Unity of the students’ argumentative essay using turnabout in the State Islamic University of Malang

ABSTRACT

Unity is one of the writing elements that only discusses one main idea. It is one of the elements reflecting a good construction of an essay especially of argumentative one. In argumentative essay using turnabout, it is begun with few sentences summarizing a point of view that is actually the opposite of the writer’s own thesis statement, before the writer makes a complete turnabout and presents his or her thesis statement. It is usually used to argue a point or to clear up a commonly held misunderstanding to the readers. Therefore, this research is important to study because it identifies the unity in the students’ argumentative essay using turnabout of the State Islamic University of Malang.

The analysis of this study focuses on unity of the argumentative essay- using turnabout. It examines the unity in the essays using turnabout as the introductory paragraph used by the students of Writing Class III in the 2005/2006 academic years.

The research design of this study is descriptive qualitative. The data are collected from the writing compilation “Turnabout and Dramatic entrance Introducing Your Argument” by Rohmani Nur Indah, M.Pd. They are analyzed through the observation done by the researcher herself. The model for analyzing strategy patterns of unity is based on Oshima and Hogue (1983), which has been widely used in investigating the unity of the essays.

The result of the data analysis shows that almost all of the essays analyzed have well-construction of its unity. The essays which have appropriate unity are under the title “The Right to Die”, (أ Confining Prostitution, an Excuse for Womanizer”, The Territory Autonomy is The Wrong Project”, “An Abortion is the Solution”, “giving Test to the Students, Why not?”, ،،Salary Increased ٧s. Advancement in Work Quality”, “Indonesia Between Privatization and Public Ownership”, “The Military Obligated Education, Why not?”, “Cohabitation, Why not?” and ،،Cohabitation, Why not?”. The unity of the essays shows that the developing and the conclusion paragraphs support the topic sentence clearly. On the other hand, only one of the data that has lack of unity because the developing paragraphs or conclusion paragraphs do not support the topic sentence which means that it is not well-constructed.

Based on the findings of the study, it is suggested that writing lecturers should give better understanding about the unity in the essays and not focus on the grammatical and the diction only. It is supposed that the unity in the essay is more emphasized to avoid misconception to the readers. Finally, by this thesis the researcher hopes that in the next research, there will be more students who are interested in analyzing essays writing using another perspective.