Research Proposal

What Happens to Final-year Students English Writing after Four Years of

Study at English Department of the University?
(Case-study at English Department of Hasanuddin University)
A. Introduction
Countries in which English is not a second language, they tend to
necessitate their students to learn English at schools to be able to
communicate internationally. Indonesia is one of the countries in which
English is still a foreign language, I as Indonesian, observed that this
country requires the students to have English lesson since junior to senior
high school (over 6 years). The learning process are focus on the four
skills, i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing with the same amount
of attention. Furthermore, in the university level, English subject that so
called general English become one of major subjects for every first year
student for every faculty. Thus, it is presumed that albeit English is still
foreign language in Indonesia, it is not literally foreign language for the
students since it has been learned for about six years and six months
through instruction method. Therefore, it can be argued that the students
who can manage to pursue their study in the university level have the
knowledge of English of at least basic to intermediate level for each skill.
There is nothing wrong with learning and teaching these four skills
in the same amount of attention and time. However, based on my brief
observation, the issue that often arise for English foreign language
students like Indonesian university students is that they often get more
difficulty on how they convey their ideas appropriately and accurately
through written communication. To counter this circumstance, there
should be a research that study about what factors that affect the
students English writing for EFL students. In fact, researches that talk
about this particular problem is scant. The bulk of researches on L2 writing
have been administered but the situations are totally different to
Indonesian context where English is still a foreign language.
Therefore, in this present study, there are two major points that I am
going to propose. Firstly, it is about the context or the setting of the study.
This study takes place in the non-English country where English is not the
second language but foreign. However, the interesting point is that
although the students live in the country where English is the foreign
language, they still have big amount of time to integrate with English
either in formal situation (e.g., classroom; between lecturers and students
or between peers) or in non-formal situation (e.g., outside the class;
between friends in the same department) despite the local environment
they mingled with. Secondly, regarding the length of the study. This study
will try to examine an English writing of the students after four years of
study. This might be the longest period of time because the newest
previous research conducted by Knoch et al. (2015) was only three years.

Research Proposal
Therefore, this study is particularly set out to scrutinize the English writing
of the final-year students after four year of study at English department of
Hasanuddin University in the non-English country, Indonesia. To instigate
the study, I will review the available researches on L2 writing and factors
affecting the improvement or lack thereof, then I will explain about why
this study might have different results with any previous studies.
1. Research on L2 Writing and the Results
L2 writing is not a new research, but it has been conducted by
many of researchers. The design of most of L2 writing studies are a
test-retest design which employed pre-test and post-test to collect
data. To gauge the development of the writing, these researchers used
composition/band scores and also applied a range of discourse-analytic
measures. The advantages of using this measures is that we could
reliably assess the fluency, accuracy, and complexity of the
participants writing. Therefore, since this study is also examining the
development of the students writing, it would roughly apply the same
design and methodology of measurements.
There are some leading experts known for L2 writing research
who have studied this particular issue over certain period of time, i.e.,
Tsang & Wong (2000), Larsen-Freeman (2006), Storch & Tapper (2009),
OLoughlin & Arkoudis (2009), Craven (2012), Serrano, Tragant, and
Lianes (2012), Knoch, Roushad, and Storch (2014), Knoch, Roushad,
Oon, and Storch (2015). In the following paragraphs, I will review these
studies by considering the length of the study, the result of each
measurement (i.e., composition/band scores, and discourse analytic
measures; fluency, accuracy, and complexity) and also the context of
the researchers considers (whether English as language instruction, or
considering an immersion concept).
First of all, the studies conducted in less than one year. The
research conducted by Tsang & Wong (2000) that took place in
Hongkong university within 14 weeks and Larsen-Freeman (2006) who
studied Chinese learners in EAP class in Australia within six months.
These studies in which the students participated in a course of
language instruction, reported that there was a significant
improvement regarding the fluency (i.e., word count and ratio of words
to T-units), the accuracy (i.e., the ratio of error-free T-units) and the
complexity (i.e., ratio of clauses to T-units and the length of T-units).
However, in 2009, Storch and Tapper who studied L2 writing of the
students in EAP instruction within 10 weeks in a university in Australia
found the improvement in the fluency and the accuracy but not
significant. Interestingly, Storch & Tapper (2009) found there was a
significant improvement regarding the the lexical complexity by
reflecting the percentage of words which appear in academic word list
(AWL) of Coxhead (2000). These mixed findings proved what Ortega

Research Proposal
(2003) has mentioned that to have an improvement particularly in the
complexity, the L2 students need to study English at least 12 months
of language instruction. Furthermore, Storch & Hill (2008) and Storch
(2009) who did not include instruction but considered immersion after
less than one year of study, they found that the fluency, accuracy, and
grammatical complexity did not change/no improvement at all.
Whereas mixed findings occurred on discourse analytic measures, the
results of the studies mentioned above showed uniform results that
there were significant improvement regarding band scores of
organisation and style, content, form and average writing score.
Secondly, the L2 studies conducted more than one year. In these
studies, the researchers considered immersion in the L2 environment
rather than instruction. OLoughlin & Arkoudis (2009), Craven (2012)
and Knoch, Roushad, and Storch (2014), they studied the improvement
of ESL students writing and its relation to degree of study. Serrano,
Tragant, and Lianus (2012), they investigated the effect of experience
of studying abroad on EFL students writing. Regarding measurement
using composition/band scores, Craven (2012), Knoch et al. (2014), and
Knoch et al. (2015) found that there was no change/improvement
happened after 18 months, 36 months, and over 3 years of study,
respectively. Albeit OLoughlin & Arkoudis (2009) found the
improvement, but it only occurred for those who have low band scores
at initial. The findings by using discourse analytic measurements even
diverse. Regarding the fluency, Serrano et al. (2012) measured by
words produced, Knoch et al. (2014) measured by ratio of words to Tunits, and Knoch et al. (2015) measured via word account, reported
that there was improvement occurred after more than one year of
immersion experience in L2 medium university. In contrast, the
accuracy (i.e., ratio of error-free T-units, error free clauses, and errors
to words) of these three studies showed no improvement. Regarding
syntactic complexity, Knoch et al. (2014) and Knoch et al. (2015)
reported no improvement over one year and three years, respectively.
On the contrary, within the same duration, Serrano et al. (2012)
observed significant improvement. Concerning the lexical richness
(type/token ratio), both studies reported improved but not significant.
To conclude, all studies above, showed improvement regarding the
fluency, but mixed findings occurred on grammatical and lexical
complexity. Consequently, it is difficult to generally said about the
relation of immersion on L2 writing.
2. Factors that Account for improvement or Lack Thereof in L2 Writing.
To identify the factors that affect the improvement or lack thereof
on L2 writing, these researches operationalized questionnaires and
Interviews. OLoughlin & Arkoudis (2009), Knoch et al. (2015) argued
that the participant perception of the importance of academic writing
for future studies become one of the reasons for the the improvement

Research Proposal
on L2 writing. Moreover, Storch & Hill (2008) claimed that participants
integration as having Australian fiends had a great impact on accuracy
in writing. They also found that factors that made L2 writing lack of
improvement are lack of opportunity to produce extended writing, and
to receive feedback on writing during the course of study. Serrano et al.
(2012), furthermore, argued that the accuracy improved for those who
are sociable and humble, so that if the students are less sociable, they
tend to have less improvement as well. Another reason is that positive
attitude towards L2 language community can become one of the best
platforms to interact with native speakers, so that the L2 students
could receive comprehensible input and produce appropriate output.
Also, students who lived with English people will have richer in lexical
(type/token ratio) than the students who are not. Knoch et al. (2015),
on the other hand, assumed that over three years of study the students
had opportunities both inside (classroom) and outside the academic
context (e.g., writing in social media), therefore, the students can
retrieve their vocabulary more often.
B. Rational and Aims
The study is worth to be conducted since it is different to other
previous researches. There are two major points to propose. First of all,
the context of the study would be totally different with the previous
studies. The previous studies treated English of whether English as a
second language (e.g., in Tsang & Wong, (2000) study which was
conducted in Hongkong university) or as medium of communication (e.g.,
Larsen-Freeman (2006) who studied Chinese learners in university in
Australia). In contrast, the context of this study considers English as a
foreign language where it is learned and used only in particular situation
like classes or courses. Interestingly, this study will specifically take place
in English Department, Hasanuddin University which I believe that the
students have more time to integrate with English. Secondly, it is about
the length of the study. The latest L2 research conducted by Knoch et al.
(2015) took three years to investigate the improvement of L2 writing of
the students. However, in this study, the interval time between pre-test
and post-test is four years. Thus, I could assume that this study would be
the longest study of L2 writing regarding the time of investigation.
Therefore, this study is set out to investigate the English writing of
the final-year students after four years of study at English department of
Hasanuddin University in the non-English country, Indonesia. The study
also will scrutinize the factors that affect the L2 writing improvement or
lack thereof.
C. Research Design
The design of the study is test-retest design. The initial writing task
which is argumentative essay was taken in 3.5 years ago since the
students were in the first semester and attended the writing class (time

Research Proposal
1). This data would be treated as the pre-test data. The second
argumentative essay would be considered as post-test data which would
be taken at time 2 (in the final year of their study).
1. Participants
The reason on why I choose Hasanuddin University, particularly
English department, is just because its accessible for me. According to
Burgess, (1991) that this accessibility is substantial in data collection
because by having them to be cooperatively answer the questionnaire
would create no difficult for me to get the data that I desired. In
addition, I was studying in this university, and so I had sufficient
knowledge about either the university or the characteristic of the
lecturers. Therefore, I found no difficulty in contacting and asked their
students to be my participants, especially the ethics. The participants
of this study would be the final year of English Department of
Hasanuddin University. The recruitment is based on the initial writing
task that they had completed on their first semester on the writing
class. There would be 20 students; 10 males and 10 females, that will
be involved in the study.
2. Measures
There are three primary tools to assess the study. First of all, both
argumentative essay (taken at time 1 and 2) would be analysed by
using discourse analytic measures, (as presented in table 1). To
analysed and code the T-units and clauses, as it shown more often on
the measurement, I would follow the coding scheme of Cummings et al.
(2006). For accuracy, it will be measured through the percentage of
error free to T-units and clauses (number of word per 100 words)
(Knoch et al., 2014 and Knoch et al., 2015). Fluency is measured by
using Pearl script program in order to count the number of words for
each essay. Fluency is also measured based on the average number of
words per T-unit (number of T-units and T-unit length). Grammatical
complexity is measured through Cluses per T-units, words per clauses,
and ratio of dependant clauses to clauses. Lexical complexity will apply
three different measures as well; percentage of academic word list
(AWL) which was developed by Coxhead (2000), lexical sophistication,
and average word length by using the Microsoft Office Word features
(the word and character count).
Secondly, the interview is going to be conducted at time 2 after
they have done the essay. The questions are developed according to
the literature of this study (i.e., Knoch et al., 2014; Knoch et al., 2015)
and are mainly about the participants academic experiences during
their study at English Department, Hasanuddin University. (see
appendix A)

Research Proposal
Third of all, Questionnaire. It used to yield some basic bio data
and previous experiences of language learning of the participants. In
the questions, the would be asked about any other activities that could
possibly help them integrate with English more often excluded
classroom interaction (e.g., joining English club, being an English
teacher at private courses, etc.).
To investigate the improvement, the result of time 1 and time 2
will be compared quantitatively by using Shapiro-Wilk tests.
D. Challenges and Limitations
1. Challenges
There are two challenges that might occur in this study. First of
all, as it has been mentioned initially, the post test would be conducted
in the final year of study. However, it is difficult for me to decide the
best time to conduct the post-test as some of the students would
directly go back home (to their own province) after they submit their
final assignments, as they come from different area in Indonesia. The
same difficulty would happen when I give them the post-test before the
final exam period in the final year of study. I am afraid the post-test
would interrupt their learning process for exam. Therefore, the best
solution is by contacting the lecturer who teach the class and sending
invitation through email to the selected students.
The second challenge is the level of difficulty of the post-test
essay. The problem that might appear is the type of essay might be the
same (argumentative), but the level of difficulty might be different (bit
easier or bit difficult). In order to have reliable data, the argumentative
essay that is conducted at time 2 should have the same level of
difficulty with the essay conducted at initial task. Therefore, to find the
same level of difficulty of the essay, this problem would be consulted
with the lecturer of the class.

2. Limitation
This study is a small scale study which relied on the data that has
been conducted at 3.5 years ago by the lecturer and not by the
researcher of this study. I assumed that, it would be much better if I
myself conducted the initial task considering the level of difficulty of
the essay time 2 in which I believed that since the beginning of study,
before giving the students the essay, I should have provided two
essays which have the same level of difficulty. Another advantage is

Research Proposal
that I could really observe my participants since the very beginning of
the research (e.g., the timing during they write essay).
The secondly limitation is the regarding the initial score of the
students writing. I have tried to ask for these scores, however, the
lecturer does not agree to distribute the scores for any reasons.
Therefore, in this study, the measurement only focus on the discourse
analytic measures.
E. Conclusion
This study is set out in order to try to fill in the gap of L2 writing
research. The context where this study take place is non-English country
so that the factors/variables that account for the improvement of L2
writing might enrich the study and so it can be contemplated for better
teaching methodology. Moreover, the length of the study could be claimed
as the longest one since the latest research conducted last year was only
three years while this study is four years of study.

Research Proposal

References
Burgess, R. G. (1991) Sponsors, Gatekeepers, Members, and Friends, in
W. B. Shaffir and R. A. Stebbins (eds), Experiencing Fieldwork. An
Inside View of Qualitative Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. pp.
4352.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213238.
Craven, E. (2012). The quest for IELTS Band 7.0: Investigating English
Language Proficiency development of international students at an
Australian Universities. IELTS Research Reports. Vol. 13 (pp. 1-61).
Canberra IELTS Australia.
Cumming, A., Kantor, R., Baba, K., Euanzoui, K., Erdosy, U., & James M.,
(2006). Analysis of discourse features and verification of scoring
levels for independent and integrated prototype writing tasks for
new TOEFL. (TOEFL Monograph No. MS-30) Princeton, NJ:
Educational Testing service.
OLoughlin, K., & Arkoudis, S. (2009). Investigating IELTS exit score gains
in higher education. IELTS Research Report. 10, 95-180.
Ortega, L. (2003). Syntactic complexity measures and their relationship to
L2 proficiency: A research synthesis of college-level L2 writing,
Applied linguistic, 24. 492-518.
Knoch, U., Roushad, A., & Storch, N. (2014). Does the writing of
undergraduate ESL students develop after one year of study in an
English-medium university? Assessing Writing, 21 (1), 1-17
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016.
Knoch, U., Rouhshad, A., Oon, S.P., & Storch, N. (2015). What happens to
ESL students writing after three years of study at an English
medium university. Journal of Second Language writing (28) 39-52.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2006). The emergence of complexity, fluency and
accuracy in the oral and written production of five Chinese learners
of English. Applied Linguistics, 27. 590-619.
Manchon, Rosa M. (2012). (Eds.). L2 Writing Development: Multiple
Perspectives. Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
Serrano, R., Tragant, E., & Llanes, A. (2012). A longitudinal analysis of the
effects of one year abroad. Canadian Modern Language Review, 68,
138163.

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Storch, N., & Tapper, J. (2009). The impact of an EAP course on
postgraduate writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8.
207-223. http://dx.doi.org/10.106.
Tsang, W. K., & Wong, M. (2000). Giving grammar the place it deserves in
process writing. Prospect, 15. 34-35.

TABLE
Table 1. Discourse analytic measures. (Knoch et al., 2014; Knoch et al.,
2015)

Category

Measures

Error-free Clause (EFC)

Accuracy
Error-free T-units (EFT)

Number of words

Fluency

Number of T-units

T-unit length

Complexity
(Grammatical
complexity

&

Clauses per T-unit

Lexical
Words per clauses

Ratio
clauses

of

dependent

clauses

to

Research Proposal

Percentage of Academic Word List

Lexical sophistication

Average word length

Research Proposal

APPENDICES
Appendix A: Interview Questions
1. Please describe your previous English learning experiences?
2. What language do you speak at home?
3. How much writing in different subjects at your time at English
Department; were it assign in a group or individual?
4. What types of writing did you have to do in your four years of study;
length of writing.
5. Did you choose courses according to much writing is required?
6. Did you experience difficulties with writing at English Department?
7. Did any of the lecturers comment on your writing? If so, what kind of
comment? And what did you do about it?
8. Did you attempt to get help with English writing during your time at
English Department, if so, what was that help?
9. Do you think your English has improved over time at English
Department; if so, which aspects improved?
10. What factors helped/hindered the improvement?
11. What do you think about most when writing essays?
Appendix B: Questionnaire questions
1. Name
:
2. Sex
:
3. Origin
:
4. How many years have you studied English?
:
5. Have you joint English test before? (e.g., IELTS, TOEFL) :
6. During your study at English Department
a. were you joining English Club?
If so, what kind of English club? (e.g., English debating club, Model
United Nations club)
b. Were you teaching English at private English courses?
If yes, for how many years?
7. Do you always speak English with your friends in English Department?
(In the classroom and outside the classroom in the English Department
area)
If so, why?