Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 146 Article History: Submitted: 28 May 2021 Reviewed: 24 June 2021 Edited: 4 July 2021 Accepted: 8 July 2021 Implementing Stylistics in IELTS Writing Preparation Focusing on Noun Phrases Erina Andriani, Stella Noviani, Barli Bram *) Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia *) Corresponding author email: barli@usd.ac.id DOI: https://doi.org/10.18.196/ftl.v6i2.11824 Abstract In the IELTS writing preparation class, the teacher can facilitate the students by integrating the stylistic approach in building writing students’ style. Not only achieving the primary goals in English proficiency by focusing on the writing style, but students can also comfortably share their ideas in their style. The paper examined the stylistics integrated material in IELTS writing through noun phrase construction. This study employed a qualitative method and a descriptive design. The data were collected using structured observation sheets as the instrument and were analyzed stylistically. Writing materials and the writing results of 12 students at an English course were collected. Results showed that stylistics was used in phrase complexity and ambiguity as a part of writing strategies. It was supported by the three dominant types of noun phrases produced by the students in their writing: determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and pre- modifier + head, as the evidence of the implementation of integrated material in IELTS writing. For the noun phrase uses, the students could vary the noun phrases in their complexity, function, and type in their tests, though the variations in each of those aspects were still low. Implications of the results are stylistics could be implemented in language learning-teaching activities in general. It could encourage students to develop their writing style for self-expression and more explicit writing products. Keywords: IELTS writing preparation; lesson material; noun phrase; stylistics https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v6i2.11824&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2021-07-16 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 147 Introduction Learning English as a foreign language takes effort. Since the English language became the most widely spoken language worldwide, many people have placed English at the top. Learners should be aware of mastering four language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking to become competent in English (Brown, 2000). However, from those four skills, writing is considered challenging because it involves many aspects, such as word choice, sentence structure, and discourse markers (Budjalemba & Listyani, 2020; Kiriakos & Tienari, 2018; Maharani & Santosa, 2021; Noori, 2020; Tardy, 2017; Vincent, 2020). In response to the statements above, language proficiency tests become an effective tool in assessing people’s language ability. The result of the language proficiency test in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) or Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is determined as one’s process in having competency in English (Farahani & Pahlevansadegh, 2019). The IELTS exam is a test for the need of applying for higher education or professional registration, general training for those migrating to Australia, Canada, and the UK, or applying for secondary education, training programs and work experience in an English- speaking environment (IELTS, n.d.). The students’ writing performance in IELTS is not always about the criteria related to academic writing skills. The difficulties that students face to perform the best in writing are also associated with the lack of competence in guiding the process to produce the language by the teacher (Pouladian, Bagheri, & Sadighi, 2017). Effective learning systems should be associated with proper transference rules in the style of writing. The academic writing style itself should be impersonal and conventional, and the foundation that is worth being taught is clarity and conciseness. The practice of curriculum in writing provides four guiding principles: “analyzing the work of excellent stylists; introducing principles like sentence focus, sentence variety, and balance; designing exercises that prompt students to imitate the stylistic moves; encouraging students to experiment with style in their writing” (Bacon, 2013, p.188). The complexity of the writing is referred to as syntactic complexity. Students often face difficulty in writing attempts, and sometimes the process of writing attempts can develop adverse outcomes as the undesired result appears. Students need to be directed to produce an excellent grammatical structure that covers syntactic structure such as subordination, coordination, and Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 148 noun phrases. The students perform various sentence patterns (Ortega, 2003; Wang, 2012 as cited in Lau, 2017). To prevent the students from being confused in writing, the teacher needs to demonstrate stylistic skills by encouraging them to master the sentence structure and style they are comfortable with (Bacon, 2013). The previous study has provided some elaboration on constructing noun phrases and finding the functions of noun phrases in TESOL academics, which help them accelerate their writing performance to their chosen field journals (Lau, 2017). Meanwhile, this study focuses on how teachers use stylistic-integrated lessons for noun phrases in IELTS and explore the students’ constructing noun phrases in academic writing. To fill the gap, the researchers intended to explore the following research questions: how did the teacher integrate stylistics in lesson materials for teaching noun phrases?; how did the students construct the noun phrases in their passages?; and how were the noun phrase uses in students’ test results? Literature Review Stylistics is the study of style. Each individual with different cognition creates different styles in presenting ideas. Tariq (2018) argues that style is how people use language, whether in a book or real-life applications. Therefore, even though stylistics is closely related to literature (Bashiruddin, 2018), its use also applies to language uses outside literature. Thus, stylistics, as the study of style, studies language for idea expressions and their significances for the work (Verdonk, 2002). It also bridges both literary and linguistic approaches (Abdulmughni, 2019; Bashiruddin, 2018) since it takes aesthetics in the meaning delivery in a passage (Tariq, 2018). A noun phrase (NP) is one of the phrase types. A phrase consists of fixed components as the head and a changeable component to modify the head (Melikyan, Melikyan, & Posidelova, 2018). The head of a phrase comes from the lexical word class, such as nouns, verbs, or adjectives (Baker & Croft, 2017), and is modified by non-lexical words to form phrases. In NP, the head is from the noun class, and it may have modifier(s) to describe the noun (Martin, Holtz, Abels, Adger, & Culbertson, 2020; Wright, & Hope, 1996). The construction of an NP is presented in Figure 1. In sentences, an NP also has various functions. Those functions include subject, the party who does the action, subject complement, which follows linking verbs, object, which follows action verbs, object complement, which describes objects, objects of prepositions, which Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 149 follows prepositions, appositive, the additional description for nouns, and adverbial adjunct, which tells time, place, or manner settings (Pratama & Isti’anah, 2017). Figure 1. Construction of Noun Phrase (Wright & Hope, 1996) Schools have started to integrate a stylistic approach in learning activities. Aside from linguistic construction, stylistics also explains various ways to convey an idea and its messages. That way, stylistics can improve the creativity of language use in writing (Hall, 2014). Stylistics is commonly used for EFL students as an effective method in teaching text construction (Abdulmughni, 2019; Hall, 2014). In this study, the researchers wanted to see how the students styled the keywords of their short descriptive texts. There are several ways to identify a writer’s style used in work, either from the choice of dictions, punctuations, lexical-semantic features, syntactic components, such as phrase and sentence constructions (Abdulmughni, 2019; Gómez- Adorno, Posadas-Duran, Ríos-Toledo, Sidorov, & Sierra, 2018). This study analyzed the syntactic component phrase, especially the NP. This study also analyzed how the teachers integrated stylistics in teaching NP to shape the information from diagram components. Studies have already implemented stylistic analysis on various types of passage in different focuses (Agu, 2015; Ejupi, Iseni, Siljanovska, & Hossain, 2014; Maulida, 2020). Some studies used stylistics specifically on NP in cosmetic names (Radzi, & Musa, 2017), novels (Pratama & Isti’anah, 2017), and newspapers (Biber, 2004). IELTS students, who are already familiar with English, face another challenge with how they style their thoughts in their writing. As stylistics is an effective method to help students improve their language use in more fluid contextual and situational uses, the researchers saw it fit to conduct a stylistic study on students’ NP uses. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 150 Methodology This study used a descriptive design and qualitative method, which explored stylistics focusing on noun phrases. Based on Sukardi (2003), descriptive research depicts and interprets the object as the way it is. In this study, descriptive analysis was purposefully conducted to describe the object’s facts and characteristics systematically. The data collection of this qualitative descriptive research is based on Marshall and Rossman (2006) that involves document analysis and material culture. The document analysis is used to analyze the structure of the students’ noun phrases. In addition, the data were gathered from the lesson materials using purposive sampling and twelve students’ writing tests using cluster sampling (Lambert, 2012). The teaching materials included NP constructions and writing strategy directions. This study focused on integrating stylistics in teaching IELTS writing classes consisting of 12 students at an English course in Jakarta. The students aimed to achieve at least 6.5 for their IELTS score. After the students were given the materials, they had a writing test from which the NP uses were analyzed. In that test, the students made a short passage describing a diagram. The test criteria included: a) writing a minimum of 150 words, b) using the keywords in the diagram, c) avoid repeating the sentence starter more than three times, d) avoid creating ambiguities, e) not using dictionaries, f) not copying from other sources, and g) finishing the test in 20 minutes. The reviewed theories on stylistic integration in a classroom and NP construction were used to construct instruments and analyze the data. The researchers used Abdulmughni’s (2019) and Hall’s (2014) theories for the lesson plan. Wright and Hope’s (1996) and Pratama and Isti’anah’s (2017) theories were used for the students’ NP in their passages. The instruments were structured observation sheets to annotate the occurrences of the observed data (Lambert, 2012). In this study, stylistic analysis was used to explore language variations based on contextual and situational language uses (Onwukwe, 2012; Varghese, 2012). The data were coded and tabulated before presented in percentages and discussed descriptively. Findings Stylistic-integrated Learning Materials Before teaching, the teachers made the materials for the students. The materials used stylistics: both linguistic and literary approaches. The materials provided the explanations in Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 151 English and Bahasa Indonesia, five examples for each subtopic for the students to observe and discuss, and exercises for them to practice. In the linguistic approach, the materials included construction and the function of NP. Below are the material descriptions: NP construction. The NP construction consisted of determiners and modifiers. The explanation about determiners included the definitive (the except for names and most languages/countries), non- definitive (a/an), demonstrative (this/that), quantifier (some), number (three), possessive pronoun (my), and pre-determiner (such) subtopics. The explanation about modifiers included the pre- modifiers and post-modifiers. The discussed pre-modifiers were nouns (fire alarm), possessive nouns (Jean’s house), and adjectives (hot cocoa). The post-modifiers included prepositional phrase (tree in my backyard), clause (cats that were eating), gerund (men standing over there), and past participle verb (dolls made by that kid) subtopics. NP function The discussion about function included: the subject (those birds are cute), subject complement (Brandon is an athlete), object (that girl washes her hands), object complement (I consider him my rival), the object of a preposition (by the lake), adjunct adverbial (last night I watched a video), and appositive (Sussie, the maid, is making tea) functions. For the literary approach, the teachers gave materials about variation and ambiguity. They were less elaborated than the linguistic approach but were used in every writing material (clauses, sentence types, etc.). Below are the material descriptions: Variations The discussion about variations emphasized one of the IELTS writing strategies given in this course. The students were guided to avoid using the exact words (especially noun, adjective, adverb, and verb) more than three times. The subtopics were simplicity (my book), complexity (the shirt hanging in the wardrobe over there), lexical variation (the picture/painting/drawing there), and modifier emphasis (the wet newspaper/the newspaper that is wet). Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 152 Ambiguity Avoiding ambiguity emphasized another IELTS writing strategy. The students were guided to create the NP, which would not cause ambiguity within a sentence. This topic included two subtopics: modifier ambiguity (the light box) and NP placement (call me an escort). Students’ Noun Phrase Constructions By identifying the types of noun phrases that the students’ constructed in IELTS writing, the researchers found six distinctive noun phrases from the twelve writings. The noun phrases that the students built were based on the noun phrases, such as determiners, pre-modifiers, and post-modifiers. From the analysis, the types of noun phrases are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Noun Phrase Types on Students’ Test Results No. Structure Number Percentage 1. Determiner + Head 182 49.59% 2. Determiner + Pre-modifier + Head 114 31.06% 3. Pre-modifier + Head 32 8.71% 4. Determiner + Head + Post-modifier 13 3.54% 5. Determiner + Pre-modifier + Head + Post-modifier 22 6.00% 6. Pre-modifier + Head + Post-modifier 4 1.10% Total 367 100% Table 1 shows some different structures of noun phrases in students’ IELTS writing. The total number of the researchers collected from the analysis was 367 noun phrases in the students’ writing. Each of the structures has a different level of percentage in the writings. The table also shows three structures that significantly dominate the writings: determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and pre-modifier + head. The Noun Phrase Use in Students’ Test Results The students used NP in several ways to construct their diagram description. The researchers combined the NP constructions, functions, and lengths to see how students styled the keywords in the diagram. Those keywords were: diagram, cycle, fish, life stage, and location. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 153 As for the functions, there are seven NP functions used in this research. They are the subject, subject complement, object, object complement, object of preposition, appositive, and adverbial adjunct. Table 2 shows each function in the students’ tests. Overall, the object of preposition is the most used NP function (48.6%), followed by the subject (25.6%). The object is the third most used function (16.8%), followed by the subject complement (8.1%) and appositive (0.6%). An adverbial adjunct is the least used function (0.3%), while object complement is never used. Table 2. Noun Phrase Functions on Students’ Test Results No. Function Diagram Cycle Fish Stage Location Other Total Percentage 1. S 12 10 56 9 3 1 91 26.6% 2. SC - 1 11 11 6 - 29 8.1% 3. O - 10 24 20 3 3 60 16.8% 4. OC - - - - - - - - 5. OP - 12 43 28 79 11 173 48.6% 6. A - - - - 2 - 2 0.6% 7. AA - - - - - 1 1 0.3% Total 12 33 134 68 93 16 356 100% Note: subject (S), object (O), subject complement (SC), object complement (OC), object of preposition (OP), appositive (A), adverbial adjunct (AA) In students’ test results, their NP lengths varied into short, moderate, and long categories. Short ones were 2-3 words (DH, PH, or DPH with one-word pre-modifier), moderate ones were 4-6 words (DPH or DPHP with a couple of pre-modifiers and a simple post-modifier), and long ones were more than 6 (DPHP with complex modifiers). The results regarding the length are presented in Table 3. The researchers found that students mainly use short NP (84.8%), followed by moderate length NP (12.4%) and complex (long) NP the least (2.8%). Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 154 Table 3. Noun Phrase Length on Students’ Test Results No. Length Diagram Cycle Fish Stage Location Other Percentage 1. Short 12 15 118 54 88 15 84.8% 2. Moderate - 14 15 11 3 1 12.4% 3. Long 1 4 1 3 2 - 2.8% Total 13 33 134 68 93 16 100% The students were free to construct the NP in their texts. However, there were two main requirements, word variations and minimum word count, that the students should consider. Students might achieve both requirements by varying the words, phrases, clauses, or even sentences while avoiding ambiguity in their passage construction. Discussion Stylistic-integrated Learning Materials Results from the materials showed that the teachers already implemented stylistics in their classes. Though the main discussion was still about the linguistic aspect of NPs, the materials also explicitly consider stylistics in creating NP to aid students’ styles, make variations, and avoid ambiguity. The lesson materials intended to improve students’ academic writing could also improve their academic literacy (Mukhroji, 2020). The linguistic aspect included NP construction and function. The lesson materials had elaborated the use of determiners, including how they should not proceed with names and specific determiners for singular countable nouns, which is in line with Paisse and Maillart (2017). The materials also explained the NP placement in the sentence, thus determining the role the NP plays, according to Pratama and Isti’anah (2017). The teacher had explained the usage and rules for both NP construction and function in the materials for students with to-the- point introductions, fine examples, and lots of exercises, which could help students’ writing (Al- Mukdad, 2019). The stylistics integration could be seen from the NP variation and ambiguity topics. In expressing the detail of the head, the learning materials showed that combinations of determiners and modifiers could distinguish the NP style (Gómez-Adorno et al., 2018; Abdulmughni, 2019). Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 155 The materials also emphasized avoiding ambiguity, in line with Hong, Ratchford, and Sagi (2018) and Nakatani (2018), especially selecting the modifiers and placing the noun phrase. However, the materials lacked direct suggestions on how to style their NP as guidance to help students understand (Abdulmughni, 2019). For example, it did not explain that the length of NP could also be affected by the target readers they intended (Biber, 2004). More extended, more complex NPs were commonly used in academic literature with high literacy readers, during the short, simpler NP for broader target readers. (Biber, 2004). Though the amount of explanation and depth on the stylistics approach could be more elaborated, the materials had entirely integrated the use of stylistics in language learning. Students’ Noun Phrase Constructions The structure determiner + head shows the highest percentage, which is 49.59%, with the number of occurrences is 182. The percentage of determiner + pre-modifier + head is 31.06%, with the number of occurrences is 114. The third-highest percentage is pre-modifier + head. The percentage is 8.71%, with the number of occurrences being 32. Those are the three structures of noun phrases that occurred the most compared to other structures. The analysis of each distribution will be discussed in the following section. Determiner + head This type of noun phrase is the most frequent type that happened in the students’ writing. It has a percentage of 49.59%, with the number of occurrences being 182. This type of noun phrase has at least one determiner as to the head of the noun phrase. [1] The + estuary D art H The word ‘the’ here is indicated as the definite article. The definite article ‘the’ in example [1] is a determiner to the noun phrase head ‘estuary. Based on Downing and Locke, a definite article identifies the referent within the text and outside the text (2006: 419). Determiner + Pre-modifier + Head This type of noun phrase is the second highest that the researchers found based on the number of percentages and occurrences in the writings. It has 114 occurrences with a 31.06% percentage. A determiner in this type of noun phrase works as articles, possessives, quantifiers, and cardinal numbers (Pratama & Isti’anah, 2017). Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 156 [2] The + immature + salmon D art Adj H This noun phrase in example [2] shows that the word ‘the’ is a determiner of the noun phrase head ‘salmon’. The term ‘immature’ is a pre-modifier that functions to modify the head of the noun phrase. Pre-modifier + Head The third type that the researchers found in the writings is a pre-modifier followed by the head of the noun phrase. The number of occurrences with this type is 32, with an 8.71% percentage. The pre-modifier here is described as adjectives, nouns, present participle, and past participle (Pratama & Isti’anah, 2017). [3] Infant + salmon Adj H This type of noun phrase contains only one pre-modifier and the head. The word ‘infant’ in example [3] is to modify the head of the noun phrase ‘salmon’. This type of noun phrase happens when the pre-modifier is adjective as the head of the noun phrase. Determiner + Head + Post-modifier Another type of noun phrase found by the researchers in students’ writing contains a determiner that follows the head and post-modifier. The number of occurrences with this type is 13, and the following percentage is 3.54%. The use of determiner in this type is represented by definite article, indefinite article, possessive pronoun, quantifier, cardinal number, and demonstrative. This kind of structure is first modified by the noun phrase head and followed by a post-modifier such as prepositional phrase, noun phrase, and adverb phrase (Pratama & Isti’anah, 2017). [4] The + development + of eggs Art D H PP For example [4], this type of noun phrase shows that the word ‘the’ as the definite article becomes the determiner that follows the head of the noun phrase ‘development’. The word after the head becomes the post-modifier used to modify the head of the prepositional phrase starting with ‘of’. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 157 Determiner + Pre-modifier + Head + Post-modifier This type of noun phrase’s structure is the most complex one. This type of noun phrase contains determiner, pre-modifier, head, and post-modifier to modify the noun phrase. The researchers found that the number occurrence of this type is 22, with 22% from the data analysis. [5] The + many + stages + of development D art Adj H PP This kind of noun phrase contains the definite article ‘the’ as the determiner of the noun phrase. The word ‘many’ in example [5] is to modify the head of the noun phrase, which is ‘stages’. The following post-modifier is described with a prepositional phrase ‘of development’ that indicates prepositions followed by nouns. Pre-modifier + Head + Post-modifier This last type of noun phrase found in the writings is the minor type of noun phrase used by the students. It has the smallest number of occurrences, only 4, with a 1.10% percentage, and the pre-modifier in this type is described by an adjective, noun, and present participle. In contrast, the post-modifier here is presented by the prepositional phrase, finite clause, and non- finite clause (Pratama, & Isti’anah, 2017). [6] Final + rearing + process + in certain areas Adj Pres part H PP This type of noun phrase has two pre-modifiers, as in example [6], such as an adjective ‘final’ and present participle ‘rearing’, which functioned as modifying the head of the noun phrase ‘process’. Then the post-modifier here is presented by the prepositional phrase ‘in certain areas’. The Noun Phrase Use in Students’ Test Results The NP used in the texts that the students made described some keywords that existed in the diagram. Those NPs used various structures, from the simplest form (with only two words) to the more complex ones (up to twelve words). The NP constructions, lengths, and placements were used to analyze the additional information the students gave, the NP functions, and how they styled each keyword from the salmon diagram to their short passages. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 158 Diagram [7] The presented diagram This NP is usually used to start the essays because the students were about to describe a diagram. This NP was simple, short-form (2-3 words) like in example [7] with DPH, PH, and DHP patterns. Students intended this NP to be direct and to the point, in line with Nakatani (2018). It used lexical variations for the modifiers and the head. All NPs functioned as subjects, contradicted with Pratama and Isti’anah (2017) that subject function was on moderate use. Cycle [8] The life cycle of a species of seawater fish called salmon. This NP at first had a moderate complexity form (more than five words), even one NP with complex structure (example [8]). The longer NP in students’ test results existed more as students merged the information in the NP (Biber, 2004). The used patterns were DPHP, DPH, and DHP, and most of them had post-modifiers, which contradicted Pratama and Isti’anah (2017), as their study showed low use of NP with post-modifiers. The students varied the dictions for pre-modifier (life/natural), head (cycle/process), and post-modifier (of a salmon). It acted as the object of a preposition, similar to Pratama and Isti’anah (2017) about the function. The fish [9] The eggs of a salmon. The discussion about the fish was around the name of the fish (salmon) and its forms (egg or adult). This NP mostly had a simple form (2-3 words) with DH and DPH patterns, but some were longer (4-5 words) with DHP (example [12]) or DPH patterns. Students used common words for the readers to avoid confusion (Nakatani, 2018). They varied the dictions on determiner, pre- modifier (adult/infant/full-grown/mother/young/immature), and head (fish/fishes/salmon/eggs). It acted as subject the most, contradicted with Pratama and Isti’anah (2017). Life stage/process [10] The incubation period [11] Their maturity point [12] The spawning area The life stage/process included the salmon’s life stages: spawning, incubation, emergence, rearing, migration, and growth/maturation. Most of them were described with short Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 159 NP with DH and DPH patterns (Biber, 2004). The first style was those stage keywords acted as the head as in example [10]. For the other style, stages (incubation/maturity) were used as the pre- modifier of a head (session/process/point) but still explained a life stage (example [11]). Others also became pre-modifiers, but the NP became a location (example [12]). In a sentence, these NPs acted as an object of a preposition the most, similar to Pratama and Isti’anah (2017). Location [13] … to the river estuaries… [14] … the area between ocean and river… The locations included the locations where a salmon could live: river/freshwater, ocean, and estuary. Most of them were described with simple NPs (Nakatani, 2018) with DH and DPH patterns (example [13]). Some life stages were changed into locations, as in example [12], and some NPs explain the estuary as in example [14]. The students varied the diction with river or fresh water and ocean and sea. Mostly acted as objects of preposition and two as appositives (Pratama, & Isti’anah, 2017). Others [15] … the mouth of the river that meets the ocean… [16] … the eye and the head… [17] This time… The students made some additions that they concluded themselves after seeing the diagram. The complexity of the NP dictions varied, which might cause ambiguity (Nakatani, 2018), though the length was primarily short (Biber, 2004). In example [15], it had a noun clause as the post-determiner. In example [16], it was a compound subject (two nouns with the level position in the sentence): both the eye and the head acted as the subject in that sentence. In example [17], it was the only adverbial adjunct found in students’ works, in line with Pratama and Isti’anah (2017), that adverbial adjuncts were rarely used. The students made varying NP in their works. The results showed that the students used shorter NPs the most, in line with Biber (2004) to avoid ambiguity (Nakatani, 2018). The results also showed that the object of preposition function was used the most, in line with Pratama and Isti’anah (2017). However, the moderate use of object function in this study contradicted the study from Pratama and Isti’anah (2017). Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 6, No. 2, July 2021 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/786 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 160 Conclusion and Implication This paper studied the stylistics integration in an IELTS writing preparation class focusing on the noun phrase. This research used a stylistic analysis of the lesson materials and students’ writing results. The stylistics integrated the materials that the teacher provided in helping the students to construct the noun phrase. The researchers found six types of noun phrases from the students’ writings: determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and pre- modifier + head as the most dominating types in students’ writing. Although the three dominating styles are considered the simplest ones, the teacher successfully guided them to explore seven types of noun phrases in their writings. In implementing the noun phrase to meet students’ style, the students varied the complexity, construction, and function of their noun phrases for each keyword. However, the variations were still dominated by a simple form with specific functions and types. This study was still limited in the source of data since the researchers gathered the samples on the writings of the IELTS post-test only. Future researchers can adopt more extensive examples in different classes and more than one linguistic or literary component to investigate. The implications of this study are stylistics can be implemented to improve scores in IELTS writing, and students may be encouraged to develop their writing style to express themselves and convey messages more clearly. References Abdulmughni, S. A. S. (2019). Stylistics, literary criticism, linguistics, and discourse analysis. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(2), 412-428. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n2p412 Agu, I. E. (2015). 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