3. 9252-36206-1-CE.pmd EnJourMe (English Journal of Merdeka): Culture, Language, and Teaching of English Journal homepage: http://jurnal.unmer.ac.id/index.php/enjourme/index Correlation between the knowledge of structure and the writingCorrelation between the knowledge of structure and the writingCorrelation between the knowledge of structure and the writingCorrelation between the knowledge of structure and the writingCorrelation between the knowledge of structure and the writing ability of students in the Architecture departmentability of students in the Architecture departmentability of students in the Architecture departmentability of students in the Architecture departmentability of students in the Architecture department Akhmad SidiqAkhmad SidiqAkhmad SidiqAkhmad SidiqAkhmad Sidiq Sekolah Tinggi Teknik Multimedia Internasional, Jl. Soekarno Hatta No.94, 65142, Malang, Indonesia *Corresponding author: akhmad4javier@gmail.com ARTICLE INFO Received 29 Desember 2022 Accepted 31 May 2023 Available online 20 July 2023 Keywords: Correlation, structure, writing skills DOI: 10.26905/enjourme.v8i1.9252 How to cite this article (APA Style): Sidiq, A. (2023). Correlation be- tween the knowledge of structure and the writing ability of students in the Architecture department. EnJourMe (English Journal of Merdeka): Culture, Language, and Teaching of English, 8(1) 27-35, doi: h t t p s : / / d o i . o r g / 1 0 . 2 6 9 0 5 / enjourme.v8i1.8992 ABSTRACT Students writing skill is usually influenced by knowledge of grammar. To improve their writing skills they need to master English structure because it is needed to improve students’ writing skills.Writing without correct structure is difficult to un- derstand and even meaningless. Moreover, the students should have knowledge of structure first before they conduct writing activities. This study is conducted to find out whether there is significant correlation between knowledge of structure and ability to write English sentences of students Architecture Department at Interna- tional Multimedia Engineering School. To solve this problem, this study was con- ducted in a correlation design. The result of this study found that the students who have knowledge of structure have good ability in writing. Therefore, the students are expected to have certain ways to learn English language skills especially about English structure and writing. The students are expected to read more English books so that students will be able to improve their English skills, especially for structure and writing. © 2023EnJourMe. All rights reserved. EnJourMe (English Journal of Merdeka): Culture, Language, and Teaching of English Vol. 8, No, 1, July 2023, Page 27–35 1. Introduction In modern era, we must consider that we need to communicate not only with the people in our country but also with the people in other countries. In this case, we need a certain language to interact each other internationally. One of the international languages is English. Nowadays, the existence of English is very important for us because most foreign books are written in English. It is used not only as a mean of communication but also for studying technology, science, and economics, etc. In Indonesia, the government put English as a compulsory subject in all levels of education from the elementary school level up to university level. As a result, English is the most popular foreign language in Indonesian’s schools. In junior high school level, English teaching is aimed at providing EnJourMe (English Journal of Merdeka): Culture, Language, and Teaching of English Vol. 8, No. 1, July 2023, pp. 27–35 | 28 | students in getting knowledge and skills that is used to continue their study at a higher level. The great difference of language system between English and Indonesian has been the major difficulty for stu- dents who learn English. In learning English the four basic skills include listening, speaking, writing, and reading. Referring to the reasons above, we can assume that students have enough time to master En- glish well. But in fact, when the teachers teach English to the students, many students complain about the difficulties to master English (especially structure). Most of the students are supposed to accelerate the students’ ability for the four basics skills. Regarding those skills, the writer believes that writing is the most important skill for the students because writing does not only deal with the knowledge of sentence, parts of speech, punctuation and spelling but also the knowledge of students to arrange and compose a good chronological and logical way of thinking to transfer into a form of a text. English is a foreign language for Indonesia students. It is not surprising if Indonesian students make many mistakes in using English when they try to transfer their ideas, thoughts, opinions, feel- ings, and desires into a form of text. Besides, adequate vocabulary proficiency is regarded as a crucial measure for assessing the writing quality of a second language, in which research mentioned as the difficulties in writing (Lailiyah & Setiyaningsih, 2021). Other than that, mastery of structure is very important to organize their writing composition correctly and logically. English writing activities for Indonesian students are believed to misuse most common everyday words in writing. So, there is no doubt that structure and writing are difficult for students in term of enriching student’s English language skills. Writing is part of English skills which is necessary for students. Writing is essential for students to know how to maintain the meaning in writing which aims to interact to the reader in form of written text. These aspects are needed by students in order to use the language communicatively and effectively. According to Belcher (2009) many have found that talking about their struggles with writing has been very freeing, both for themand their chosen confidant. The lesson: Learning to talk about writing is an important key to becoming a productive writer. According to Heaton (1975) writing is a way of interpreting experiences for oneself and for others. Moreover, he said that writing also serves as the simplest and most interesting way because the result will be visible, it will be an experience that will make you feel more satisfied. In an article by MasterClass also explained that there are lots of writing tips for those who want to structure their sentences better:First of all is keep it simple. Long sentences or overly complex sentences do not always make the writing of the sentences we write complicated. Look for ways to adapt the syntax to suit your writing style and target audience. So that the message sent is easily digested by the reader and makes communication better.Next, Use concrete rhetoric. Use direct lan- guage to convey strong imagery, significance, and create emotional appeal—make the reader the top priority whatever your point. Then, Employ parallelism. Sentences are easier and more enjoyable to read if there are provisions that are patent in their grammatical terms, especially in the case of lists.Further, Mind your grammar. The best sentences shouldn’t be in the passive voice, run-on sen- tences, or typos. Sometimes writers accidentally write incomplete sentences, or accidentally form fragments when editing and rewriting. Be sure to double-check incomplete sentences that may have Correlation between the knowledge of structure and the writing ability of students in the Architecture department Akhmad Sidiq | 29 | slipped into your writing. Proper grammar should give better writing.Furthermore, Properly punctu- ate. Improper punctuation can make or break the rhythm of a sentence. Ensure that periods, commas, hyphens, semicolons and other punctuation tools are used correctly. And the last one is Practice writing. Improvement will occur with practice. Do writing exercises that focus on the structure of your sentences and how you express your ideas. The more you practice writing sentences, the better you will become. As writers, we should always try to write well and pay attention to grammar. Beside thatMelissa in her blog said that one of the most important aspects of teaching grammar is showing students how grammar relates to reading and writing. Students should spend time applying their knowledge of sentence structures. Structure is a set of rule which is essential for students in writing. Structure is the study or use of the rules about how words change their form and combine with other words to make sentences (Procter: 1995). And it is very essential for students in writing. Structure guides students or people to write correctly. If students and people know the structure of their language, they will know to con- struct sentences or utterances in understandable forms. In English grammar, sentence structure is the arrangement of words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence (Nordquist, 2017). The grammatical meaning of a sentence depends on its structural organization, which is also known as syntactic structure or syntax. As we know that, there are four basic types of sentence structures are simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. Having known the importance of structure mastery, students and people will find it easily to understand why structure is very useful. The sentences or paragraphs will have different ideas and meanings to the readers if they are written without structure. Consequently, if a language had no grammar it would never be spoken or written. People will be able to learn language if the language is structurally fixed. Viet (1986) states that by studying structure, students would learn to make up of the language and so be able to apply what they learned as a better speaker, writer, and reader. There- fore, structure is an important skill in English because it is really needed to make English sentences. Similar to the above definition, Swan (2005) explains the rules that show how words are combined, arranged or changed to show certain kinds of meaning. Grammar is the rules that explain how words are combined, arranged or altered to show some kind of meaning. There were some previous studies which related to the researcher’svariables, firstthe title of the study was “The Correlation Between Students’ Grammar Knowledge AndWriting Ability”.The result of this study showedthat thestudents have well of grammar ability and good writing skill, it was showed that the mastery of compoundsentence supports the students to produce a grammatically correct in paragraph. It was conducted by Muhsin (2015). On the other hand, the study which entitle “A Correlation BetweenStudents’ Grammar Mas- tery And Students’ Writing Ability” by Rismasari (2019) stated that the correlation between students grammar mastery in term of past tense and their writing ability in term of recount text of SMP 1 UNISMUH Makassar class VIII.A1 have correlation. It was proved by the result indicated that rxy was 0,50 which classified average correlation. EnJourMe (English Journal of Merdeka): Culture, Language, and Teaching of English Vol. 8, No. 1, July 2023, pp. 27–35 | 30 | Even though there are many differences between this study and that previous study, the similar- ity between the previous study and the present study is that those studies concern about grammar mastery of the students in case of students’ writing ability.Based on the explanation above, the writer is interested in knowing the correlation between mastery of structure and ability to write English sentences of the third semester students of Architecture Department at International Multimedia Engineering School. This study is expected to inform the students about the importance of mastery of structure for their ability to write English sentences. This is because, writing is one of the important English skills and many previous having proven so. Finally, it can be concluded that structure is an essential point for writing sentences. 2. Method This writer design of this study was quantitative, and the writer conducted this study in the form of Correlation Design, which concerns on investigating the correlation between mastery of structure and their ability to write English sentences on the third students of Architecture Department at International Multimedia Engineering School in the 2021 – 2022 academic year. A main step to conduct a research was select respondents. In this study, the procedure to decide the respondents was very important in order to collect data. The writerdistinguished that the decision in this study is usually controlled by accountability to generalize to the entire entities of populationreferring to the reason above, the writercollected the data from the representative sample. In short, there are two methods used namely population and sample. The writer selected them as the population on the basis of some considerations. First, those students had passed Structure I course and also writing I course when this study was conducted. So that it is assumed that they were still familiar with all materials of grammar and sentences (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentence). The population is the entire research object consisting of humans, objects, animals, plants, symptoms, test scores, or events as a data source that has certain characteristics in a study (Margono, 2004) The sample is a portion of the population taken using the sampling technique (Husain & Purnomo, 2001). Besides that, Hardani (2020) also has an opinion that the sample must really be able to reflect the state of the population, meaning that the conclusions drawn from the research results from the sample must be conclusions on the population.Because the subject is 90 students, the writertook a portion of them (called sample) depending on the consideration of the writer’s time and fund, the extension of research, the risk of the research, and the significance of study. Referring to the reasons above, the writerconcluded that sample is subject of the research that represents the population. Sample must be representative of population. This sample is used to gener- alize the population. To determine of the sample of this study, the researched used “cluster sampling”. The instruments will use in this study is test only.The writer gave the structure and writing test to the third semester English Department students. That instrument is used to investigate the degrees for the students’ knowledge of structure and their ability to write English sentences. The writing test is used to measure the students’ ability to write English sentences. In this case, the writer asked the students to make 20 English sentences (five simple sentences, five compound sentences, five complex Correlation between the knowledge of structure and the writing ability of students in the Architecture department Akhmad Sidiq | 31 | sentences, and five compound-complex sentences) and the sentences is free. And this study will be analyzed by using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation. 3. Result and discussion This research was quantitative form of correlation design between two variables, independent variable (knowledge of structure) and dependent variable (writing ability). This data were collected and computed by using Pearson Product-Moment correlation formula because the data was in the form of interval data and the number of respondents more than 30. This research was conducted to analyze the great extend of the third semester students’ scores of knowledge of structure and writing ability. It was involved 38 students as a sample taken from 90 as population of Architecture Department at International Multimedia Engineering School in the 2021 – 2022 academic years. After the writer gathered and computed the data, the writer found that the result of the computation was ‘r’ = 0.3999 and ‘r’ of the table = 0.3246 proving that the research hypothesis was accepted and the null hypothesis was rejected. The research hypothesis (H1) in this study was “there is positive or significant correlation between students’ knowledge of structure and their ability to write English sentences”. To know whether the correlation was significant or not as the hypothesis above, the writer referred to “r” table at level of significant 0.05%. Based on the above computation the research hypothesis was accepted, and the null hypothesis was rejected. The critical value (r) is on “r” table with the degree of freedom N = 38. The “r” computation is 0.3999 whereas “r” table is 0.3246 at level 0.05%. In this study, the writer used Pearson Product-Moment correlation formula to compute the data. The data that was resulted from the knowledge of structure score was regarded variable “X” and the writing score was regarded variable “Y” with the respondent N = 38. The “r” score of Pearson Product-Moment correlation showed two variables – knowledge of structure and writing ability. Those variables were computed by using Pearson Product-Moment correlation (r), the result of Pearson Product-Moment’s computation proved that the result was higher than “r” of the table. It meant there was a positive or significant correlation between students’ knowledge of structure and their writing ability of the third semester students of Architecture Department at International Multimedia Engineering School in the 2021 – 2022 academic years. The computation result of correlation coef- ficient of Pearson Product-Moment correlation formula between students’ knowledge of structure and their writing ability to write English sentences was 0.3999 > 0.3246. It meant that the result of the data analyzed was included in a significant correlation. In other words, the research hypothesis was accepted and null hypothesis was rejected. The computation of Pearson Product-Moment correlation showed that there was significant correlation or positive correlation between students’ knowledge of structure and their writing ability to write English sentences. In other words, the students who have knowledge of structure tend to have good ability in writing. As the previous, the writer stated that competence is the knowledge of someone about the linguistic rules well and correctly, and performance is the ability of someone to apply the linguistic rules both written and orally. It meant that the third semester students of Architecture Department at EnJourMe (English Journal of Merdeka): Culture, Language, and Teaching of English Vol. 8, No. 1, July 2023, pp. 27–35 | 32 | International Multimedia Engineering School in the 2021 – 2022 academic years have a good knowl- edge of structure and then, they applied their knowledge of structure in their writing ability. Many students assumed that they did not only need to speak but also need to write in English correctly. This reason was influenced by the students’ development about English. These facts moti- vated and encouraged the students to master about structure and writing better. The language devel- opment and students’ need to improve and increase their knowledge are the main points that forced students to have more knowledge and experience especially about English language skills that recently become the main requirement to participate in this competitive era. Furthermore, the students should master the structure to be able to write English and speak well. Moreover, the students would be faster to increase their writing ability in the teaching and learning process if they know the importance of structure in their writing. According to Nurlinda (1997), writing is an activity carried out by someone to produce writing. People doing scribbling on the wall can also be said to be writing, with or without a specific purpose and device. Good writing is writing that can be understood by others. Based on the above explanations, the writer states that the students who want to be able to express their ideas in written form should enlarge their structure ability including how to use punc- tuation, spelling, capitalization, word formation, etc. On the other hand, the students’ ability to write English sentences is often overlooked in this discussion as learning English writing for EFL students in Indonesia, especially in International Multimedia Engineering School. This is probably due to a perception that writing skill is not the students’ immediate need. However, viewed both from the nature of writing skill in language learning and purpose of language stated here, that students’ ability to write English sentences is important and useful. This interpretation is based on the previous statement that one of the requirements for language development is knowledge or ability to write in English correctly. In line with those above explanations, there are several factors that influenced the significant correlation between the students’ knowledge of structure and their writing ability to write English sentences. This reason is presented in order to motivate, enlarge, and increase the students’ knowledge of structure and English writing skill for college students in Indonesia, especially at International Multimedia Engineering School. First, the curriculum writing skills’ for college students’ should be reviewed. The curriculum should reflect the goal of teaching and learning that implies what the students’ expect to achieve in teaching and learning process combining students’ writing ability and students’ knowledge of struc- ture. In this study the writer shows that structure skill is valuable for students’ future orientations and writing ability. These assumptions supports that students’ writing ability is not enough without stu- dents’ knowledge of structure. Second, the result of teaching and learning of writing skills can be drawn from the result of the students’ correlation between knowledge of structure and their ability to write English sentences. In this reason the writer intends to show that knowledge of structure is necessary for students’ English achievement in terms that students also need to develop their writing ability because writing without structure has no meaning. In this explanation, the writer implies that the importance of students’ Correlation between the knowledge of structure and the writing ability of students in the Architecture department Akhmad Sidiq | 33 | knowledge of structure does not only support their writing achievement but also other language skills such as listening, reading, and speaking. For examples; utterances and reading activities without correct structure used is difficult to transfer, interpret and understand the meaning and even some- time has no meaning at all. Third, the students’ English knowledge should not only be limited on one assumption that knowledge of structure is essential for writing only but also for other skills, such as: speaking, reading, and listening. Speaking ability, for example is related to writing ability because students often transfer their utterances and expressions in conversations in the written form. The students misconception about the rules of structure used often makes the students feel confused both in speaking and writing. In this study, the writer has proven that writing, speaking and other language skills need to be sup- ported one another because knowledge of structure is needed to produce words, phrases, and sen- tences correctly. Fourth, the students’ writing ability and the knowledge of structure stimulate students to mas- ter the other English language skills. This encourages students’ to have expectation and consideration that writing, speaking, listening, and reading are influenced of the students’ knowledge of structure. Based on those above reasons, students in writing class are expected to be able to apply and use the structure, vocabulary and mechanics to write English sentences correctly. According to Klein (1985),writing is the ability to put pen and paper to express ideas through symbols. In this way, the representation on paper that has been written by the writer will have a meaning and content that can be understood by others people. In addition, students are also expected to be aware of their grammatical problems and errors in their writing because according to Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) the students are expected to be able to communicate in English and master four language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing). The reason above indicates that writing skill is the dependent part of other English language skills. As teachers, we need to work continually to aid our students in their search for fulfillment as writers (Harris, 1993). Therefore, writing skill should receive proportional attention with regard to other skills. 4. CONCLUSION In this case, the writer has proven that students’ knowledge of structure is important to up- grade and improve the students’ writing ability to write English sentences. In other words, the writer wants to inform to the English teacher that students’ knowledge of structure is essential factor that influences the students’ ability to write English sentences. The writer also informs to the English students that knowledge of structure’s position in English are independent, it means that knowledge of structure become a based-line for students to be able to master other English skills especially for writing class. Next, as stated in the previous, the writer states that competence is the knowledge of someone about the linguistic rules well and correctly, and performance is the ability of someone to apply the linguistic rules both written and orally. Now, it can be said that the third semester students of Archi- EnJourMe (English Journal of Merdeka): Culture, Language, and Teaching of English Vol. 8, No. 1, July 2023, pp. 27–35 | 34 | tecture Department at International Multimedia Engineering School in the 2021 – 2022 academic yearshave a good competence in structure and also a good performance in writing. It means that theyhave a good knowledge of structure and then, they apply their knowledge of structure in their writing ability. According to Murray (2022), there are certain qualities that most examples of good writing share. The following is a brief description of five qualities of good writing: focus, development, unity, coherence, and correctness. One very important addition is creativity. The best writing brings some personality and individuality to the writer. Follow all the established guidelines, but always try to make your writing unique. The writer expects that the result of this study will be helpful for English teachers that English teachers to have professionalism, creative motion, anticipation, appropriate teaching method to teach students about the importance of structure in order to upgrade students’ English skills especially in writing and structure. The teachers are expected to realize and to teach structure in connection with their writing ability in order to improve the students’ ability in mastering four English language skills. Next for students,the students are suggested to pay more attention to their structure and writing classes and to have certain ways to enhance their language skills related to structure and writing.The last writer recommends for future researchers to conduct a more detailed and complex research about the correlation between the students’ knowledge of structure and writing or another correlation between one English skill with another that is considered important to improve students English skills. 5. REFERENCES Belcher, Wendy Laura. 2009. Writing Your Journal Article In 12 Weeks.United States : Princeton Univer- sity Class, Master . 2022. How to Write Better: 6 Tips for Writing Good Sentences.Retrieved from https:// www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-better. Accessed March 21, 2022 Hardani, dkk. 2020. Metodepenelitian.Yogyakarta : CV. PustakaIlmu Harris, J. (1993). Introducing Writing. London :Penguin English. Heaton, J, B. (1975). 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