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COMPARING THE EFFECTS OF FOCUSED FREE WRITING AND

UNFOCUSED FREE WRITING ON WRITING COMPETENCY OF THE


THIRD SEMESTER STUDENTS OF MAHASARASWATI UNIVERSITY
BASED ON TEXT TYPES
Ita Ariati, C., I., Ratminingsih, N., M., Suarnajaya, I., W.
Language Education Study Department, Postgraduate Program
Ganesha University of Education
Singaraja, Indonesia
e-mail: ita.ariati@undiksha.ac.id, made.ratminingsih@pasca.undiksha.ac.id
wayan.suarnajaya@pasca.undiksha.ac.id
Abstract
This study focused on: 1) investigating the significant difference between the effect of focused free writing
and unfocused free writing on students writing competency; 2) investigating the significant difference in
the effect of focused free writing on the students writing competency across text types; and 3)
investigating the significant difference in the effect of unfocused free writing on the students writing
competency across text types. It was an experimental research in which using post-test only static
groups comparison design. Population of the study was third semester students of English Education
Program at Mahasaraswati University in academic year 2015/2016 where in 2 classes were chosen as
the sample through Group Random Sampling. The research data were collected through writing test
which consisted of two kinds of post-test based on text types namely; descriptive and narrative. The
result of the writing test of each group was analyzed descriptively and inferentially by using SPSS 20.0. It
was found that Fob was 44.289 which was higher than Ft which was 4.40. This finding shows that there
was a significant difference between the effect of focused free writing and unfocused free writing on the
students writing competency. The mean score of focused free writing was higher than the mean score of
unfocused free writing. The second finding is there was no significant difference in the effect of focused
free writing on students writing competency across text types; the result of the One-Way ANOVA analysis
found that Fob was 1.802 which was lower that Ft 4.40. The third result of the One-Way ANOVA analysis
found that Fob was 7.180 in which the result was higher that Ft 4.40, it shows there was significant
difference of the effect of unfocused free writing on the students writing competency across text types.
Keywords: focused free writing, unfocused free writing, writing competency, text types

INTRODUCTION
Language
is
a
means
of
communication
that
is,
transmitting
information, ideas or feeling from one
person to another. English is one of the
languages which are used in all parts of the
world and almost all countries in the world
use it either as their first, second or foreign
language. As an international language,
English has become an important subject to
be mastered by Indonesian students, either
for communicative purposes or for
academic purposes. In teaching English,
there are four language competencies; such
as:
listening competency, reading

competency, speaking competency, and


writing competency.
Those competencies as mentioned
above must be mastered by the students
who learn English as their foreign language,
especially for the English Education
Program students that take English
language as their main subject. Writing is
one of important competencies in learning
English that should be mastered by the
students to be able to use English for
communication in their daily life; moreover,
by writing, the students are able to express
their thoughts, communicate ideas and

views to others. Writing competency also


involves linguistic and cognitive aspects.
Brown (2004) states that writing skill
is a productive skill and should be taught
and assessed in different ways with
receptive skills such as reading and
listening. It also supported by Phelps (2001)
who explains that writing as an activity that
engages
writers
more
actively
in
processing, interpreting, and evaluating
information and putting it in a logical,
coherent, and well-responded arrangement
for the sentences. Writing is a productive
skill that requires intensive practice and it
indicates the writer to be involved in a
complex process; in which, the writer have
to follow four major steps in writing which
includes process of pre-writing, drafting,
revising, and editing (Winch, et al., 2006)
However, learning writing as a
productive skill is more complex than
learning receptive skill. Writing is a complex
skill that has to be acquired by the writer it
is caused by writing involves several
important components in language such as:
vocabulary
and
grammar,
text
management,
meaning
clarity,
and
coherency of ideas (Depdiknas, 2003).
Writing is always state as an activity that full
of challenging and difficult for the learners.
The difficulties are not only deals with
generating or organizing the ideas, but also
express the ideas into readable text
(Richards and Renandya, 2002). According
to Chakraverty and Gautum, (2000), a
major achievement of writing is acquired in
term of ability to express ideas in writing by
using foreign language and make it
coherence and unity.
In relation on the facts above,
writing competency is expected to be
mastered by the all students of English
Education Program in Mahasaraswati
University who prepare to be English
teachers in the future. They focus to be able
to competent with four language skills,
particularly in writing competency. Writing
competency is essentially needed for every
job requirements and write the academic
writing as well as be an English teacher.
English
Education
Program
in
Mahasaraswati
University
already
conducted a syllabus for teaching writing
specifically, which is contained with

standard competency, basic competence


and indicators. Standard competency and
basic competency are made for stating the
general goal of learning writing which is
expected the students to be able to perform
the language in producing the written
product in term of organizing their ideas in
writing their description, narration and the
other kinds of academic writing.
However, based on preliminary
observation, the third semester students of
English
Education
Program
at
Mahasaraswati University still face some
problems in writing after applying some
writing strategies by the lecturers.
Considering the complexity of writing, it is
common happen that the third semester
students of English Education Program at
Mahasaraswati University likely face some
problems during the process of writing. It is
caused by the learners are commonly face
the difficulties in conveying and generating
their ideas. The students also face the other
writing problems such as: developing their
grammar skill or the use of correct
grammatical structure, using appropriate
vocabularies that can support their
paragraph, and arranging the information or
ideas logically to achieve coherency and
unified.
Effective teaching strategies have
been applied in order to overcome the
problem which encountered the students in
mastering writing competency. However,
the improvement was not consistently
maintained toward the students' writing
competency. The selection of appropriate
teaching strategy in third semester students
of English Education Program still becomes
a problem in teaching writing. Therefore,
the present study will be carried out at third
semester students of English Education
Program at Mahasaraswati University.
The common strategy for teaching
speaking is free writing strategy. Free
writing broadly defined as writing without
stopping and editing, has been viewed and
used as a powerful technique for
developing student writing since it was
initially advocated by writing theorist Peter
Elbow (Elbow and Belanoff, 2000). Free
writing is writing strategy where the writer
conducts some activities like writing quickly,
just putting down whatever is in the writers

mind and thought. Free writing is a strategy


that leads the students to have an
experience in bottom-up process which
meant that students began to distance
themselves
from
their
individual
experiences to be more general, abstract
state which is eventually required in
academic writing (Hwang, 2011). According
to Elbow (2000), free writing divided into
two forms that commonly used in teaching
writing namely: Focused Free Writing and
Unfocused Free Writing.
Murray (2004) states that focused
free writing is a strategy where the writer
returns to the free writing process with a
focus on what is known about the topic.
Focused free writing gives the writer
opportunity to more focus on the topic of
writing and will help the writer to expand
ideas and the purpose for writing. Focused
free writing is one of strategy in writing in
which happens when a topic of the writing is
given (Elbow and Belanof, 2000). Focused
free writing strategy indicates the writer to
write and develop their ideas freely based
on the topic given. According to some
previous researchers, there are some
benefits in teaching writing by using
focused free writing. Hwang (2011) found
that focused free writing had a statistically
significant influence on improving the
students writing fluency. Li (2012) also find
some benefits of focused in her research
shows that focused free writing can
stimulates the students thinking by allowing
the students or writer to pour more
attention, focus and energy into a brief
writing act, which in turn, helps to discover
and generate more ideas.
Meanwhile, According to Brown
(2001), unfocused free writing is designed
to generate the writer thought or free up
ideas in which the writer can express their
ideas free without any guidance from other.
It is also supported by Oshima and Hogue
(2007) state that unfocused free writing is a
writing activity in which the writer free to
write about a certain topic. Brown (2001)
also notes that unfocused free writing is
designed to generate or free up ideas.
Unfocused free writing can help the
students to build their writing competency
by encouraging them to elaborate their
ability in expressing their ideas and thought

in written production. According to the


previous research that conducted by
Enders et al. unfocused free writing is one
of teaching strategies that is very useful for
developing students writing skill. Unfocused
free writing can help the students to
overcome fears of making mistakes, to
express their ideas openly, to release inner
tension, and improve the students writing
skill.
In Indonesia nowadays, the teaching
learning process of English is not only
focused on the use of teaching strategies,
techniques, and methods in teaching, but
also the use of types of text is important to
measure the students competency in
mastering the language skills. According to
Davis and McKay in Budiarta (2015) state
that text types define as a set of texts that
share a number of common traits, features
and
effects
which
makes
them
distinguishable from texts with different
features and effects. The shared effects and
features allow readers and writers to
recognize that a text belongs to a certain
types.
To sum up, based on several facts
above, these two teaching strategies;
Focused
Free
Writing
(FFW)
and
Unfocused Free Writing (UFW) are chosen
as teaching strategies under the study. In
which, those strategies will be used in
teaching writing skill which is essentially
needed by the third semester of English
Education Program of Mahasaraswati
University. And the result of the research
will be mentioned based on the text types
used they are; descriptive and narrative.
Therefore, the researcher is highly
motivated to compare whether focused free
writing or unfocused free writing which has
more significant effect on the students
writing competency. The present study is
also focused to find the effects of focused
free writing and unfocused free writing
across text types on the students' writing
competency of third semester students of
English
Education
Program
of
Mahasaraswati University.
TYPE OF ARTICLE
The article is based on an
experimental
research
which
was
conducted in the third semester students of

English Study Program Mahasaraswati


University. The research was conducted as
a criterion to fulfill graduation standard in
Post Graduate Program in Ganesha
University of Education.

Teaching instruments used for both of


the groups were lesson plans and teaching
handouts. The instruments for data
collection were tried out and it was found
that the instruments were reliable and valid.
The collected data were analyzed by using
One-Way Anova assisted by SPSS 20.0.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The population of this research
consisted of 240 students in which the
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
researcher used 50 samples in two classes
The object of this research was the
by using the random sampling.
writing competency as the result of
The research design was post-test
treatment between focused free writing and
only static group comparison design. The
unfocused free writing by considering the
design was about comparing two groups
writing competency. The data of the
under the study without giving a pre-test.
research were classified into six groups
The prior students writing competency was
such as: 1) general writing score of focused
not measured, therefore; the data were only
free writing group, 2) general writing of
gained from administering a post-test. This
unfocused free writing group, 3) writing
design was used to find out the comparison
score of focused free writing group on
between focused free writing and
descriptive text, 4) writing score of focused
unfocused free writing strategy on students
free writing group on narrative text, 5)
writing competency based on two different
writing score of unfocused free writing
types of texts (descriptive and narrative).
gropu on descriptive text, 6) writing score of
The instruments that were used to
unfocused free writing on narrative text. The
collect the data were in the form of writing
data result of post test of writing
assessment test which was consisted of
assessment test in each group based on
two different post-test based on the text
text types can be showed as follows:
types.
Table 1. Summary of the Students' Writing Score based on Text types
Statistic
Mean
Median
Mode
Std.
Deviation
Variance
Range
Minimum
Maximu
m
N

Group
A1
78.60
78.67
86.00

A2
65.68
64.00
61.00

A1B1
80.16
77.43
76.00

A1B2
77.04
80.00
66.00

A2B1
68.40
66.00
60.00

A2B2
62.96
62.92
62.00

7.57

6.07

7.20

9.11

8.34

5.77

57.33
24.00
67.00

36.89
27.00
52.00

51.97
26.00
70.00

83.04
24.00
64.00

69.67
26.00
60.00

33.37
34.00
42.00

91.00

79.00

96.00

88.00

86.00

76.00

25

25

25

25

25

25

The main purpose of this study was to


investigate between the effect of focused
free writing and unfocused free writing on
the students' writing competency based on
text types of the third semester students of
English
Education
Program
at
Mahasaraswati University
in Academic

Year 2015/2016. The following elucidation


would present the detailed results of
hypothesis testing which would be parted
into three points; in which, the first
hypothesis was alternative hypothesis:
there is significant difference between the
effect of focused free writing and unfocused

free writing on the students' writing


competency, the second and the third
hypotheses testing were also alternative
hypothesis: there is significant difference in
the effect of focused free writing on the
students' writing competency across text
types, while the third hypothesis was there
is significant difference in the effect of
unfocused free writing on the students'
writing competency across text types.
Hypothesis testing in this present
study was statistically done by the
implementation of inferential analysis which
was calculated by one-way ANOVA analysis
using SPSS 20.0. The requirement to do

the hypothesis testing was if Fob>Fcv, then


Ho is rejected.
Before the calculation one-way
ANOVA,
pre-requisite
analysis
was
calculated in order to prove that the data
were clearly normal and homogeneous.
Normal distribution of the data were
analyzed by using Kolmogorov-Smirnov
analysis; while, the analysis of data
homogeneity done by the calculation of
Levene's statistics.
After pre-requisite analysis was
calculated, the summary of hypothesis
testing calculated by one-way ANOVA using
SPSS 20.0 can be seen in the following
table:
Table 2. The One-way ANOVA Analysis of FFW and UFW
Sum of Squares Df
Mean Square F
Sig.

Between Groups 2086.580

2086.580

Within Groups

2261.440

48

47.113

Total

4348.020

49

44.289

.000

Table 3. The One-way ANOVA Analysis of FFW across Text Types


Sum
of Df
Mean
F
Sig.
Squares
Square
Between
121.680
1
121.680
1.802
.186
Groups
Within Groups
3240.320
48
67.507
Total
3362.000
49
Table 4. The One-way ANOVA Analysis of UFW across Text Types
Sum of Squares Df
Mean Square F
Sig.
Between Groups

369.920

369.920

Within Groups

2472.960

48

51.520

Total

2842.880

49

Table 2. showed that Fob was found


44.289. It was tested by Ft table with db
1:44 significance level 5% which was 4.40;
moreover, it meant that the result of oneway ANOVA 44.289 was higher than 4.40. It
proved that there was significant difference
between the effects of focused free writing
and unfocused free writing on the students
writing competency. Moreover, the first
hypothesis
which
was
alternative
hypothesis was clearly accepted and null
hypothesis was rejected.
In addition, in accordance with the
result of descriptive statistics analysis, it

7.180

.057

was found that the general mean score of


students taught with focused free writing
was 78.60, which was higher than those
who were taught by unfocused free writing
which was 65.68. These findings definitely
showed that the focused free writing group
of students achieved better than unfocused
free writing on writing competency.
There are some reasons why focused
free writing achieved better in teaching
writing. Many advantages were occurs
when focused free writing was applied in
teaching writing. focused free writing
strategy gave the students opportunity to be

more focus on the topic of writing and it can


help the students to expand their ideas in
developing their paragraph and focus on
the
in
achieving
some
important
components in writing. By using focused
free writing the students had opportunity to
identify the purpose of their writing, have a
chance to narrow the general topic into
specific topic, identify the purpose and
organize their ideas into keywords in order
to compose the sentences, in which their
paragraph became structuralize. The
students also had chances to connect their
large abstract knowledge with the new
information in which the knowledge itself is
converted relevant to the lesson and
properly organized more specific and step
by step.
It also supported by some experts that state
focused free writing is one of teaching
writing where the writer returns to the free
writing process with a focus on what is
known about the topic (Murray, 2004). It is
supported by Elbow (2000) that states
focused free writing provides specific
directions or filters prompting the writer to
write about a specific topic. Li (2012) states
that focused free writing can stimulates the
students thinking by allowing the students
or writer to pour more attention, focus and
energy into a brief writing act, which in turn,
helps to discover and generate more ideas.
The students can organize their ideas into
keywords and develop the keywords in
order to compose the sentences.
Some previous researchers also
state that focused free writing is an effective
teaching strategy that can improve students
writing
competency.
Research
that
conducted by Hwang (2011) found that
practicing focused free writing had a
statistically significant influence in improving
the students writing fluency. Li (2012) also
found that focused free writing can increase
the students writing fluency, thus the
students are able to convert their abstract
ideas into a form of written paragraph
fluently by writing the keywords and
develop the keywords into sentences.
Focused free writing found that effective to
increase students writing skill in the area of
academic writing.
It contrasted with the group who
were treated by using unfocused free

writing. In this strategy, the students did not


have a chance to breaks their ideas into
some keywords and they felt difficult in
developing their ideas and relating their
ideas in which it made their paragraph run
out of the topic. The students also felt
difficult to organize their paragraph
structurally without any guidance because
the students were told to write their topic
freely based their ideas. It also caused
misunderstanding when the students were
trying to write their paragraph; there were
many inappropriate vocabularies and
sentence which were not related to the topic
that has been choosing by the students and
their sentences were not related to each
other and it could caused their paragraph
was not coherence and unity.
As what aforementioned, writing is
declared as a complex skill; in which
includes many multilevel skills. It requires
the students to have back up factors in
which to be able to write in using target
language.
These
factors
include
organization, grammar, the content of their
written product, the mechanical of writing,
and the vocabularies used to support the
sentences. Therefore, teaching strategy for
writing must be structured activity which
guides the students to be able to develop
their ideas based on the topic and relate
their ideas become a good paragraph and
structurally. Therefore, focused free writing
as an effective teaching writing strategy
which provides the students with activities
to more focus on the topic of writing and
organize their writing appropriately is a
relevant choice instead of unfocused free
writing.
It also supported by the interviewed that
conducted with the writing lecture said that
teaching writing by using focused free
writing, she felt easier to attract the
students to be more focus on a topic in
writing a paragraph. In conducting focused
free writing strategy, the lecturer could
make the students involved in some
activities before writing their paragraph
such as: identifying the purpose of their
writing, narrowing the general topic into
specific topic, identifying the purpose and
organizing the students ideas into
keywords in composing the sentences that
support the paragraph became unity and

coherence. It totally contrasted in teaching


the students who were treated by using
unfocused free writing. Most of students
who were treated by using unfocused free
writing still face some problems in writing
their paragraph. The students mostly wrote
their paragraph run out from the topic that
they have been choosing, the students also
wrote
their
paragraph
by
using
inappropriate vocabularies; in addition, their
paragraphs were not unity and coherence.
The lecturer also felt difficult to attract
students focus on the topic even she gave
the students chance to ask some questions
about the topic before starting to write.
In summary, the significant difference
between the effect of focused free writing
and unfocused free writing on the students
writing competency was totally approved; it
is supported by previous theories
mentioned and it is in accordance with the
result of some empirical studies that
reviewed in this study. Therefore, it could be
concluded that the effect of focused free
writing on students writing competency was
more effective than unfocused free writing
on the students writing competency.
Afterwards, the hypothesis was
continued to the effect of focused free
writing on the students' writing competency
across text types by testing the second
hypothesis.
According to the result of descriptive
analysis, the mean score of group treated
with focused free writing on the two kinds of
text types were above 60 or above
minimum passing grade. The mean score of
descriptive was found 80.16; in addition, it
was slightly higher than narrative text which
was 77.04. The result probably indicated
the different achievement on students
writing competency between the text types;
furthermore, inferential analysis essentially
needed to be applied.
The inferential analysis that was
applied in this study was one-way ANOVA;
in which, it was computed to answer the
research questions particularly to figure out
the significant differences of the effect of
focused free writing across text types. The
result of the analysis was showed the Fob
was 1.802. F was tested by using Ft which
was found 4.40; furthermore, it was clearly
indicated that 1.802 was lower than 4.40.

As a result, the differences of the effect of


focused free writing across text types were
not significantly measured; therefore, the
alternative hypothesis was rejected.
According to the some theorists of
focused free writing proposed by expertise,
focused free writing is announced as an
effective strategy in teaching writing. Elbow
(2000) states that focused free writing can
attract the students to be more focus in
developing the topic based on their ideas.
Added by Murray (2004), focused free
writing can give the writer opportunity to
more focus on the topic of writing and will
help the writer to expand ideas and the
purpose for writing. In line with those
theorists, there are some facts mentioned
that focused free writing proved as an
innovative strategy that is highly purposed
to be applied in teaching writing for
improving students writing competency.
This research also intended to
broadly explore the effectiveness of focused
free writing on students writing competency
based on two kinds of text types;
descriptive and narrative. By using focused
free writing in teaching these two text types,
the researcher found that there is some
improvement from the students during the
class activity and the students felt easier to
construct their prior knowledge based on
the topic given.
Practically, the sample in group I
who were treated by using focused free
writing strategy were gaining positive result
on their writing activity based on the two
different text types such as descriptive and
narrative. The mean score between two text
types were not statistically different; the
mean score in descriptive was higher than
the mean score in narrative. Further, the
mean score from both of text types were not
slightly different; it indicates that the
application of focused free writing was an
effective strategy for students to practice
their writing skill in using two kinds of text
types (descriptive and narrative). Focused
free writing gave the students opportunity to
be more focus on the topic of writing and it
could elaborate the topic in order to connect
their prior knowledge to the topic that they
were going to be learned. After the
treatment by using focused free writing, the
students were able to organize their

paragraph appropriately and develop their


ideas in order to compose unified and
coherence paragraph.
Therefore, based on the several fact
which already mentioned above, it clearly
stated that focused writing was not give
significant difference across text types;
however, the mean scores of the two text
types were above passing grade and the
mean scores showed that the results of the
treatment by using focused free writing was
not significant. In addition, it can be
concluded that the implementation of
focused free writing was absolutely effective
for teaching writing in descriptive and
narrative.
The last hypothesis was continued to
know the effect of unfocused free writing on
the students' writing competency across
text types by testing the third hypothesis.
According to the result of descriptive
analysis, the mean score of Group II who
were treated by using unfocused free
writing based on the two different text types
such as descriptive and narrative were also
above 60 or above minimum passing grade.
The mean score of descriptive in using
unfocused free writing was found 68.40 and
it was higher than mean score in narrative
that was only 62.96. The result was also
probably
indicated
the
different
achievement
on
students
writing
competency based on the text types. In
order to know the significant effect of those
text types, the inferential analysis
essentially needed to be applied.
The inferential analysis that was
applied was also one-way ANOVA; in
which, it was computed to answer the
research questions particularly to figure out
the significant differences of the effect of
unfocused free writing across text types.
The result of the significant value on the
effect of unfocused free writing on the
students writing competency across text
types was 7.180. This significant figure was
much higher than Ft which was 4.40. Thus,
the difference of the effect of unfocused
free writing on students writing competency
across text types was significant and the
alternative hypothesis was accepted.
According to the some theorists of
free writing proposed by expertise,
unfocused free writing is stated as an

effective strategy in teaching writing.


According to Brown (2001), unfocused free
writing is designed to generate the writer
thought or free up ideas in which the writer
can express their ideas free without any
guidance from other. It is also supported by
Oshima and Hogue (2007) and Elbow
(2000) state that unfocused free writing is
an activity in which the writer can write their
ideas freely about a topic because of the
writers are not looking for a specific focus
and the lecturer or teacher does not give
any specific topics for the students in
writing. Unfocused free writing can give
students opportunity to make meaning with
language by letting them write about what
topic that they were interested in and
develop their ideas to write what they want
to write and not focusing in certain topic
(Hilgers, 1980 in Hwang, 2011).
Based on the fact that found in this
research, the students who are treated by
using unfocused free writing strategy find
some difficulties in organizing their
paragraph structurally without any guidance
from the lecturers such as: there were
many inappropriate vocabularies and some
sentences are not related to the topic;
moreover, their sentences are not related to
each other and it is caused the paragraph is
not coherence and unity. In this activity, the
students does not have a chance to focus
on the topic and they felt difficult to
developing their ideas and related their
ideas in which it made their paragraph run
out of the topic.
This research also intended to
broadly explore the effectiveness of
unfocused free writing on students writing
competency based on two kinds of text
types; descriptive and narrative. The result
of the mean score in Group II who treated
by using free writing showed there was
significant difference between the text
types. The descriptive text showed higher
score than narrative. It indicated that in
writing narrative, some of the students felt
more complicated in developing their ideas
in writing a story and relating the sentences
with the other and it affected their
paragraph were not unity and coherence.
The students also found difficulties
in organizing their paragraph in writing
narrative. They found some problems in

composing the complication and match the


resolution to solve their problem in their
story; in addition, the students were not
able to construct good generic structure in
narrative. Furthermore, in writing descriptive
the students score were higher than
students score in narrative. It was affected
by the generic structure in descriptive text is
more simple than narrative text and the
students felt easier to relate the sentences,
thus their paragraph became well
organized. The students were also easy to
write the physical appearances, identity,
and the personalities of the public figure
that have been chose by the students and
relate the sentences in the paragraph.
In addition, the application of
unfocused free writing was gave significant
difference across text types. It clearly seen
that the mean scores of both text types
were totally different; the mean score of
descriptive was higher than the mean score
in narrative. It can be concluded that
unfocused free writing was not an effective
strategy in teaching narrative; furthermore,
it can be used to teach writing in context of
descriptive.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Based on the findings, it can be
According to the aforementioned research
questions, this research was conducted to
compare the effect between focused free
writing and unfocused free writing on the
students writing competency based on text
types (i.e. descriptive and narrative). In
addition, based on the result of data
analysis and discussion, it can be drawn
several conclusions which can be
presented as follows: 1) There was a
significant difference between the effect of
focused free writing and unfocused free
writing on the students writing competency
of the third semester students of
Mahasaraswati University. 2) There is no
significant difference of the effect of focused
free writing on students writing competency
across text types. 3) There is significant
difference of the effect of unfocused free
writing on the students writing competency
across text types.
Based on the research findings, the
discussion, and the conclusion, there are
several suggestions are proposed. It is

recommended for EFL teachers to apply


Focused Free Writing (FFW) as an
innovative teaching strategy in teaching
writing skill. It is also recommended to the
other researchers to conduct a research
about focused free writing in different levels
of students. This research also suggested
to the other researchers to compare
focused free writing with other teaching
writing strategies in order to consider which
one gains more improvement on the
students writing competency.
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