Developing EFL Students’ Descriptive Writing through Alternative Joint Construction

Ekawati, Dian and Muhtar, Siti Nuraeni and Dalimunthe, R Nadia R P and Kurniawati, Nia (2017) Developing EFL Students’ Descriptive Writing through Alternative Joint Construction. In: International Systemic Functional Linguistic Conference, 10-14, Wollongong, Australia.

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Abstract

This study attempts to explore how Alternative Joint Construction (AJC) can improve the fifth-semester-English-Education-Department students’ academic descriptive writing in large Indonesian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Classrooms with Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and a Genre-Based Approach (GBA). AJC combines Derewianka’s (1999) whole-class-model and Emilia’s (2010) small-group-model of Joint Construction to be a Group-Class-Group-Class (GCGC) model that merges the advantages of those models. The implementations of traditional Joint Construction caused serious problems: teachers’ difficulties in guiding, supervising, and providing feedback to the students’ Joint Construction due to the big number of students. Therefore, previously identified issues with the students’ descriptive writing—such as (1) the students’ incohesive and incoherent flow of information exchange, (2) the red herring of a personal perspective, and (3) lexicogrammatical issues—were not optimally improved. The result of this case study shows that AJC eliminates various problems in the implementation of traditional Joint Construction. The students’ writing also improved in some respects: (1) more cohesive and coherent text, (2) a less personal perspective, and (3) lexicogrammatical improvement in some parts of their writing. In sum, Joint Construction with the GCGC model is recommended for teaching academic descriptive writing in large EFL classrooms with similar characteristics to this Indonesian context.

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