. EFL Students’ Writing Quality in Argumentative Essaysacross Genders.

ABSTRAK This research was about EFL students’ writing quality of argumentative essays. The research measured the writing quality and analyzed students’ writing based on elements of argumentative writing. Thus, the study was intended to find out the EFL students’ writing quality in terms of quality in argumentation, coherence and cohesion. The present study also described differences in the writing quality in terms of quality of argumentation, coherence and cohesion in argumentative essay by male and female students. Last, the study analyzed different elements provided in Indonesian EFL male and female students’ argumentative writing based on pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. Furthermore, descriptive quantitative research method was applied to score and analyze argumentative essays produced by 20 IELTS students that consisted of 10 male and 10 female students. The data were collected from student’s IELTS final test in IELTS writing task 2 from IELTS preparation class in Direct English Malang. In IELTS writing question number 2, that asked the students to perform their writing skill by producing an argumentative essay. Later, the essays for the study were selected by several criteria such as the length of the essay. Also, the present study adopted Chase (2011) score sheet for argumentative writing for quality of argumentation, coherence and cohesion. In scoring argumentative writing, inter-rater reliability was used that there were two rates evaluating the students’ argumentative essays. The raters werethose who were graduated from English department, have teaching experience in teaching writing in more than 2 years and have knowledge of how to use scoring rubric in evaluating students’ writing. In short, the finding of the research shows that in terms of quality of argument in the argumentative essay the average the IELTS students composed their arguments in essay partially developed with relatively low coherence and cohesion score. Then, the present study concluded that 1) the quality of argumentative writing by EFL students are in partially developed argumentation with low score in both coherence and cohesion, 2) gender differences was not significantly presented in the writing quality of Indonesian EFL students that even though female students seemed likely to receive a high score than the male students. 3). Based on analysis on elements of argumentation, in several elements male students provided more reason below level 1 reason and introduction of the argumentative writing, however, female students performed a better quality of argumentative essay because their writingconsisted of almost all of functional elements of argumentative essay with only few number of nonfunctional elements. Normal 0 false false false IN X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}