ISSN : 2654-5152
Vol.
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2 (December, 2.
CHALLENGES IN TEACHING ESSAY WRITING: A REFLECTION ON STUDENTSAo LIMITED CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS Nana Suciati1 English Education Study Program.
Faculty of Social and Humanities University of PGRI Kalimantan Email: nanasuciati@upk.
ABSTRAK
Penulisan esai merupakan komponen penting dalam pembelajaran menulis akademik pada konteks English as a Foreign Language (EFL) karena menuntut mahasiswa untuk mengintegrasikan kompetensi kebahasaan dengan keterampilan berpikir kritis.
Namun, dalam praktik pembelajaran di kelas, banyak mahasiswa EFL masih mengalami kesulitan dalam menghasilkan esai yang fokus dan terorganisasi dengan baik.
Artikel ini bertujuan untuk merefleksikan tantangan dalam pengajaran penulisan esai, khususnya yang berkaitan dengan keterbatasan keterampilan berpikir kritis mahasiswa.
Penelitian ini menggunakan desain penelitian kualitatif reflektif dengan sumber data berupa observasi kelas terhadap 12 mahasiswa yang mengikuti mata kuliah Essay Writing pada Tahun Akademik 2025/2026 dan observasi hasil draf esai mahasiswa, serta catatan/jurnal reflektif pengajar di Mata Kuliah Essay Writing Program Studi Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris.
Universitas PGRI Kalimantan (UPK).
Catatan reflektif diklasifikasikan berdasarkan tahapan penulisan esai, yang meliputi proses mempersempit topik yang diberikan, merumuskan thesis statement, mengembangkan paragraf isi, serta menyusun bagian pendahuluan dan simpulan.
Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa mahasiswa mengalami kesulitan dalam mempersempit topik esai yang bersifat luas, merumuskan thesis statement yang jelas dan spesifik, serta menjaga koherensi antara thesis statement dan pengembangan paragraf isi.
Meskipun mahasiswa diperbolehkan menggunakan alat berbasis kecerdasan buatan seperti ChatGPT dalam proses penulisan, kualitas esai yang dihasilkan sering kali belum memenuhi standar Hal ini terutama disebabkan oleh kurangnya pemahaman konseptual mahasiswa terhadap thesis statement dan organisasi esai, sehingga membatasi kemampuan mereka dalam mengevaluasi dan menyempurnakan teks yang dihasilkan oleh AI secara kritis.
Oleh karena itu, penelitian selanjutnya disarankan untuk mengkaji secara empiris strategi pembelajaran yang mengintegrasikan pengembangan berpikir kritis dalam penulisan esai melalui penelitian eksperimen atau penelitian tindakan kelas.
Kata Kunci: Penulisan Esai.
Tantangan.
Studi Reflektif.
Berpikir Kritis.
Teks Hasil AI.
ABSTRACT
Essay writing is a crucial component of academic writing instruction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts, as it requires students to integrate linguistic competence with critical thinking skills.
However, in classroom practice, many EFL students continue to face difficulties in producing focused and well-organized This paper aims to reflect on the challenges in teaching essay writing, particularly those related to studentsAo limited critical thinking skills.
The study employed a qualitative reflective research design, drawing on classroom observations of 12 students who enrolled in an Essay Writing Course during Academic Year 2025/2026 and studentsAo essay drafts as well as reflective teaching notes collected from an essay writing course at an English Education Study Program of UPK (University of PGRI Kalimanta.
The teaching notes were categorized based on the stages of writing essay, starting from narrowing given topics, formulating thesis statement, developing body, and making introduction and conclusion.
The findings indicate that students experience difficulty in narrowing broad essay topics, formulating clear and specific thesis statements, and maintaining coherence between thesis statements and body paragraph Although students are permitted to use artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT during the writing process, the quality of the resulting essays often fails to meet academic standards.
This issue is primarily attributed to studentsAo insufficient conceptual understanding of thesis statements and essay organization, which restricts their ability to evaluate and refine AI-generated content critically.
It is suggested .
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ISSN : 2654-5152 Vol.
7 No.
2 (December, 2.
that future research should empirically investigate instructional strategies that integrate critical thinking development into essay writing through experimental or classroom-based action research.
Keywords: Essay Writing.
Challenges.
Reflective Study.
Critical Thinking.
AI-Generated Text.
INTRODUCTION
The writing courses at English Education Department in University of PGRI Kalimantan is started with paragraph writing, continued to essay writing, and ended with Academic Writing.
The hierarchy is designed in order to give a scaffolding experience in writing target, which is Academic Writing.
The design is supposed to accommodate studentsAo to make a standard academic text.
The essay writing is an introduction step before students write academic essay.
Here, students are expected to demonstrate not only linguistic accuracy but also the ability to construct logical, coherent, and well-supported arguments.
Essay writing refers to a structured form of academic writing in which learners are required to develop ideas systematically, present a clear thesis, and support arguments through evidence and reasoning.
The main competencies targeted in essay writing instruction include idea development, organization, coherence, argumentation, and the conventions (Hyland, 2.
In achieving these competencies, essay writing requires the integration of several language components, such as grammatical accuracy, word choice, unity, coherence, and rhetorical Mastery of these components enables students to articulate their ideas effectively and meet academic standards.
However, linguistic competence alone is insufficient for producing quality essays.
Students must also possess adequate critical thinking skills, which allow them to analyze issues, evaluate information, synthesize ideas, and formulate reasoned arguments.
Previous studies in EFL writing have emphasized that weaknesses in critical thinking often result in essays that are descriptive, repetitive, and lacking analytical depth, even when language errors are minimal (Facione, 2015.
Hyland, 2.
A reflective studies in Indonesian higher education contexts have reported that EFL students struggle to move beyond surface-level description toward analytical and evaluative writing (Rahmawati and Fitriani, 2.
Both studies indicate a persistent gap between instructional expectations and studentsAo actual performance.
In fact, this condition is also mentioned in the authorAos prior study conducted in the Academic Writing class at the English Study Program.
UPK .
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Banjarmasin.
The study, entitled The Analysis of StudentsAo Strengths and Weaknesses in Academic Writing Class.
English Study Program.
UPK Banjarmasin (Suciati.
N, et.
al, 2.
, revealed that while students demonstrated relative strengths in basic essay structure, formatting, and language mechanics, they showed significant weaknesses in developing arguments, critically engaging with ideas, and elaborating supporting evidence.
These findings suggest that studentsAo limited critical thinking skills remain a central challenge in teaching essay writing.
Although previous research has extensively discussed the relationship between critical thinking and writing performance, they lacked studies of addressing the issue from a teacherAos reflective perspective, particularly in terms of how studentsAo limited critical thinking skills shape classroom challenges in essay writing instruction.
This reflective dimension is important because teachersAo pedagogical awareness plays a significant role in bridging the gap between theoretical expectations and actual classroom Therefore, this paper aims to reflect on the challenges of teaching essay writing in EFL contexts, with particular emphasis on studentsAo limited critical thinking skills.
By drawing on classroom-based reflections, this study seeks to contribute pedagogical insights into how critical thinking limitations influence essay writing instruction and to suggest more studentsAo guidance on the use of AI tools such ChatGPT for making academic writing in EFL higher education METHODS This study employed a qualitative reflective research design.
The research is a pedagogical reflection supported by document analysis and classroom-based observation (Farrel, 2.
The observation was done 6 times during regular One meeting was about 100 minutes.
Most of meeting, students presented their work based on task given by lecturer.
From the presentation, their performance was reviewed.
This design is considered appropriate as the study ISSN : 2654-5152 Vol.
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focused on understanding instructional challenges from the teacherAos perspective and situating them within relevant theoretical and empirical literature.
The subject of the study are 12 students who enrolled in Essay Writing Course during Academic Year 2025/2026.
The studentsAo written works and classroom learning processes are used as the primary sources of reflection to identify recurring issues related to critical thinking in essay writing.
StudentsAo essays are examined using commonly accepted criteria in academic writing, such as idea development, argumentation, coherence, use of evidence, and critical engagement with topics.
These aspects are used as indicators of studentsAo critical thinking performance in essay writing.
Data analysis was conducted qualitatively by identifying recurring patterns and challenges related to critical thinking in essay writing.
Every student was given a chance to present their work based on the guided task.
Their works were reviewed and identified based on writing themes from the stages of essay, starting from narrowing given topics, formulating thesis statement, developing body, and making introduction and Third, even when students attempted to formulate thesis statements, these statements were often vague and unfocused.
The thesis statements did not clearly indicate the main arguments to be discussed in the body paragraphs, resulting in body paragraphs that were loosely connected or inconsistent and irrelevant with the thesis statement.
Finally, although students were permitted to use AI tools such as ChatGPT during the writing process, the generated thesis statements and essays frequently failed to meet academic Classroom observation indicated that students lacked conceptual understanding of thesis statement construction and essay rhetorical structure, which limited their ability to formulate effective prompts and to evaluate the outputs This is one example of studentsAo lack conceptual understanding of thesis statement:
AuThe rhythm of the traditional song Ampar-Ampar Pisang used to create English songs that help elementary school students improve their pronunciationAy.
This is not a sentence, which is a vital requirement of thesis statement.
Since it has no predicate, the idea became not clear.
So the essay will have unfocused topic to be developed.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
RESULTS
DISCUSSIONS