The Overall Proficiency in English Composition of Indonesian University Students of EFL

This study was aimed at examining the students" overall proficiency in English composition across university-year cohorts and across academic options. The participants were undergraduate students of Universitas Negeri Matang. They were asked to write persuasive essays on whether violence as exposed on TV programs should be restricted. The essays were evaluated using the ESL Composition Profile. The results showed that that there was a significant difference between the firstand fourth-year students' overall proficiency in English composition. In addition, there was no significant difference between the overall proficiency in English composition of the students taking the thesis option and those taking non-thesis option. The instructional program and writing curriculum appeared to play an important role in developing the students' overall proficiency in English composition. However, the thesis prerequisite courses provided to prepare the students to write a thesis proposal did not seem to affect their overall proficiency in English composition.

writing above the sentence level focuses on personalized express-ions of experience" the purpose of which is to provide rnore opportunities for the stu-dents to write.
Further writing courses which are given in the next four semesters have differeni purposes.r'ltiting I emphasizes paragraph wriiirrg based on model paragraphs of various genres.writing II teaches the students to de- velop ideas into an essay with an emphasis on the organization of the essay.
writing III provides the students with opportunities to write more essays requiring various techniques of development, such as the cause and effect essay or the comparison and contrast essay" writing IV focuses on the de- velopment of an argumentative type of writing, i,e.one with problem-solution patterns.Included in this advanced writing course is the instruction of the persuasive type of writing.
The students in the English Department may choose one of two aca- demic options in their study, i.e. the thesis or non-thesis options.The thesis option requires the stud,ents to take three additional courses, i.e.Introduction to Thesis writing, Thesis Proposal seminar, and Research statistics.These courses provide the students wiih more writing practice to prepare them to produce a thesis ptoposal.The non-thesis option does not requirc +l-^ ^.,,1^-.^.^.^l-^ rL^ -ll:^:-r rlls Jrutrrills tu tilt\tr urtr auuruuflill uuurses.
A study conducted previously indicated that undergraduate studcnrs of the English Department ciid not necessarily write essays of better quality tive essays written by the fourth-year and the third-year students indicated that the essays written by the fourth-year students were more coherent than tiiase \ilritien by tlhe third-yeer students.In terms of sentence construction, the essays written by the three groups of stucients did not show differences in the complexity of sentences.Most of the sentenees in the essays were simple or complex sentences; very few of them were compound or com- pound-eomplex sentences.In terms of sentence length' the stucients did not write longei descriptive essays as they had longer study period and took more courses.With regard to grammatical and mechanical qualities, the students did not ma-ke fewer errors as they took more courses.Latief also found that the primary-trait scoring was effective for assessing the rhetorical qiraiity of the students' writing and it could be impiemented without any difficulty.
Examining the results of research reported by Latief, it is in'riguing tc investigate the students' overall proficiency in English composition.In order to guin dutu reflecting the outcome of writing instruction, this study involved the firSt-and fourth-year students.The learning outcome was ex- pected to differ'according to the length of exposure to English instruction and, particularly, to writing insfuction.In addition, an attempt needed to be made to examine the effect of courses related to writing on the students' overall proficiency in English composition.The courses related to writing are the thesis prerequisite courses.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the overall proficiency in English composition of the students across university-year cohorts and aca- demic options.The research questions were formulated as follows: . Does the overall proficiency in Engiish composition of the firsi-year students differ from that of the fourth-year students?
. Does the overall proficiency in English composition of the fourth-year students taking the thesis option differ from that of the fourth-year stu- dents taking the non-thesis option?
Cahyono, The Overall Proficiency in English Composition Bl

MET[IOD
The participants in this study were undergraduate studenis of universitas Negeri Malang.The firstand fourth-year students were asked to write persuasive essays on whether violence on TV programs should be restricted.
To find out which of the fourth-year students w€re taking the thesis option, a questionnaire was distributed.
The data coliecrion took place in september an<i october 1g99.prior to the actual data collection, a pilot study was conducted in two out of fir'e classes of first-year students.The purpose of the pilot study was to exarnine whether the prompts of the writing task had been understood.The essays from the pilot study were used in the practice session of scoring.TWo other classes of the firsryear students and three classes of the fourth-year stu- dents were involved in the actual data collection.Forty essays from each group were selected randomly by using a table of random numbers.The data from the questionnaire indicated that out of 40 fourth-year students, 19 students were taking or had taken the three thesis prerequisite courses and 15 students were taking the non-thesis option.These two groups of stu- dents were compared to know whether the thesis prerequisite courses af- fected the students' overall proficiency in English composition.The other students had not decided whether they would take the thesis option or they had taken one thesis prerequisite eourse.The essays of these students were not used in the analysis.
The students' overall proficiency in Engtish ccmposition was evalu- ated using the ESL Composition Prcfile (Jacobs,er al.,lg8l).This profile was used because it was designed t,r help teachers of Engiish for speakers of other languages evaluate learners' compositions in a practical way.As emphasized by Hartfiel, et al. (1985), the profile is usefui as a guideline fbr iearners to iearn ESL cornposiiion because it cleariy sholvs ihe cornpcnents of writing and the criteria of evaluation.Most imponantiy, this profile had been applied in the English Department where the study was carried out.
The ESL Composition Profile <iivicies writing into five componenrs with various percentages, i.e. content (3AVg, organizarion (20VoJ, vocabu- lary (2A%a),language use (25Va) and mechanics (5Vo).Each component has a set of criteria ranging from "exceiient to very good" to "very poor" with a SpecifiedrangeofScores.Theprofileassumesl00asthehighestpossible score for overall proficiency in English cornposition The scoring of the esiays was done by two raters' The raters were faculty members of the English Department of the same university' These raters had rnore than l0 y-ears of ixperience in teaching English and in evaluating English "o*p..i,ions.
To make sure_that the profile was applied correctly in aisigning "o'"' for each essay' the raters were trained in a worrsr,op session.tn-ttris session, the procedures for applying this measure *er" fir.t explained.The raters were then asked to score five of the essays g"rrrri_Jr*,i-} the pilot study and rhe scores were compared.Different scores were discussed in an utt"*pt to arrive at an agreement in the rating.At the end of discussion, an ugr*t"n, was finally reached tor the total scores anci for the components of the system as well' Theinterraterreliabilitywascomputedioseetheeffectivenessofthe ESL Composition Profile u*"d fo' scoring the students' essays.In addition, anattemptwasalsomadetoexaminedifferencesinscoringbetweenthe first and the second raters using the wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test.This test was used becausJit tut"t into account the magnitude and the direction of the difference for each pair of scores (Huck, et al', 1974:2O4)' io *utyr" the differences in the siudents' overall proficiency in English compositionacrossuniversity-yearcohortsandacrossacademicoptions, flrc r-test was used.Tf,e prolutility level to judge the statistical signifi- cance was .05.The total scores of overall proficiency in English composition were the sum cf scores of content, organization, vocabulary' language use' and mechanics components.The intenater reliabiiity for the totai scores of over- allproficiency.inEnglishcompositionwas.g0'Forthetotalscoresofthe "rruyr, the fiist rateiassigned 38 "*t"yt (47'57a) greater scores than the secondraterdid,whereasthesecondrateralsoassigned33essays(47.5To)greaterscoresthanthefirstraterdid'Fouressays(59o}rcceiv.edthesameseores from the two raters.The difference in scoring between the two raters was not statistically significant (Wilcoxon matched.pairssigned-ranks test, z=-0.67,p>.05,N=80).
Cahyono, The Overall ProJiciency in English Composition 83

RESUUTS
The comtiined scores of ihe two raters were used as a referer,ce for ihe overall proficiency in tsnglish ccrnpcsition.The scores of the first-and fourth-year students on overall proficiency in English composition arepre- sented in Table 1.The table shows that the lowest score of the first-year students is 40 and the highest score is 91.5.The lowest score of the fourthyear students is 53.5 and the highest score is 99.
Thble I Scores of the First-and Fourth-year Students on Overall Pmficiency in English Composition (Mean Scores of 2 Raters) 0l 57 65 il 69 94 21 49 91.5 31 68 77.5 The mean of overall proficiency in English composition of the first- year stuclents is 65.33, whiie thai of the fourth-year siuiients is 84.36.Table 2 shows that there is a significant difference between overall proficiency in l:nglish composition of the firstand fourth-year students.Further examination was focused on the means of the components of the profile.Tlre means {rf confent, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics of the first-year students' essays were 19.8, 13.8, 13.2, 15,  aild 3.6 respectively.The means of ccntent, organization, vocabulary, !an- guage use, and mechanics of the fourth-year students' essays werc 25'2, 17.7,17.!,20, and 4.4, respectively.Figure I exhibits the means of the components of proficiency of the two groups.As shown in the figure, the fourth-year students were more successful than the first-year students in all of the components of proficiency in English composition.'"ddcci" ou Based on the criteria in the ESL Proficiency profile used to evaluate the essays, the two groups' means of proficiency components can be de- scribed further.In terms of content, the first-year students' essays corrtained limited knowledge of subject, limited idea substance, and inadequate topic development.Conversely, the fourth-year students' essays contained some knowledge of subject, adequate range of ideas, and some development of thesis.With regard to organization, the first-year students' essays were loosely organized and not entirely sequenced, whereas the fourth-year stu- dents' essays were fluently s.*-pressed, well organized, and logically se- quenced.In terms of vocabulary', the first-year students' essays contained a limited range of vocabulary and frequent errors of word choice and usage.Unlike the first-year students' essays, the fourth-year students' contained an adequate range of vocabulary and occasional enors of word choice and usage.Concerning language use, the first-year students' essays contained major problems in simple or complex construction and frequent errors of tense and parts ofspeech.In contrast, the fourth-year students' essays contained minor problems in sentence construction and several errors of tense and parts of speech.In terms of mechanics, the first-year students' essays were likely to contain occasional errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing.Conversely, the fourth-year students'essays were likely to demonstrate mastery of conventions and contain fewer errors of ^-^ll:-^ -.--^e--^rl^-^^-ir^li-^ei^---l -^-^^-^-L:-ŝlrgrr rilg, Pu[L;luatlutr, uapr latrzarluil, ill lu Pail aBt dpllrilB,, The status of the students in taking the thesis and non-thesis options did not appear to affeci overall proficienc.v in English composiiion of the fourth-year students.Thble 3 shows that there is no significant difference in the overall proficiency in Engiish composition of the fourth-year siudents taking the thesis and non-thesis options.Because there was no significant difference in the overall proficiency in English composition of the students taking the thesis and non-thesis op- tions,-it can be argu€d that there is no basis for further examination of the components of overall proficiency in English composition'

DiSC{JSSION
The difference of overall proficiency in English composition was   shown between the firstand fourth-year students' The examination of the componcnts of proficiency indicated that the fourth-year sfudents were more successful in all of the components of proficiency in English composition, inciuding content, Organization, vocabuiary, ianguage use, Lnd mechanies' The diffirence was likely to be attributed to the role of the instructional prcgram in the departrnent.The first-year students were in their beginning stage of study, while the fourth-year students had taken all writing courses anJ some of them were taking or had taken the thesis prerequisite courses' Although the instructional pfogram in the department was likely to influence the students' overall proficiency in English composition, the three thesis prerequisite courses did not appear to cause any difference in the overaliproficiency in English composition of the fourth-year students' This *u, "uidrnt from the lack of significant difference in the overall profi- ciency in English composition of students who took the thesis and non- thesis options.A possible reason underlying this might be that the total credits of tn" prerequisite ccurses (6 credits) are too small to cause any difference in the overall proficiency in English composition of the students taking the thesis anci non-thesis options.Another possibie reason might be that both the students taking the thesis and non-thesis options had reached the threshold level of proficiency in English cornposition as established in the curriculum of writing courses.Another possible reason might be that the thesis prerequisite courses are related to a particular genre of writing, i.e. thesis proposal writing, which might not be directly related to the stu- dents' overall proficiency in English composition.However, the findings and the hypotheses should be treated with care because of the limited num- ber of participants taking the thesis and non-thesis options involved in this study.
Cahyono, The Overall profciency in English Composition g7

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIGNS
In light of the results of the study and tire discussion of the results, two conelusions can be drawn.First" the instructional program in general and writing courses in particular appearetl to play a role in developing the students' overall proficiency in English composition.second, although ad- ditional thesis prerequisite courses were designed to prepare the students to write a ihesis proposai, these courses qiid not seem io affect the siudents' overall proficiency in English composition.
The comparison of the overall proficiency in English composition in this study involved students from two extreme levels: the firstand fourth- year.Future research might involve the second-and third-year students as well to provide a more detailed description of the students' overall profi- ciency in writing composition across all university-year cohorts.

Figure I
Figure I Means of components of Proficiency in English composition of the Firstanri Fourth-Year Students

Tbble 3 AD
Comparison of Overall Pmliciency in Enslish Composition of the Fourtlry'ear Students Taking ir're Thesis and i{on-tu'resis Options (Mean Scores of 2

Table 2 A
Comparison of overall Proficiency in English composition of the Firstand Fourth-year Students (Mean Scores of 2 Raters)