The Implementation of Outlining in Argumentative Essay Writing for University Students

Abstract

Outlining is commonly used by students before they start to write an argumentative essay. Previous studies in outlining also reported that outlining is beneficial to improve the quality of students’ writing. However, there is still much to be learned about the process itself. This study aimed to analyze how students perform outlining in argumentative essay writing including the outline writing process, challenges faced by students, and strategies they developed to cope with such challenges. This research used a qualitative multiple case study design and conducted semi-structured interviews to collect the data. The participants were selected from the third-semester students at the English Department University of Islam Malang using their final scores in writing class to decide on four participants: two high achievers and two low achievers. The student’s outline documents were also used as the source of the data to be presented in the findings along with the interviews’ transcripts. The data in this study were analyzed through three stages including data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. The interview was conducted twice to ensure the data's validity and trustworthiness. The result of this study reported that during the outline writing process, students revealed two important points including outline structure and sources. Further, students encountered challenges in the outline writing process: generating ideas, discovering sources, and arranging words. To overcome the challenges, students revealed some strategies: finding relevant sources, word arrangements strategy, outline writing practice, peer learning, and time management. After analyzing the data, it is indicated that high achievers performed better than low achievers in the outline writing process. The high achievers also faced fewer challenges during the outline writing process compared to the low achievers. Furthermore, strategies developed by high achievers are more effectively solved and accurate compared to low achievers’ strategies. In conclusion, the high achievers performed better execution in the overall outline writing process compared to the low achievers. Based on the result of this study, English Teachers are suggested to establish a new way of learning how to write an outline properly to improve students’ writing quality. Further exploration and investigation of outline writing performance by comparing participants’ age gap and genders can be examined in future research. Keywords: Argumentative Essay, Outlining, Writing