Writing Spoken Language in Higher Education of Indonesian Students-Comparison Contrast Essay

(General Statement) Writing spoken language is a common phenomenon among higher education students in Indonesia. Since English is a foreign language, students find it difficult to express their ideas into a good academic writing which fulfills its standard. Their reasons may vary from the grammar and structure, diction, and the notion to rules of formal writing. This phenomenon reduces when students start their classes in higher semester. It means that their writing skills evolve respectively along with the knowledge improvement. Even though some students get improvement in their writing skills, most of them still have spoken language writing.(Thesis Statement) This essay will explain about the nature of writing, the nature of spoken language, and phenomenon of spoken English writing among higher education students.

(Topic Sentence) In language learning, writing belongs to productive skills or language performance. It includes writing journal, free writing, and Academic writing. Writing journal and free writing do not follow the formal standard of writing. They may use spoken language in the composition. On the other hand, academic writing is quite different from both of them. There are writing standards which must be fulfill to have a good writing. They include grammar, diction, punctuation, paraphrasing, sentence and paragraph structure, parallelism etc. Writing skill is a matter of habit which means that it will improve by practicing continuously. Some people said that writing is an art to express ideas into stirring words. By writing, the idea remains either in a hard copy such as draft or in a soft copy such as data. This is the advantage of writing which other people may observe the writer’s point of view from those records.

(Topic Sentence) In contrast, spoken language means the language which is used in speaking. When language serves as a message medium in verbal communication, its main goal is interpersonal communication understanding. Therefore, speaking does not much concern about any specific standards as long as it can make other people understand about what they speak. Further, the grammatical error will not visible because it is a verbal language. For examples, Chinese may say “don’t forget to play play to my house” instead of “don’t forget to play to my house” or you will find the word “civilized urinating” instead of “rest room”. Although speaking is also one part of productive skills, those samples show us that its structure sometimes different from the written one and they are not interchangeable.

(Topic Sentence) The interchangeable phenomenon which spoken language is composed in academic writing happens among higher education students in Indonesia. Writing is relatively new experience for most students since they have practiced it in speaking activity or hear it from their favorite film and song. They may write “ I wanna go to the club tonight”, but it is not acceptable in academic writing because the word “wanna”, which means “want to”, does not exist in formal language. In addition, English does not recognize such abbreviation except in speaking activities. The sentence “could you help me?” shows politeness in spoken language. Rather, the word “could” must be changed into “can” to make it in standard academic writing. Precisely, it must meet grammatical aspect which is syntactical case or subject verb agreement in internal structure of a sentence. Although the rules are clear cut, the students still have those common errors in their writing because of lack of practice and knowledge.

(Conclusion) Writing spoken language is still readable and understandable. It is not accepted in academic or formal writing because it does not meet the standard rules. Understanding the nature of writing will ease the writers to make standard composition. Therefore, they are able to express their ideas clearly, orderly, and logically. A good writing skill does not come at once, thus it is recommended to have lots of practices.