THE EFFECT OF OUTLINE PLANNING IN ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY WRITING OF FOURTH SEMESTER STUDENTS OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, FACULTY OF ARTS, UDAYANA UNIVERSITY Ketut Santi Indriani English Department, Faculty of Arts, Udayana University kt.santi.indriani@gmail.com Abstract This study is aimed to identify the effect of outline planning in writing argumentative essay. Outlining is making a plan to map your writing, which shows the content and sequence of each paragraph in your writing. Task planning will give the students an opportunity to plan what to say and how to write their ideas in the task performance. Task planning can be in the form of cubing, clustering, mapping (Ojima, 2006:566), and outlining (Kellog, 1990: 328). The data source of this study is argumentative essay writing of 30 students. The data in this study was analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively, by comparing the results of pre-test and post-test in argumentative essays writing. Pre-test was conducted without outlining the writing, while post-test proceeded by outlining the writing. Based on the data analysis, there is a significant improvement in students writing after implementing outline planning. The improvement reflected from the reduction of the types and number of mistake made by the students in their writing. Keywords: argumentative essay, writing, outline planning I INTRODUCTION Argumentative essay is an essay which presents both sides of arguments of an issue. It is also defined as an essay which proofs the truth and/or the untruth of a statement. In an argumentative essay, the author uses many rhetorical strategies to convince the readers about the truth or the untruth of the statement (Alwasilah, 2005: 116). The basic of argumentative essay is critical and logical thinking, which means it should be supported by logical facts. Keraf (2004: 5) stated that argumentative essay should be based by logical reasoning. According to Nursisto (1999: 43), the characteristics of argumentative essay are (i) including facts and truth, (ii) including strong reason; (iii) using denotative language, (iv) rational analysis and (v) subjective and emotional factors are very restricted. Writing a good essay, especially an argumentative essay is not an easy task for EFL students. Giving them a provision planning in writing essay might help them in increasing their ability in writing. Task planning will give the students an opportunity to plan what to say and how to write their ideas in the task performance. Task planning can be in the form of cubing, clustering, mapping (Ojima, 2006:566), and outlining (Kellog, 1990: 328). Outlining is making a map of your writing which shows the content and the sequence of each paragraph. The parts of argumentative essay outline should contain an introduction, the body parts, and the conclusion. Outlining also reflects the planning of your writing for each paragraph with its thesis stamen and the supporting arguments. The focus of this study is to find the effect of outline planning to the essay organization of argumentative writing of fourth semester students of English Department, Faculty of Arts, Udayana University. II MATERIALS AND METHODS The data source in this article is 30 fourth semester students of English Department, Faculty of Arts, Udayana University. The data was collected in four meetings through pre-test and post-test design. Dimitrov and Rumrill (2003: 159) stated that pre-test and post-test design can help rehabilitation to better understand and determine effects resulting from the intervention. The preliminary study was conducted by giving the students a pre-test in the first meeting to find out the students’ ability in terms of the argumentative writing contents and composition. Students were given a task to write an argumentative essay consists of four to five paragraphs. Students chose their own topics based on their own interests. Argumentative writing subject had been delivered in the previous meeting. However, students did not plan their writing in this meeting. In the second and third meeting, the students were given an outline planning related to the argumentative essay organization and content as well as asked to plan their writing. The post-test was conducted in the fourth meeting by asking the students to write an argumentative essay based on the outline planning that had been created. mailto:kt.santi.indriani@gmail.com 2 | Ketut Santi Indriani Lingual (Vol. 8, No.2, 2019) The students’ pre-test and post-test result was scored based on the Jocob’s ESL composition profile only for the category of essay organization and content. The collected data was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative analysis was done by comparing the students’ pre-test and post-test results, while the qualitative analysis was done by explaining types of mistakes that the students made in the pre-test and post-test. The data analysis in this article is presented trough tables. III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Writing is one of four essential elements in language learning beside listening, speaking and reading. Some of EFL students may have problems in writing since they face some obstacles such as grammatical structure of the language, limited vocabularies and even the mistake in organizing the sentences. To help EFL students in writing, teachers try to find many methods that can improve students’ abilities in writing. One of the methods that can be done is by giving students a chance to plan their writing. Writing ability depends much on the writers abilities in doing plan, saying plan and composing plan whether in mind or on paper (Isnard and Piolat, 2014: 121). There are many forms of writing task planning. One of them is outline planning. Argumentative essay consists of four main parts; those are (i) claim, evidence or factual information, (ii) pro argument and (iii) counter argument. A claim is the main argument of an essay. It defines the goal and direction of the writing and is supported by evidence, quotation, expert opinion, statistics and details. Claim is similar to thesis statement because one sentence sets up the rest of the writing. Pro argument is argument which supports the author’s argument. Counter argument is argument which opposes the author’s argument. It expresses the opposite view of the thesis statement. The outline of argumentative essay consists of introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction of argumentative essay sets up and states the author’s claim. It must also contain the thesis statement, which outlines author’s position and the major points the author will discuss in the essay. The body should contain pro and/or counter arguments. The purposes of a conclusion in an argumentative essay are to restate main arguments related to the issue being discussed. 3.1 OUTLINE PLANNING IN ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING Outline planning in writing means positioning your main and supporting ideas into a good organization. In argumentative writing, the organization of the essay should also reflect a good position of the author’s claim, pro and counter arguments. Every writing task must consist of three main parts that must be included in the writing organization, which are the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. For the argumentative writing, all these three parts has its own characteristics. The introductory paragraph in an argumentative writing states the position the author arguing for. It also includes the thesis statement that provides the author’s claim and the reason for it. The body of an argumentative writing gives the readers the basic information to understand the author’s position. It should give reasons or evidence to support author’s claim and also the refutation of it. The conclusion in an argumentative writing is the last part of the writing organization. It should include the importance of the issue, the arguments and what would happen if the author’s argument is not believed or acted upon the issue. There are some outline models that can be used in organizing argumentative writing. Those models can be seen in the diagram bellow. Diagram 1. Argumentative Outline Models Argumentative Outline Models Model 2 Thesis statement Counter Argument Pro argument I Pro argument II Pro Argument III Conclusion Model 3 Thesis statement Counter Argument I Counter Argument II Counter Argument III Conclusion Model 4 Thesis statement Counter Argument I Counter Argument II Counter Argument III Pro argument Conclusion Model 1 Thesis statement Pro argument I Pro argument II Pro Argument III Counter Argument Conclusion The Effect of Outline Planning in Argumentative Essay Writing of Fourth Semester Students of English Department, Faculty of Arts, Udayana University 3 3.2 THE EFFECT OF OUTLINE PLANNING TO STUDENTS’ ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING ORGANIZATION Organizing ideas in writing will influence the readers, both to read your article and make the readers easily understand your points. In argumentative writing, there are some models that can be used in organizing our ideas. The model is shown on the diagram 1. Putting thesis statement in the introduction part of the argumentative essay has two purposes. First, its purpose is to give a brief view to the readers about what the writer is going to talk about and to prove in his writing. Second, it is purposed to attract the reader’s attention since the writer uses a provocative words in creating the thesis statement. In argumentative essay, it is a must to put your thesis statement in the introduction part of the essay. Pro arguments or counter arguments will be the next part of the essay after stating the thesis. As shown on the diagram 1, thesis statement can be followed by either pro arguments or counter arguments. If the writer states some pro arguments after the thesis statement, then the writer may put one counter argument after those pro arguments; as shown in model 1. A counter argument or some of it may follow the thesis statement before the pro arguments in argumentative essay. As shown in model 2, the writer may put a counter argument and followed by some pro arguments. In model 4, some counter arguments are stated before a pro argument. Pro argument does not always exist in an argumentative essay. It can be omitted if the writer focusing in opposing the thesis statement as shown in model 3. In every essay writing task, a conclusion plays an important part of the essay. Especially in argumentative writing, conclusion should clinch up your final thoughts with a powerful statement in order to persuade the readers to believe in your statement. A conclusion should summarize all the ideas explained including the thesis and all the writer’s reasons to support his opinion. Based on the data analysis, the pre-test result of 30 students’ argumentative writing shows that students still make some mistake in organizing their essay. The types of mistakes in argumentative writing from the students’ pre-test can be shown on the table below. Type of mistake Number of students who make the mistake None 2 Thesis statement omission 3 Pro or counter arguments organization 11 Conclusion omission 6 Thesis statement omission and Pro or counter arguments organization 3 Thesis statement and Conclusion omissions 2 Pro or counter arguments organization and Conclusion omission 2 Pro or counter arguments organization, Thesis statement and Conclusion omissions 1 Table 1. Pre-test result of types of mistakes in argumentative writing organization From the table above, it can be seen that some mistakes made by the students in writing argumentative essay are thesis statement omission, pro or counter arguments organization, conclusion omission and combination of those mistakes. Only 3 students did not make any mistake in terms of essay organization. There are 3 students who made mistake in form of thesis statement omission. Students did not write a thesis statement in the introduction. The mistake that was done by most of the students is pro and counter arguments organization. Number of students who made mistake in organizing the pro and counter arguments is 11. The mistakes are in the form of mixing the pro and 4 | Ketut Santi Indriani Lingual (Vol. 8, No.2, 2019) counter arguments and omitting the counter argument in the text. Conclusion omission was done by 6 students. They did not state any conclusion at the end of their essays. However, some students who omitted the thesis statement also made mistake in organizing the pro or counter arguments and omitted the conclusion. The number of students who omitted thesis statement and made mistake in organizing the pro and counter arguments is 3 students while the number of students who omitted both the thesis statement and the conclusion is 2 students. The number of students who made mistake in organizing the pro and counter arguments as well as omitted the conclusion is 2 students. The number of students who did those three types of mistake is 1 student. It can be seen that the ability of the students in organizing the argumentative essay in the pre-test is still low. It is caused by the unprepared writing. They did not plan their writing. However, the post-test result shows an improvement of students’ ability in organizing the argumentative essay. After planning their performance by making outline planning, students’ post-test result increase significantly. The mistakes made by the students reduced in terms of types and number. It can be seen on the table below. Type of mistake Number of students who make the mistake None 23 Pro or counter arguments organization 6 Conclusion omission 1 Table 2. Post-test result of types of mistakes in argumentative writing organization Based on the table above, it can be seen that the types of mistake and the number of mistake decrease significantly. There is no combination of mistakes in students’ writing. Types of mistakes appeared were only pro and counter arguments organization and conclusion omission. Number of students who made mistake in terms of pro and counter arguments organization decrease from 11 to 6 while conclusion omission decrease from 6 to 1. IV CONCLUSION Outlining provides an opportunity for writers to plan what will be written.This plan includes organizational planning and content planning. Based on the study of the effect of outline planning in argumentative essay writing of fourth semester students of English Department, it can be concluded found that outlining improve students writing significantly. This conclusion is obtained from comparing the results of the pre-test and post-test in argumentative essays writing. The improvement reflected from the reduction of the types and the number of mistake made by the students in their writing. REFERENCES Alwasilah, A. C. 2005. Pokoknya Menulis 1st edition. Bandung: PT. Kiblat Buku Utama. 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