Treffer: Discovering student’s expertise to augment claim quality in writing class at UIN Maliki Malang

This study begins with the identification of some problems found in my writing classes. Developing cliché claim and copying other person’s opinion have been the main problems followed by the failure to develop sufficient examples to support the claim and eliminate the number of grammatical and mechanical error in students’ essays. I also tried to find out the reason through some discussions both with students and colleagues. It appeared that students reading habit is unsatisfying and as the result they do not expand their critical thinking skill. The other significant reason is students mostly think that writing is a difficult assignment. At the beginning students were introduced to how to find the issue for WHAT TO WRITE. They need to get involved in interest mapping activity. In potency mapping, students are trying to discover the following: what my area of interest is, the kinds of topic I look for when I browse internet and the issues I couldn’t miss. In the classes, it was found that their interest mostly covering the topic on music, fashion, sport, teen’s lifestyle, and travelling. Whereas, the unfavorable topics are political issue and education. Afterwards, students conducted brainstorming in groups having the same interest. On the next phase the students started planning ahead on HOW TO BEGIN WRITING by making an outline and present it in class conference. Their friends contributed a lot of ideas to support the proposed claim. Later, the students were assigned to find related data from various resources to get as many examples as possible to strengthen their claim. This is related to the activity to decide WHICH FACT SUPPORTS THE CLAIM. Their writing draft was checked by their friends in peer-editing. The comments given on HOW TO ELABORATE THE CLAIM were used to revise the draft before the final draft was submitted. As the last process, the evaluated draft was published in the form of mini magazine to be distributed to other students. This last activity has become the most favorable part for the ...