International Journal of Social Science (IJSS)

Vol.2 Issue.6 April 2023, pp: 2429-2434

ISSN: 2798-3463 (Printed) | 2798-4079 (Online)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.53625/ijss.v2i6.5542 2429
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A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY ON STUDENTS' ESSAY
WRITING SKILLS
By
I Nyoman Suparsa1, Ida Bagus Nyoman Mantra2, Ni Luh Sukanadi3, I Nyoman Adi Susrawan4, I Nyoman
Suwandi5
1,2,3,4,5
Universitas Mahasaraswati Denpasar
Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
4
[email protected], [email protected]

Article Info ABSTRACT (10 PT)

Article history: The objective of this study was to investigate the essay-writing skills of students in
Received March 17, 2023 Indonesian education institutions. A descriptive study approach was used to collect
Revised March 20, 2023 data from a group of students. Students were given three topics to choose from and
Accepted April 27, 2023 were instructed to write academic essays within a certain time range. The student
writings were gathered and scored using a scoring rubric that assessed several
components of the essays. The data obtained were statistically analysed using
Keywords: descriptive analysis to describe the students’ essay writing skills. According to the
Study, findings of this study, the majority of students performed modestly on the writing
Essay, test, with some performing better than others. The research found that the students
Writing, struggled with organization and consistency, while their grammar and word usage
Students, still required to be improved. The study highlights the importance of enhancing
Skills students' writing skills to a higher level.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license.

Corresponding Author:
I Nyoman Suparsa
Universitas Mahasaraswati Denpasar. Jalan Kamboja 11 A Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION
Writing is a productive language activity. As a language skill, writing is a complex activity because a person
must organize and organize the contents of the writing. Writing activities need someone to express ideas, ideas,
experiences, and opinions in written form. Writing does not develop independently of individuals but as part of the
process of production and expression. As a production process, writing relates to biological aspects that make it
meta-performant. Writing conveys messages through graphic symbols, which are arranged logically and
systematically in words, sentences, paragraphs, and discourses so that the readers understand their meaning (Mantra
et al., 2021).
Writing is a construction process and is one of the most learning skills for students. It is a process of
creative thinking power of an individual to express ideas, ideas they have and can express them in an unspoken way
directly (Cahyani et al., 2018). It is well known that not everyone can express opinions and ideas directly. Therefore,
writing skills are needed. Writing skills are an aspect of language that humans need. Writing expressed by a writer, of
course, has a particular purpose. The result of creative thought sourced from individuals poured through written
language that what then called essay writing (Kadek & Lastari, 2018).
Writing skills are one part of units of expression conveyed through linguistic aspects. Furthermore, writing
is also one of the forms of artistic activity. In writing activities, someone redescribes symbols, shapes, or graphics
whose function can clearly describe a language (Widiastuti et al., 2020). Originally the symbol was challenging to be
interpreted, but in the end, the meaning of the complicated writing can be understood and understood by the
community. This is why writing activity is one of the crucial aspects that need to be mastered by someone in the
process of communicating messages in life socializes (Exposition et al., 2015).
Writing activity is a part that usually becomes one unity obtained through the learning process experienced
by students, primarily when they pursue formal education (Widiastuti, 2018). With good writing skills, it is hoped
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2430 International Journal of Social Science (IJSS)
Vol.2 Issue.6 April 2023, pp: 2429-2434
ISSN: 2798-3463 (Printed) | 2798-4079 (Online)
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that in the future, students will quickly develop their linguistic creativity and distribute it for use in life in society as
well as the work environment they want. Writing activity is something that the students can easily do. Writing
activities have been taught at each level of the educational unit from Kindergarten to College. However, that ability
is acquired that person is not the same. This happens because various things influence it (Widiastuti et al., 2020).
Based on the explanation above, it can be said that a writing activity is an activity that cannot be separated
from the teaching and learning process. This is because the process of writing is not easy for students to do. Activity
writing takes a long time if someone wants to produce good writing. In the process of writing, it is necessary not only
to write neatly and beautifully, but it also requires precision and creativity. All of this, of course, comes from within
the student self (Mantra & Widiastuti, 2019). Thus, to produce writings that contain meaning and can be understood
by other people or readers, students must meet a set of writing requirements.
There are various writing skills, one of which is writing essays essay. In the process of learning to write
essays, students are expected to have the ability to develop the ideas they have (Vijayavalsalan, 2016). In the process,
writing essays requires carefulness to read situations and environmental conditions around them. Thus, their essays
will look good and become more attractive to readers. An essay is a piece of writing made to affect emotional and
psychological readers. In writing an essay, the writer needs complete data and concrete examples or relevant. It is
helpful to influence the reader convincingly with the arguments given. The writing of Essays can influence or invite
readers to join in the same argument as the author. Essays also provide a uniform point of view, such as what the
author wants, and indirectly force the reader to fulfil the author's will. In writing an essay, students must be able to
process the information they have (Zarei & Feizollahi, 2018).
Essay writing is one of the writing skills topics in the Teaching Curriculum for creative writing courses. As
part of language skills, writing skills have a crucial and strategic position because students can express ideas and
problems with others through writing essays (Sun & Feng, 2009). In addition, through essay writing, students can
express problems using sound and coherent language as a basis for writing scientific papers (Mantra et al., 2021).
Writing essays can be helpful for students to practice patience, be thorough, and focus on the topic. Essay writing is
also used to measure the author's knowledge of the topic of discussion. An essay is one type of writing that can be
used to communicate with the public. Aside from emphasizing elements of thought, reasoning, and factual data,
essay writing activities also pay attention to aspects of using language to produce good writing (Tyas, 2020).
Writing an essay aims to convince readers to believe our opinion about an incident. With this aim, the essay
should be accompanied by supporting data and facts so that the reader is sure of our opinion. Besides that, the essay
also aims to show how a cause will have a particular impact, describing a problem and offering a solution. Writing
effectively and efficiently is challenging because it requires a series of processes (Toba et al., 2019). This is because
writing is an activity to convey ideas, thoughts, and feelings in written form so that other people or readers can
understand them (Widiastuti et al., 2020).
Writing is an inevitable human need for students, educators, and employees. However, in reality, in the
educational environment, many students still complain about how difficult it is to write or compose, even though
learning to write has been given since elementary school. Several previous studies found problems in writing essays
(Widiastuti, 2018; Toba et al., 2019; Bukhari, 2016). These problems can be seen in that students need a complete
writing structure to write essays. Studies also revealed that students needed help to write essays coherently. The
essay's title could be more precise, engaging, and relevant to the content. Students writing essays do not show the
elements of the essay in the form of unclear content, so students' essay writing skills still need to improve.
Furthermore, it was found that Some of the results of previous research indicated that students' writing skills
still need to improve, and there still needs to be an enhancement in linguistic, and logical aspects. The inability to
write essays is related to students' weaknesses in expressing their ideas in written forms. Therefore, this study
analysed students' essay writing skills is considered to be essential.

2. RESEARCH METHOD
This study employed a descriptive research design to reveal the real existing ability of the students in
writing academic essays. Thirty-five students participated in this study. They were randomly selected to represent the
total population. The selected students were given three topics to be chosen and then they were assigned to write an
academic essay based on the topic chosen. The collected essays were then analysed by employing a scoring rubric to
obtain an accurate score of the student’s abilities. The scores of the students were then analysed based on a norm-
reference measure of five standard values. This is done to find out the students’ levels ranging from poor to
excellent. After all the data were carefully analyzed, the findings were discussed descriptively to provide a clearer
understanding of the student’s skills in writing academic essays. Data analysis of the student’s skills in writing essays
was essentially conducted to identify the strengths and weaknesses that could be used to design a better teaching
strategy to improve students' writing skills.

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International Journal of Social Science (IJSS)
Vol.2 Issue.6 April 2023, pp: 2429-2434
ISSN: 2798-3463 (Printed) | 2798-4079 (Online)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.53625/ijss.v2i6.5542 2431
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The Scoring Rubric

Criteria Maximum Score
Format – 5 points
- There is a title. 1
- The title is centered. 1
- The first line is indented. 1
- There are margins on both sides. 1
- The work is tidy. 1
Total 5
Punctuation and Mechanics – 5 points
- There is a period after every sentence. 1
- Capital letters are used correctly. 1
- Commas and other punctuation are used correctly. 1
- Spellings are correct. 2
Total 5
Content – 25 points
- The paragraph fits the assignment. 5
- The paragraph is unified. 10
- The paragraph is coherent. 10
Total 25
Organization – 40 points
- The paragraph is begun with clear identification about the object being
10
described.
- The paragraph uses detail descriptions about the object so that the readers can
25
easily visualize it.
- The paragraph is ended with a suitable concluding sentence. 5
Total 40
Grammar and Sentence Structure – 25 points
- Estimate a grammar and sentence structure score. 25
Total 25
Grand Total 100

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This study analyzed the essay-writing ability of the students. The data were obtained by administering a
writing test. The student’s essays were first scored using the scoring rubric and analyzed based on a norm-reference
measure of five standard values.
Results
After scoring the students’ essays using the scoring rubric and the results were analyzed by converting into
a norm-reference measure of five standard values. The summary of data analysis can be presented in the following.

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2432 International Journal of Social Science (IJSS)
Vol.2 Issue.6 April 2023, pp: 2429-2434
ISSN: 2798-3463 (Printed) | 2798-4079 (Online)
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Table 2. The Summary of Data Analysis of Students’ Essay Writing Competence
No Converted Scores Total Percentage
1 ≥ 84.64 (A/Excellent) 3 8%
2 ≥ 62.91 < 84.64 (B/Good) 9 26%
3 ≥ 19.42< 41.15 (C/Sufficient) 23 66%
4 ≥ 19.42<41.1 (D/Insufficient) 0 0%
5 < 19.42 (E/Poor) 0 0%
Total 35 100%

The results of the data analysis showed that 8% of samples under study were categorized as excellent essay
writing achievement, 26% of samples under study were categorized as good essay writing achievement, 66% of
samples under study were categorized as sufficient essay writing achievement, 0% samples under study were
categorized as insufficient essay writing achievement 0% samples under study were classified as poor essay writing
achievement. In this research, 23 samples obtained sufficient essay writing achievement because they only had few
vocabulary and low grammar, so they could not write well.
The results of this study showed that students' essay-writing skills need to be improved. Their essay writing
skills were rated average by 66% of the sample studied, but only 8% were rated excellent. This showed that there is a
huge gap between what is expected of students and what they can achieve. One way to address this problem is by
giving the students more opportunities to practice their essay-writing skills. This can be achieved by regularly
assigning students essay writing tasks and providing feedback on their work. Additionally, teachers can guide on
structuring essays, using proper grammar and punctuation, and effectively incorporating evidence to support
arguments.
Additionally, students are required to improve their vocabulary to write a better essay. This study showed
that 23 samples obtained only sufficient essay writing achievement due to limited vocabulary. Students can be
encouraged to read extensively to expand their vocabulary and learn how to use words in the correct context.
Moreover, the students needed more vocabulary and more substantial grammar. While they could produce coherent
essays, they needed more variety in their language and grammar to achieve higher scores. The findings suggest that
the majority of the students in this study possessed adequate essay-writing skills. However, a significant proportion
of the students could benefit from improving their vocabulary and grammar to enhance the quality of their writing.
Moreover, teachers can offer assistance to students to develop fundamental skills for successful essay
writing. It can be accomplished by empowering students to inquire questions, analyze data basically, and create their
points of view on issues. Students can moreover take part in talks about and dialogues, which can offer assistance to
them create their contentious improvement. The findings of this study emphasized the requirement for students to
progress their paper writing competence. Whereas there is no one-size-fits-all solution, giving normal practice
openings, direction on structure, language structure, and lexicon, and creating basic skills can go a long way in
progressing the academic essay writing skills of the students. By taking these learning stages, students can be better
prepared to construct their ideas and opinions clearly, coherently, and viably, which can offer assistance to them to
succeed academically.
The findings highlighted the significance of developing and refining writing skills, particularly in
educational institutions, to empower students to communicate their thoughts and opinions through writing
successfully. Writing essays is a fundamental ability for students in education. In writing essays, students are
required to be able to organize thoughts and information logically and coherently. Students must be able to
communicate thoughts and arguments clearly and viably.
In addition, the ability to write essays can also help students improve their academic writing skills. Students
are always expected to have the expertise to write essays as part of their academic assignments (Ayu et al., 2020). By
having good essay writing skills, students can efficiently complete their academic assignments and obtain higher
achievement in writing exams and other academic assessments. In addition, the ability to write essays is also
essential for the students to prepare themselves for the world of employment and businesses as well as a better
standard of living (Syahrin et al., 2019). Students may be faced with situations where they have to write reports,
proposals, or even presentations while they are at work. Therefore, having good essay writing skills definitely help
students to be efficient at their study and also at their work in the future. Therefore, students’ writing skills should be
improved continually (Uysal & Sidekli, 2020).
In addition, having good writing skills as a part of linguistic competence may improve students’ ability to
communicate socially (Mantra & Kumara, 2018). Developing writing skills, means students have to develop various
linguistic competence, moreover, students have to develop their critical and creative thinking skills to develop their
opinions, thoughts, ideas and argument and then integrate them into a good piece of writing. Moreover, in writing
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International Journal of Social Science (IJSS)
Vol.2 Issue.6 April 2023, pp: 2429-2434
ISSN: 2798-3463 (Printed) | 2798-4079 (Online)
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essays, students can reflect on their views on a topic, analyze arguments from different points of view, and conclude
with clear and precise reasons. Consequently, critical and reflective thinking is useful in developing writing skills.
Understanding various skills need to be addressed in enhancing writing skills, it is important for students to seriously
study writing skills and practice them regularly (Styers et al., 2018).
The ability to write essays is a basic skill that students must master in language learning because it can help
them develop critical thinking and creative skills, improve communication skills, create inventiveness and public
speaking skills, progress academic achievement and prepare them for the world of work. Therefore, educational
institutions, schools and universities ought to pay more consideration to create students' essay-writing abilities and
give them meaningful opportunities to improve their essay-writing skills.

4. CONCLUSION
The findings found in this study are based on the data taken from writing tests given shrewd data concerning
their essay writing competence. The results showed a variety within the level of accomplishment among the students,
with a few scorings higher than others. The findings showed the need for teachers to pay consideration to their
students' writing skills and give suitable opportunities to enhance their writing performance. Moreover, the
investigation of the scoring rubric uncovered that the utilization of evidence and coherence were the foremost
considerable ranges of the student's essay writing skills. At the same time, linguistic use and lexicon were recognized
as their weakest areas which need to be carefully addressed by the teachers. In this manner, it is fundamental to
provide instruction to progress students' linguistic use and lexicon skills and improve their essay writing competence.
The findings also showed that most of the students fell into the adequate essay writing accomplishment category,
demonstrating areas for improvement in the student’s writing skills. These findings highlighted the requirement for
teachers to distinguish and address the particular areas in which their students require improvement and to provide
ongoing support and input to help them develop their writing skills.

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