International Journal of Innovation, Creativity and Change. www.ijicc.

net
Volume 8, Issue 12, 2019

Challenges in Descriptive Essay

Writing: A Case of Indonesian EFL
Leaners
Mister Gidion Maruea*, Marvio B Pantasb, a,b
English department,
Universitas Negeri manado, Manado, Indonesia, Email:
a*
marviopantas@gmail.com

Essay writing has a pivotal role in the education system. Within the
context of learning English as a foreign language, essay writing is
viewed as the reflection of the students’ knowledge and language
acquisition. This creates challenges for students of every level and
background, including those learning English at thehigh school level.
This study reports on the investigation of Indonesian students’
challenges in essay writing, particularly descriptive essays. In the
frame of qualitative design, this study gains the data by analysing
students’ essay assignments as documents for data, and interviewing
them if the elaboration of the data is necessary. Students are
interviewed on the basis of the following main question; how did you
write your essay and what challenged you? The respondents for this
study are students of the high school in North Sulawesi, whose
academic achievement is high, and the students come from different
regions of Indonesia. Later, they are assumed to represent the
circumstances faced by most EFL learners in Indonesia. The grounded
theory perspective is applied for analysing the data and presented
descriptively. The findings indicate that students experience various
challenges in their efforts of writing a descriptive essay such as
grammatical problems, vocabulary limitations, and word choice,
spelling, and idea development. This study recommends the need for
regular teacher feedback, and more essay writing practices for
students.

Key words: Essay, Descriptive, Challenge, Indonesian.

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Introduction

Writing is an important skill to be developed within the context of language learning and
global knowledge transfer. This particular skill is not merely related to the use of language in
communicating and negotiating meaning or ideas, but it is also concerned with the reflection
of the absorption of the source of knowledge, as well as retransferring it into the written form.
Further, writing skills are synthesized to be the marks of a cognitive psychological
perspective, a socio-cultural perspective and a linguistic perspective (Myhill, 2009). It involves
these aspects in the presentation of a writing product. That suggests the pivotal place of
writing in the academic world, is more than solely a language competence. Writing is “a
thinking tool” (Mohammad and Hazarika, 2016); (Bjork and Raisanen, 1997). According to
Cullingford (2000), “writing is not concerned with remembering but rather, it is the link
between language and thought”. It defines an acquisition of multidisciplinary knowledge and
its productive transmission through language (Cullingford, 2000). Within the context of the
teaching of English as a foreign language in Indonesia, it has been part of the curriculum
from time to time, following the various curriculum changes in the country. In the latest
curriculum, essay writing as part of the development of writing skills is considered as a
medium for students to expose themselves to the English language. This is done through
digging out the relevant resources for enriching the quality of the content and selecting the
appropriate words with the correct grammatical rules for sharing the gained knowledge. In
general, a good essay requires a strong understanding of information organization,
vocabulary, language usage, and mechanics (Ariyanti, 2017).

However, writing an essay in EFL class is difficult for both native speakers and foreign
learners (Haider, 2014). For a good essay, writers must be able to select the proper language
to systematize ideas in the form of a well-organized work. Writing is not an easy skill to
develop since it deals with communicative skills using the English language as a medium. It
creates challenges for a foreign learner whose language exposure is limited or needs more
practice. As afore-mentioned, foreign learners have to handle such components such as
content, organization, grammar, syntax, mechanics, word choice, audience and purpose, and
the ability to not ignore the writing process itself. In other words, an essay has to display
clearance, fluency and effectiveness of the idea the writer is trying to communicate. In this
context, Indonesian students as foreign learners must learn to create written products that
demonstrate mastery over contextually appropriate formats for the rhetorical presentation of
ideas, as well as mastery in all areas of the language (Krapels, 1990). This illustrates the
sophistication and challenge of essay writing.

In Indonesia, descriptive essays are one of the genres of essays that has to be taught,
beginning in Junior High School (Harmenita and Reszy, 2013). It is further explained
thatdescriptive essays are included in the curriculum of EFL class as it helps students to

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develop their communication skills and allows students to engage with literacy to further
develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It bridges the formation of basic
study skills required for understanding what students observe and think, and how they convey
it in their own words. Students illustrate an image and translate it to readers using their
linguistics and contextual knowledge. In doing so, descriptive essay writing turns to be a
challenging activity for students with varying levels of English knowledge, despite occupying
one classroom. It arises curiosity towards what situations challenges arise in the learning of
descriptive essay writing in EFL classes.

This study aims at reporting a qualitative study on the challenges in students’ descriptive
essay writing. It is pivotal to figure out the challenges that students experience in their writing
process. The understanding of students’ challenge(s) in their essay writing, particularly in
descriptive essays, will be of use to formulate strategies to assist them to increase their
academic achievement, to design a suitable learning method to improve students’ basic
writing skills, and to trigger and encourage students’ habits of thinking, organizing ideas, and
developing critical thinking abilities. Hence, this research focuses on identifying and
illustrating the common challenges students face in writing descriptive essays, by relying
upon the results of the study that focuses on Indonesian students as EFL learners. It is
intended to discover writing challenges and suggest ways of overcoming them.

Literary Review

Writing in English has always been a challenge for Indonesian students as foreign learners of
English and also, those in other Asian countries (Suriyanti and Yaacob, 2016). Students have
to meet and tackle problems of English structure, the limited choice of words, content
development, and the influence of socio-culture and communication perspective (Ghabool et
al., 2012). Writing can cause problrms for students, as shown by errors made in both of the
organizing of the composition of writing and the language used (Silalahi, 2016). Yet, these
circumstances do not eliminate the inclusion of essay writing in the English subject taught in
Indonesian schools. The Indonesian government stipulates English as a compulsory subject in
schools. According to the Government Regulation (32, 2013), English is one of the
compulsory subjects which is taught from the first year of junior high school to the university
level. As a compulsory subject, English as a subject taught in Indonesian schools, has to
address the development of four integrated basic skills such as Listening, Speaking, Reading
and Writing.

Having no intention to ignore other skills, writing occupies a crucial role in language
learning. The skill of writing needs to be learned and mastered by students. Students’
achievement’s in writing can be used as indicators for academic progress and their
communication ability, as well as knowledge transmission. When one writes, they are not
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only selecting useful language, but they are also selecting information to be presented, whilst
considering the purpose of writing. In other words, writing is a process of managing
information and knowledge, and is a process of formulating and organizing the way it reaches
readers. Students’ writing must “demonstrate mastery over contextually appropriate formats
for the rhetorical presentation of ideas as well as mastery in all areas of language” (Krapels,
1990). That means that the skill of writing is important for both language learning and
academic assessment. A good piece of writing goes beyond the layer of linguistics
components, it has multi layers of knowledge and perspectives. In writing, students deal with
“finding out ideas and assembling them into coherent discourse, conforming to social
conventions underlying written discourse, in order to perform an act of communication”
(Bouyakoub - Bouabdallah, n.d). At this point, language learning is practiced and the learning
process is activated.

Writing an essay is part of the writing activities that are taught in the EFL classroom.
Descriptive, narrative, expository and argumentative writings are the four most common
types of writing (Suriyanti and Yaacob, 2016). Among these four genres, descriptive essay
writing is the most basic form of writing. It describes sensory experiences such as, the senses
of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, along with the figurative language that is associated
with it. Visualizing people, places and things in detail seems to be the essence of descriptive
essays. It is considered as being simple for an academic discourse, yet it is “fundamental and
the best way to lay the foundation of the writer’s craft” (Meyers, 2009). It is pivotal due to its
process of writing which may also relate to other genres or types essays. Describing an object
in a specific and vivid mode requires and prescribes accuracy not only in its medium of
expression, but also in its systematic arrangement so that readers may sense the presence of
the object and its qualities. Teaching descriptive essay writing is admittedly not easy.
However, the curriculum in Indonesia requires students to be able to write some kind of texts,
including a descriptive one (Masitoh and Suprijadi, 2015). The ability to write a descriptive
text is viewed as the readiness for global interaction and communication, and for science and
technology absorption and transfer. This phenomenon underlines the need for the deep
understanding of the challenges that students face in their engagement with descriptive essay
writing. It is true that some studies (Harmenita and Reszy, 2013); (Inderawati et al., 2018);
(Adriyati and Wienny, 2004); (Masitoh and Suprijadi, 2015) have been carried out in order
to improve the descriptive writing skills, but the fundamental issue in fact deals with more
efforts to map students’ common problems or challenges in their learning of essay writing.
There is urgency in the need for designing new strategies in the learning process for both
students and teachers, and also there is a need for more breakthroughs in the field of language
teaching.

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Method

In the frame of qualitative design, this study gains data by analyzing students’ essay
assignments as documents for data, and then interviews them if any elaboration of the data is
necessary. In the interview stage, students as respondents are asked to respond to the
following main question; how did you write your essay and what challenged you? The
respondents for this study are students of a particular prominent high school namely SMA
Lokon St. Nikolaus in Tomohon, North Sulawesi, whose academic achievement is high, the
students come from different regions of Indonesia and the location wherein one of the
researchers did teaching practice (PPL). Later, they are assumed to represent the
circumstances faced by most EFL learners in Indonesia. The grounded theory perspective is
applied for analyzing the data and presented descriptively. Students’ errors are viewed and
coded as the reflection of their challenges while the results of interview session are coded to
clarify and confirm, as well as to predict the ways of overcoming the challenges.

Result and Discussion

Results

This study involved students of the tenth grade in one of the prominent high schools in
Tomohon, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. There were 20 students from Social and Science
Classes. They were purposively regarded as the representatives of the two majors in their
school due to their achievement. The students were instructed to write a simple descriptive
essay of 100 – 250 words on “A description of my own hometown/village”. Students’ essays
were then analyzed and coded in order to figure out the challenges that students faced when
producing their descriptive essay. For the discussion, interviews were carried out to elaborate
on the findings. The challenges traced through students’ essays are as follows. Students
mistakes were in different forms that related to grammatical errors, wrong choices of words,
and spelling problems, as well as content development. Within this analysis, only a few
selected and the most vivid mistakesassumed as the main data are presented and discussed.
The challenges are indicated by the combination of initial of students’ number as subject with
the mistake they made.

Grammatical Challenges

a. The Inappropriate usage of preposition

Subject :5
Incorrect : I live to Timika City
Correction : I live in Timika City

In this sentence the respondent inserted “to” as the preposition. This error relates to usage or
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selection of preposition. By inserting “to” in the sentence “I live to Timika City” is wrong.
Preposition “to” describes a process “on going” meanwhile preposition “in” describes a
place.
b. The b. Inappropriate usage of “to be”
Subject :3
Incorrect : Kuala Kencana and Tembagapura is beautiful city.
Correction : Kuala Kencana and Tembagapura are beautiful citiesy.
The sentence “Kuala Kencana and Tembagapura is beautiful city” is found as an incorrect
sentence because of the inappropriate usage of “is” in the sentence which has a plural subject
(Azar, 2003). The usage of “is” only appropriate when the subject of a sentence is singular.
Therefore, it should be “Kuala Kencana and Tembagapura are beautiful cities”.

c. Error of omission
Subject :1
Incorrect : I live Tomohon City
Correction : I live in Tomohon City

The error related to the omission is also found in students’ essays. Omission is the absence
of an item that must appear in a well-formed phrase or sentence (Dulay et al., 1982).
Therefore, the sentence “I live Tomohon City” is omitted “in”. It should be “I live in
Tomohon City”.

d. Error of addition
Subject :2
Incorrect : You can see a many trees
Correction : You can see many trees

In this statement “you can see a many trees”, the insertion of “a” is not necessary. The
opposite of omission is addition. Addition is a presence of an item, which does not appear in
a well-formed utterance (Dulay et al., 1982). Therefore, in this statement should be “you can
see many trees”.

e. Error of disordering
Subject :9
Incorrect : I want to learn in university international
Correction : I want to learn in an international university

It seems to be difficult for the students to use a correct order of a noun phrase in a sentence.
In this context the sentence “I want to learn in university international” indicates the incorrect
order of phrase which is called “disordering (Dulay et al., 1982)”. Therefore, the sentence
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should be “I want to learn in an international university”.

f. Inappropriate usage of verb selection

Subject : 12
Incorrect : Laikit have three elementary Schools.
Correction : Laikit has three elementary Schools.
The sentence “Laikit have three elementary Schools” has the inappropriate usage of the
verb selection. Based on present perfect tense formula, the usage of have and has are
different. The word “has” corresponds with “He, She, It”. Meanwhile verb “have” is only for
“I, You, We, They”. In this sentence “Laikit” as the name of a place which is refer to pronoun
of singular thing or object which requires singular auxiliary that is “has”. Therefore, it should
be “Laikit has three elementary Schools”.

g. Inappropriate usage of infinitive

Subject : 20
Incorrect : Sometimes I really want to moved from this city.
Correction : Sometimes I really want to move from this city.

In this sentence the subject adds “d” in the word “to moved”. An infinitive is basic form of
a verb that usually follows “to” (Azar, 2003). It means that sentence “Sometimes I really
want to moved from this city” is considered being an incorrect sentence. Therefore, the
correct one should be “Sometimes I really want to move from this city”.

h. Inappropriate usage of personal pronoun

Subject : 18
Incorrect : There are lot of butterfly species. It is beautiful
Correction : There are a lot of butterfly species. They are beautiful

“It” describes singular subject pronoun meanwhile “they” describes plural subject pronoun.
Thus, the correct form should be “There are a lot of butterfly species. They are beautiful”.

Word Choice Challenges

Subje Errors Note

ct
S2 I live with my Prepositi
parents from child on: since
S13 There is a statue Past
of writing of Tense:
Benteng Moraya Wrote
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S14 I can make Verb: do

everything in my
home
S15 Biak is a little Adjective
city : small

a. Inappropriate usage of adjective

Subject : 15
Incorrect : Biak is a little city
Correction : Biak is a small city

The word “little” indicates the quantity or total amount of something meanwhile the word
“small” describes the size of something. In other words, "little" is used as a quantifier,
denoting the amount of something, whereas "small" denotes size. Within this context, the
respondent means the size of the city compared to another city. Therefore, the sentence
“Biak is little city” is regarded as the inappropriate word choice selection. It should be “Biak
is a small city” indicating the size of Biak.

b. Inappropriate usage of verb selection

Subject : 14
Incorrect : I can make everything in my home
Correction : I can do everything in my home

There are two differences between “make” and “do”. The word “make” means forming
something by putting parts together or mixing substances, meanwhile “do” means carrying
out or completing an action, duty or task. Therefore, sentence “I can make everything in my
home” is categorized as the inappropriate usage of verb selection. It should be “I can do
everything in my home” because the word “do” describes an action.

c. Inappropriate usage of tense

Subject :5
Incorrect : There is a statue writing of Benteng Moraya.
Correction : There is a statue written Benteng Moraya.

The sentence “There is a statue writing of Benteng Moraya” is found as incorrect sentence
because the word “writing” was written in present continuous tense. Therefore, it should be
written in past participle form “written”. The correction should be “There is a statue written
Benteng Moraya.”

d. Inappropriate usage of preposition

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Subject :2
Incorrect : I live with my parents from child.
Correction : I have lived with my parents since a child.3

Both “Since” and “from” are prepositions that can be used to indicate a specific time period
or the starting point of an action, event or a state of being, or time at which a journey,
process, or action starts. Yet, they are used differently and are not interchangeably used.
“From” usually suggests a finished action or an action that is in the future. “Since” can only
be applied for perfect tenses, whereas from can be applied for any tense. In this context, the
sentence “I live with my parents from child” must be corrected into “I have lived with my
parents since a child.”

Mechanics Challenges

Errors Note
Subject
S3 Tembagapura city Addition:
is beautifull. beautiful
S6 Kuala Kencana is Incorrect
city in the middle of letter: forest
folest.
S9 I com from Timika Lack of
Papua Letter: come
S14 My neighbor is my Incorrect
granmom. word:
grandmother

a. Incorrect letter
Subject :6
Incorrect : Kuala Kencana is city in the middle of folest
Correction : Kuala Kencana is city in the middle of forest
In this sentence, the respondent uses “l” for the word “folest” which is the incorrect
spelling of the word. Therefore, the word “forest” should be used, “Kuala Kencana is city in
the middle of forest”.

b. Lack of a letter
Subject :9
Incorrect : “I com from Timika Papua”
Correction : I come from Timika Papua.

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The word “com” has no meaning in English, because it is an incorrect spelling. The
sentence “I com from Timika Papua” should be corrected to “I come from Timika Papua” as
a complete sentence.

c. Incorrect word
Subject : 14
Incorrect : My neighbour is my granmom.
Correction : My neighbour is my grandmother.

English Spelling really challenges the respondents as indicated in above sentence “My
neighbour is my granmom”. The word “granmom” is categorized as an incorrect word which
has no meaning. Therefore, it should be “grandmother” as the correct word. Hence, it
becomes “My neighbour is my grandmother”.

d. Additional letter
Subject :3
Incorrect : Tembagapura city is beautifull
Correction : Tembagapura city is beautiful.

The word “beautifull” is supposed to be spelled “beautiful” without additional letter “L”. But,
in this sentence the respondent wrote “double L” which is wrong. Therefore, the correct
sentence should be “Tembagapura city is beautiful”.

Discussion

Having revealed the patterns of the challenges, further investigation is carried out to elaborate
the reasons behind the tendencies of making the mistakes. For that purpose, interviews were
performed by asking students how they wrote their essay and what was behind their errors,
this is discussed below.

a. Grammatical Challenge

Language skills are the product of habitual actions. When a language is rarely used or
practiced, it is almost impossible to expect the acquisition of fluency. Students of the high
school seem to face this issue. They are assigned with essay writing which is assumed to be
“the most difficult skill among the four language skills” (Mirlohi et al., 2012). Following the
curriculum, students are required to be able to write, yet they are not really prepared for such
activity. “I feel that writing is a problem, I don’t write very often even in Bahasa Indonesia
subject” (S3). This response determines the students’ situations in the classroom. They do not
have enough experience or practice with the language to write an essay. Students appear to
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lack the exposure of writing in even their own mother tongue or first language. Grab and
Kalan (1996), argued that writing does not come naturally but is rather gained through
continuous efforts and much practice. This means that good essay writing will only be
achieved by doing more essay practice.

Practicing writing does not only mean to go through the process of structuring sentences and
organizing ideas, but also having the opportunity to gain feedback from their teachers and
peers. Zamel (1985) stated, “teacher’s feedback can be effective if teachers respond to
students writing as genuine and interested readers rather than as judges and evaluators.”
Feedback both direct and indirect, helps students to improve the quality of their writing
including in linguistics and cognitive aspects. As they rarely practice, students rarely get
feedback. Through feedback, students learn and expose themselves to target language and its
rules, and to form the habit of communicating ideas and negotiating meanings. Therefore,
teachers should engage students with more activities that drive and stimulate students to
write. To motivate students, a writing teacher should include comments of praise and
encouragement in the written feedback. If teachers see their students’ response as the end of
the interaction, then students will stop there. However, if the response includes specific
direction on what to do next, there is a chance for the application of principles (Alfaki, 2015).
It indicates that feedback can also be a chance to motivate students in the teaching of writing.
Correction, encouragement and praise can come as one, motivating and improving the
package of learning. “We sometimes do not like to write because of the topic, we do not
know the topic or it is not interesting”, admitted one of the respondents (S7). An interesting
topic and strategy might be offered to push students’ curiosity and interest to take part in the
writing activity. Writing tasks must be designed not solely as an assignment to complete, but
as a form of entertainment to enjoy. This may establish positive attitude toward the activity of
writing. It does motivate students. Davies (1988) states that learners will be encouraged to
write if the writing task motivates them and keep them interested. One of the ways to create
such situation is by providing a relevant and familiar context on the topics that are written
about. It is synthesized that for all ages and levels, motivation is increased if writing is placed
in a realistic context (Pincas, 1982). It implies that familiarity can be a factor that assists the
development of students’ writing skill. When students’ concerns and interests are
acknowledged, they are open to participate in the writing activities and ready to explore and
express themselves in the target language.

b. Word Choice Challenge

Choosing proper words to express ideas in writing constitutes one of the basic challenges.
Students find problems in delivering their ideas as the words from their own language leave
them confused. “It is not only Grammar is difficult but also the words, not only how to use
them but also what to use”, said the respondent (S20). These words imply that, in the case of
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diction, students face lack of vocabulary in conveying their ideas. They are trapped in
stagnancy of both the stock of words to use and the ways to put the words into a meaningful
construction to create an engaging piece of writing. Although limited vocabulary has been a
common problem for students as foreign learners (Harmenita and Reszy, 2013), there is no
solid solution for such limitation, instead of practicing and exposing students to the target
language. The decision to pick up correct and proper words to communicate ideas in a writing
activity relates to both the frequency of practicing using the words and of practicing writing
the words in the organizational structure. It deals with more comprehensive works, namely
lexical meaning and function. It can be said that understanding the nuance of the words and
categories helps students to meet a good essay output. This explains that teachers of writing
are obliged to prepare students to enrich their vocabularies and use them for writing.

c. Spelling Challenge

The accuracy of spelling influences the accuracy of meaning, and later the quality of an
essay. The failure to correctly spell words in writing can have negative impacts on the
intended meaning of the writng. It affects the communicative aspects of a piece of writing.
This circumstance frequently occurs to students as English foreign learners. In the case of the
respondents, a similar situation seems to occur in students’ writing activity. “I got corrections
on my spellings, I made several errors in writing words, sometimes, I forget that it is English,
I wrote as Indonesian, writing a word as it is read.”, clarified the respondent (S12). This
confession indicates that the spelling problem may stem from the unfamiliarity of students
towards the English spelling system. The English writing system is based on word form and
not pronunciation, and the relationship between sound and symbol is arbitrary and not a clear
relationship of one sound to one symbol [25]. Students find it difficult to transform from their
own Indonesian spellings to those of the foreign language which has linguistic distance. The
knowledge of students’ first language or mother tongue intrudes their way of writing words
of the target language. Bereikhi and Mekhlafi (2016), affirmed that Students of English of
Foreign Language potentially experience this phenomenon. Thus, students’ confusion can
actually be interpreted as a challenge for teachers to assign more exercises and exposures
relating to improvement of the English word spelling. In other words, errors in spelling can
be viewed as “a sign of education,” (Subhi and Yasin, 2015), which means that it reflects the
quality of language acquisition and process of foreign language learning.

d. Idea development

Idea development is fundamental aspect for the quality of an essay. In this study, students’
essays also implied that students face difficulty in developing and communicating their ideas.
They seemed to be unable to produce more words. Most of the essays consisted of only three
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to four sentences which is very few for high school students. In academic writing, paragraphs
usually consist of 100 – 200 words. While in the students’ text, it was found that some of
them were unable to write more than 100 words in one paragraph. “To be honest sir, our
problem in finishing the essay is not only the language but also the way to develop our idea,
we think twice at the same time, thinking the words to use, and thinking its presentation. It’s
hard”, uttered the respondent (S5). This data points out that although students have already
been given the topic for their essay, they struggled to generate the relevant ideas to develop
the essay, not to mention the possibility of disliking the topic. Describing a hometown is
actually an easy topic to write about, however students had problems in uniting and
organizing the details. They may know what details can be attributed to their hometown, but
challenge comes as they gather and connect them. Arranging and linking the descriptive
details of the hometown creates a serious issue to address after being puzzled by the grammar
and vocabularies. The lesson from such circumstances shows the demand for teachers to
apply more helpful strategies and to stimulate students’ creativity by providing interesting
topics and exercises, as well as to suggest more readings from which students can gain
examples of idea development and encounter a variety of language features.

Conclusion

As foreign learners, students find some challenges in descriptive essay writing such as
grammatical challenges, vocabulary challenges, and mechanics challenges, as well as their
idea development. These challenges are apparently related to some aspects such as a lack of
motivation, lack of practice, lack of language exposure, lack of feedbacks, and a lack of
reading. These aspects challenge the teachers’ role in the teaching of essay writing in the EFL
classroom. Further researches on addressing strategic breakthroughs in overcoming the
challenge and its causes are recommended to be carried out in the future.

Acknowledgment

Mister Gidion Maru and Marvio Pantas would like to express our gratitude to DRPM
Ristekdikti to financially support some parts of this collaborative study as a part of
Fundamental Grant Schema 2019 and to LPPM (Research and Community Outreach Center)
Universitas Negeri Manado for facilitating this study.

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Authors Profile Mister Gidion Maru is currently the head of English Education
Department in Universitas Negeri Manado (UNIMA). He completed Sarjana Sastra in
English Literature in Universitas Gadjah Mada in 1998. He is awarded with Cum Laude
for both his Master of Humanities in American Studies (2006) majoring in Literature
and for Doctorate (2013) of the same field at the same University. Besides having
experience in teaching several language centers, He is currently as an editor and
reviewer for several national journals. He has been a regular winner of a two-year
scheme research Grant from Directorate of Research and Community Outreach of
Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education since 2013. He has
published four reference books namely The Jeremiad Approach: From Text
Interpretation to Teaching Approach (2017), The Upper Class Woman in the Late
Ninetenth Century (A Case Study of New York Woman in Wharton’s The Age Of
Innocence) (2014), Asal Usul Siau dan Kisah-Kisah Lainnya (2012), and Kumpulan
Sampere Siau, Tagulandang, Biaro, dan Makalehi: Seratus Teman Lama Koleksi Reinhold
Dulag Kansil (2011). Besides being active a presenter in various International
Conference, His scientific articles have been published in national accredited journals
and International reputable journals.. His interest is in literature teaching, cultural
studies, text analysis, and essay writings related character building.

Marvio B Pantas completed his Bachelor in English Education in Universitas

Negeri Manado with very satisfying predicate. As a former general secretary of
Student organization in Campus, He is now active in managing students’
enterpreneurship corner including distributing volunteer teachers to orphanages and
cordinating students’ translation activity and service. He has been awarded with students with
most valuable achievement and joining various international exchange program. His interests
are teaching of writing, students’ enterpreneurship and character building

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