Assignment for Meeting 1 (Uploaded to SIKOLA Assignment)

Taken from Karmila’s Teaching Material point 2.3.3 (pp. 41 – 42)

Berdiskusilah dalam kelompok untuk mengevaluasi teks di bawah ini

berdasarkan sifat-sifat tulisan akademik. Gunakan kriteria, deskripsi,
dan pertanyaan evaluasi dalam tabel 1 untuk membantu Anda dalam
pembahasan

Teks 1
Among some tasks performed by the ED gradauates, only items related to description
that have been included in the writing lesson plans. In the GBRP of Writing I, there are
activities of “Making a poster containing description about people” and “Making a poster
containing description of a process or a street plan”. Similarly, the “Rencana Pembelajaran
Berbasis KBK” contains a topic about Writing description (place, people and objects).
The other three tasks are not yet found in the lesson plans. However, they can be
found in other subjects. Writing letters is taught in English correspondence, while note taking
in a meeting might be taught in listening subject. Similarly, the writing of lesson plans and
teaching material is not specifically mentioned in the lesson plans, but it might be included as
part of another subject (TEFL).
Interestingly, the writing lesson plans present argumentative essays in a big
proportion. It is started with an activity of writing a paragraph about an opinion in the GBRP
of writing I, continued with the writing of discursive essays plus plagiarism and paraphrases
in the GBRP of Writing II. In contrast, only one respondent reported a task related to
argumentative essay. The respondent wrote that one of the tasks he performed is translating
documents. Although this is not really a writing task, he said that “The translation sometimes
deals with argumentative essay type of text. The basic knowledge regarding this kind of text
is very necessary to make good translation” (R2). This means that, the skill he obtained in the
writing subject gives an indirect benefit on his translation job.
It is too early , though, to claim that the argumentative essay topic is not relevant with
ED students’ need in the future. It is quite possible that the limited number of respondents
reporting tasks related to argumentative essays might be due to the characteristics of the
respondents’ occupation. Most of them work as government or project officers, so they might
not need to write argumentative essays. As a comparison, in the study of Huh (2006), the
researcher has listed some tasks related to business English, and nothing is related to the
writing of argumentative essay (p. 27). Some of the writing tasks listed, such as writing
letters and meeting summary, are similar with the findings of the current study. This is quite
possible since most of the respondents in the current study work in offices, a business
working environment.
Sumber: Mokoginta, K. 2011