction. In an essay entitled

Bonfire Night, the native reader comments that the

direct language at the introductory paragraph is

somewhat conversational in tone. While this might

be appropriate for a descriptive essay on Bonfire

night, the ‘soft’ language used would be frowned

upon in more persuasive writing. The phrase “Have

you ever heard of Bonfire Night?” would not be

appropriate in more ‘serious’ types of essays.

However, it is a good example of the way an English

written narrative might utilize a ‘hook’ line to reel a

reader in. In a word, this essay writing uses direct

opening to the readers, which is okay to do as long

as it is used in writing a personal essay, not the

academic one.

Indirectness of writing was also found in an

essay entitled Halloween Party. The indirect way

this essay is written makes it difficult to understand.

The student structures their sentences in a very

convoluted way, which makes it challenging for the

reader to stay focused. The convoluted ways of

writing could be seen from some sentences that also

felt out of place and did not flow with the rest of the

description of events that occurred at a Halloween

party. It is clearly stated when the student writes the

history of Halloween in the second paragraph and

then writes the history of Halloween again in the

third paragraph. This should probably be placed just

after the first sentence of the first paragraph of this

essay. The student needs to learn to highlight the

subject of the sentence most effectively.

The next essay writing shows another kind of

indirectness in its text. The student’s indirectness is

not abundantly obvious here. Because the topic is

narrative writing and not persuasive essay writing,

the indirect tone does not negatively impact the

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native reader’s understanding of the text. It could be

said that the kind of essay writing also influences the

tone of the essay. Even though it is written

indirectly, the perception of the native reader in

understanding this essay does not change. This

indirectness of course would have different impact

when it is written in an argumentative or persuasive

essay. This narrative essay helps the writer a lot in

case of indirectness so that this indirectness could

still be accepted and understood by the native reader

since it does not change the meaning of the whole

text.

Another essay writing totally put the native

reader in difficulties to ascertain whether or not the

student is indirect in their writing, because this essay

is so challenging for her to read. This means that the

native reader could not get the idea and information

delivered in the essay writing so that she could not

decide whether the style of writing is direct or

indirect. However, the presence of transitional

sentences between paragraphs is helpful and aligned

with her expectations.

On the other hand, the rest of the essay writings

show some ways of directness. There is one essay

which is direct at the beginning of the essay writing

and then indirect at the middle to the end of the

essay writing. At least, the student has made

attempts to be direct. For example, the student

introduces the essay with a reference to her/his own

excitement. As it can be found in the following

sentence: “I am always excited to wait and see

Valentine’s Day every year because it is believed as

the feast of saint valentine.” The personal

excitement here shows the directness of the writer to

start the essay writing. However, she/he has a habit

of being vague and indirect when describing

Valentine’s Day practices, and often demonstrates

unclear pronoun usage. The indirectness could be

identified from the way the writer writes the three

body paragraphs. These three body paragraphs talk

about the practices of Valentine’s Day celebration

whose processes are very complicated and do not get

through the point straight away. Although there are a

lot of awkward sentences, the structure of the essay

follows English conventions of introduction, body,

conclusion and this helps to guide the reader through

the piece.

4.4 Expectation on Cultural Values

Expectation on cultural values is the last factor yet

the main focus here. In this research, the native

reader is asked to look at the values on cultural side

in the ESL students’ essay writing, whether the

essay writing has already delivered the cultural

values or not. The data show that there were some

students who wrote the same topics with different

tone and way of expression especially in delivering

the information of the cultural sides. The same

topics used by the students are Christmas,

Halloween, and Thanksgiving; while the rests are

Bonfire, Prom Night, Finding Partner, Barbecue,

Leap Year Proposal, Valentine’s Day, and Summer

Festival.

There are three different essay writings use

Christmas as the idea of the writing. The first essay

writing was written in a fairly straight forward way

which seems to echo the native reader conventions.

While the structure is linear, as Kaplan suggests, the

content itself accurately describes a traditional

Western Christian Christmas, except for the

exchanging of gifts the day after Christmas. Another

essay writing with the same topic shows that the

student does a decent job of exploring the activities

surrounding Christmas, such as family get together

and present exchanging. However, the examples are

a little vague and repetitive. Repeating examples

many times in one essay writing shows that the

students is not able to describe the cultural values

yet. In the other essay writing, the student uses

examples from movies to effectively illustrate some

of the culture surrounding Christmas in the west.

Subject specific vocab (such as tinsel) helps to

strengthen the text and position the reader within the

narrative essay.

Unlike the essay on Christmas, the native reader

does not have the cultural framework to understand

the piece of writing entitled Bonfire Night.

However, the student does a good job of conveying

what he has witnessed, even to someone who has

never experienced Bonfire Night. It is a

straightforward account that follows Kaplan’s linear

structure theory. In terms of cultural writing values,

this essay ends with a summarizing statement. This

is a really important convention in English essay

writing and gives credibility to the rest of the

writing.

The essay writing about Halloween shows that

Western countries vary in their celebration of

Halloween. In Australia, for example, many people

do not celebrate Halloween and trick-or-treating is

rare. However, the essay describes various activities

that seem to be synonymous with America’s

Halloween traditions and therefore met the native

reader’s expectations. Another writing about

Halloween explains that this essay provides a clear

and concise description of Halloween throughout the

ages and fulfills the native reader’s cultural

expectations. Another essay gives examples of

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Halloween practices are in line with what the native

reader knows about the holiday.

In addition, in Australia, there is no ‘prom

night’. They just have a ‘graduation party’. There

are some significant differences between the way

American high school students and Australian high

school students celebrate. However, the student

shows that they have understood the material they

viewed. The use of the word ‘awesome’ is a nice

touch.

Moreover, it could be said that several students

have the tendency to use their native language

pattern even though they are writing essays in

English. This is when the cultural transfer is likely to

happen. As a consequence, the message they want to

say in their essays will not be successfully delivered

(Bennui, 2008). Moreover, the grammatical mistakes

and inappropriate vocabulary usage found in the

students’ essay writing are totally able to show that

these two parts have vital roles in determining and

fulfilling the native reader’s expectation. When these

two factors happen, the native reader’s expectation

would not able to be fulfilled by the essay writer,

which then would impossibly bring the native reader

into misunderstanding. As in a study (Hinds, 1987),

the structure of sentences favors a description in

which the grammatical relation subject-predicate

assumes primary importance.

In this research, we could see that many of the

students’ essay writing still have problems in the

language category, it could be said that most of the

students’ essay writing are not too communicative

enough. As it is stated earlier (Silva, 1992), one of

the three categories to consider developing a proper

second language writing is a language which is

mainly related to grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and

punctuation. All of these categories will help

student-writers to produce a “communicative”

English text, which can be described as, “English

discourse that shows individual autonomy,

inventiveness, forthrightness, action”. It is also in

line with a research (Ahmed, 2010), Egyptian

student teachers of English experience some

coherence and cohesion problems in their English

writing. In relation to coherence problems in their

English writing some problems are revealed such as

difficulty writing the introduction, the thesis

statement, the topic sentence, writing concluding

sentences and writing the conclusion.

The clarity of writing could not be seen in most

of the Indonesian essay writing but still there are

more who were also able to write precisely and

effectively. This weakness is absolutely influences

the message delivered in the essay. They are not able

to write straight forward about what they want to

say. Western people also find clarity in language

usage as better than ambiguity since precision leads

to practical action. If the message is understood,

then language and communication are good.

5 CONCLUSIONS

By referring to the review of literature explicated

in the background, findings of research and the

discussion on the result of data analysis, the

researchers can draw the following conclusions.

The result of this study reveals that several

students have the tendency to use their native

language pattern even though they are writing essays

in English. This is when the cultural transfer is likely

to happen. Besides, the grammatical mistakes and

inappropriate vocabulary usage found in the

students’ essay writing are totally able to show that

these two parts have vital roles in determining and

fulfilling the native reader’s expectation. When these

two factors happen, the native reader’s expectation

would not able to be fulfilled by the essay writer,

which then would impossibly bring the native reader

into misunderstanding.

The students’ essay writings also show that the

students still have problems in the language

category. It could be said that most of the students’

essay writing are not too communicative enough.

One of the three categories to consider developing a

proper second language writing is a language which

is mainly related to grammar, vocabulary, spelling,

and punctuation. Furthermore, the clarity of writing

could not be seen in most of the Indonesian essay

writing, but still there are more who were also able

to write precisely and effectively. This weakness

absolutely influences the message delivered in the

essay. They are not able to write straight forward

about what they want to say.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to extend our gratitude to Bethany

Tyndall, our dearest colleague, for her thoughtful

assistance in finishing this research. Miss Tyndall

has a Master of TESOL degree, graduating from

Flinders University, Australia, in 2012. We would

also like to thank our dedicated students, who gave

us permission to analyse their essays and to include

them as participants of this study.

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