A Proposed Syllabus for EFL Writing Class at University

This present study intended to develop the first draft syllabus for writing course in English Education major. Particularly in teaching writing as foreign language, syllabus became one of the key factors for teachers before and while delivering thelesson. The research was carried out by initial steps of research and development approach (R and D). The respondents were the students from writing classes, writing lecturers, and the stakeholders in one university in Jakarta. In collecting data, the instruments were the questionnaire and in-depth interview. After analyzing the data from need analysis descriptively, the researchers have modeled a developed layout of the syllabus for writing class. The syllabus is developed in a set of concepts and rationale, general and specific objectives or outcomes of the course as competences, teaching methods, materials and content, practices and activity, and evaluation.


INTRODUCTION
The term syllabus might be considered to be interchangeable with the curriculum. Curriculum refers to the entire process of teaching and learning, including planning, teaching process, and evaluation that can be called as course, whereas, syllabus contains a set of concepts on the designed course (Christison & Murray, 2011a). In a different point of view, Nation & Macalister (2010) distinguish curriculum and syllabus. Syllabus, as an inner circle of curriculum, may include objectives or goals of learning, presentation format and sequence, content, and evaluation. Meanwhile, curriculum development is a process of planning and implementing in developing and renewing curriculum. At this point, the syllabus can be seen as a part of the curriculum which can be developed based on the needs of the educational program.
To be more precise, syllabus contains material contents that will be taught and achieved in one language program, and it is more detail and specific than curriculum. Breen (2001) writes four elements of syllabus; aims, content, methodology, evaluation. Syllabus for language curriculum or course may provide the communicative knowledge or more broadly the capabilities to be achieved as well as it gives specific structure and vocabulary. Moreover, syllabus contains manageable units of content which are selected and broken down to achieve the targeted objectives.
The frameworks in developing syllabus have been underpinned on several orientations. Richards (2001) has stated that syllabus can be developed based on at least ten syllabus frameworks, such as structuralbased syllabus, lexical-based syllabus, functional-based syllabus, situational-based syllabus, topical-based syllabus, competency-based syllabus, skill-based syllabus, taskbased syllabus, text-based syllabus, and mixed syllabus. Meanwhile, Breen (2001) has proposed two kinds of orientation in designing syllabus, namely task-based and process-syllabus. The former orientation is to design syllabus which is the task as the key unit within to encourage interaction students and input, so they can express and interpret meaning during doing tasks. He also summarizes that syllabus is currently designed emphasizing on four main trends, such as focusing on outcomes/competencebased planning, organizing through tasks and subdivided and sequenced as tasks, negotiating between teacher and students, serving a range of appropriate language-learning aims. Interaction, negotiation, and tasks become essential points in developing the syllabus for the language course.
In Indonesian context, syllabus, according to National Educational Department as cited by Koryati (2011) is the focus in organizing the instructional design, applying the learning process and evaluating its process. Teaching and learning in higher education have been shifted its paradigm from teacher-centered to student-centered which means that college students are no longer as the passive receiver. They are, through the learning process, forced to be independent to figure out knowledge and information by themselves. Consequently, they are highly competent in their main field and can perform as demanded in and outside the class.
Related to teaching and learning English as the foreign language, Cahyono & Widiati (2011) have said that English teaching at the university level is outside the whole system, in which institutions have the large opportunity and autonomy to design their teaching system. Despite the fact that there are standard learning outcomes, the lecturers still have a plenty of room to explore their teaching process in the classroom. Teaching L2 writing for EFL students particularly in English department has its specific purposes. Writing course is discussed and practiced paragraph and essay development in various text types. However, the constraints in writing class are various, such as student intake competence, rare teaching resources, curriculum system, and others. Students often enter writing class with insufficient competence to write. As a result, they find it too difficult. In addition to competence, competences should be achieved sound unclear and unsystematic for both teacher and students. Moreover, the aim of learning writing probably does not meet the students' needs. Redesigning syllabus for writing class is one of the alternative solutions in order to enhance the qualities of teaching and learning in writing class as well as the students' performance in writing.
Syllabus development for language course has been modeled by some language experts, for instance, Brown (1995), Graves, (2000), Richards (2001), Nation and Macalister (2010), and Murray and Cristison (2011a). Generally speaking, though some aspects are quite different, they commonly proposed a set of steps as analyzing needs, setting goals, of course, selecting content, and determining evaluation. To be more specific, Graves (2000) set several phases in designing a language course, such as defining the context, articulating beliefs, conceptualizing content, formulating goals and objectives, assessing needs, organizing the course, and developing materials. It can be seen in Figure 1. Figure 1 The Phases of Designing Course (Graves, 2001) Research related to developing the syllabus for language course has been widely conducted in Indonesia for either specific purposes or academic purposes. Development of syllabus by Floris (2008) is done by surveying 1.450 students and 34 teachers. The purposes are to identify needs of EGAP in universities in Central Java to determine the type of program, methodology, and to set the learning outcomes targeted as part of the syllabus. Moreover, Wardhani & Sadtono (2014) also try to design the syllabus of English for Tourism 1 at Tourism Department, Airlangga University. As a result, the relevant and necessary topics for prospective graduate's job are found as a part of the proposed syllabus. In 2014, Ambawani (2014) conducted developmental research to design an English syllabus for Industrial Engineering in Yogyakarta. The research findings show that a topic-based syllabus is suitable for the students which focus on reading skill. The proposed syllabus then provides competence standard, basic competence, indicator, materials, activities, time allotment, and source of materials. And then this present study is addressed to answer the following research questions: (1) what are the needs of Writing Class at English education program?, and (2) how is a model of proposed syllabus based on the needs of Writing Class at English education program?

METHODS
This research is part of the study carried by research and development (R and D) proposed by Dick and Carey (Gall, Gall, & Borg, 2003). From 10 steps on research and development, seven of the steps has been done, as follow identify instructional goal, conduct instructional analysis, identity level behavior, write objectives, develop test items, develop instructional strategy, and select instructional materials. The respondents are 92 students from Writing Class, 4 Lecturers, and stakeholders of one university in Jakarta. The data are obtained from April to June 2016. In collecting data, questionnaire, documentation and indepth interview are used as instruments. The questionnaire for students consists of four parts; perceptions on learning writing, self-assessment on learning writing, needs and difficulties in learning writing, and techniques, practices, evaluation in writing by rating scale. Meanwhile, questionnaire for lecturers contains objectives and orientation in teaching writing, needs and difficulties in teaching writing, and techniques, practices, evaluation in writing. Then obtained data from questionnaires are analyzed descriptively by using percentage.
Furthermore, existing course units and coursebooks used in the classroom are analyzed its relevancy and effectiveness. And then, students' worksheets are also documented to find out students' performance in writing. Besides, lecturers and stakeholders are interviewed and videotaped to gather data related to the orientation of teaching writing, profiles of expected student competencies and outcomes. Transcribed data from videotaped interviews are analyzed quantitatively into some categories; current writing performance, the importance and difficulty of writing course, the effectiveness of current materials and practices, and orientations of writing course.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
After analyzing data descriptively in assessing needs and designing proposed syllabus of writing class, it can be drawn two findings; they are results of need assessment and model of the proposed syllabus. Some aspects of need assessment as conclusions are in terms of current writing performance, the importance and difficulty, the effectiveness of current materials and practices, and the orientations of the writing course. The findings will be described in details.
Currently, the information on students' writing performance is gathered together by the rating of selfassessment of writing performance as part of questionnaire and writing worksheets. The statements on self-rating of writing performance are dealt with the micro skill of writing, such as writing correct sentences, punctuating, spelling, using conjunctions, developing paragraph and essay. The interval scores are ranged 2,9-3,4. These scores can be categorized as "somewhat true of me". The students find their writing competences fair. It indicates that the students believe they can do all writing activities and practices in writing class, despite the fact that they may fall into errors, ineffectiveness, and inaccuracy of writing. They probably make some mistakes in writing mechanisms, such as punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. Then, when selecting words, they pick inappropriate words; accordingly, their writings seem unnatural. This may be same as the survey analysis by Floris (2008). She reports that 51,4% of the respondents believe that they have the fair language proficiency. It can be classified as intermediate level learners.
Furthermore, they call developing sentences in the correct patterns and using grammar the most difficult activities in writing class. This is consistent with errors found in student's worksheet, such as "we should proud" (Sa3), "Pizza come from to Italia (sa5)", "It is give… he teach…" (Sa2). Developing sentences in the patterns of simple, compound and complex with correct grammar becomes the most challenging part; making simple sentences is not as simple as they think. This may be consistent with what Murray & Christison (2011b) write. They said, "There is no evidence that simple sentences are easier to understand than compound and complex ones". Sentence patterns are mostly taught in writing classes for beginning level learners. Just like what Tedjasuksmana (2004) has said as cited by Cahyono & Widiati (2011), primary school students may start to learn English with writing being taught through basic tasks such as copying and forming simple sentences. They still feel it hard even when entering writing class for advanced learners. On the other side, the highest scores of self-rating in writing performance go to using writing mechanism, using conjunctions, and developing topics and ideas based on examples, experiences, and reasons. It indicates that the students have a lot of ideas and topics. They are able to combine those topics/ideas using correct conjunctions, even though they may confuse to express those ideas in correct grammar.
In addition to self-assessment of writing performance, the students' writing worksheets have also been reviewed and analyzed after they are asked to write descriptive or narrative essays. From the worksheets, it can be found some interesting result that some aspect may be contradicted with what shows on self-assessment. The topics that students choose for their writing are quite various and interesting, such as my favorite food, my future husband, the perfect mother, why I like Gado-gado, Pak Tino Sidin, and strawberry pudding cake. The ideas are fairly organized in the form of the 5-paragraph essay. However, thesis statements are mostly unclear and ineffective to depict the whole essay.
From students' writing worksheets, it can be summed up that the students have some lacks of the s-v agreement, sentence patterns, tenses, conjunctions, vocabulary, and writing mechanism. Some sentences have no subjects or wrong auxiliary. Then, they also do not fit the sentence patterns in English. Wrong verbs also appear in several points. Inappropriate word selection makes the writing unnatural. These results may support the study by Hidayah (2013). He analyzes the writing essay by TESL college students and finds that the most frequent errors are s-v agreement, tenses, part of speech, and vocabulary. Moreover, the students likely have the insufficient competence of writing in the areas of grammar, vocabulary, writing mechanism, and sentence patterns. The needs of these areas should be facilitated in the developed writing course. They need a lot of exposure and modeling as well as practices to those areas. As Murray & Christison (2011b) suggest, English language learners, particularly in writing class, need to have more exposure to more formal vocabulary.
By distributing the questionnaire to students and lecturers, this part of the questionnaire (see appendix) is to reveal micro skills of writing should be focused and emphasized on in writing class. Both students and lecturers agree that all micro skills of writing mentioned are important to learn in writing class, except the lecturers' opinions on the unimportance of creative writing as the writing orientation and activities in writing class. Moreover, creative writing is also considered difficult to learn and teach in writing class. As what Cahyono and Widiati (2011) wrote, in university level, teaching English writing particularly for English department means expressing ideas in acceptable written English for particular purposes. A series of writing courses are taught in constructing paragraph and essays. There is limited practice for creative writing. In the aspect of difficulty, students and lecturers are poles the part in giving opinions. Lecturers believe that grammar, vocabulary, and developing thesis statements for essay are less difficult than developing personal writing, structuring sentences, using appropriate conjunctions, and expressing ideas in writing class. Based on these results, the course designers can make some decisions related to the course framework and organized course unit systematically. The statements of the importance and difficulty of writing skill from students (Ss) and lectures (Ls) is displayed in Table 1.
The existing writing course consists of three classes; Writing 1, Writing 2, and Writing 3. The first writing class purposes to develop sentences. Meanwhile, writing 2 has objectives to develop the paragraph. And then, developing various types of the essay is the objective of writing 3. Each writing class has at least three book references for both students and lecturers. They are, for example, First Steps in Academic Writing by Ann Hogue, Ready to Write Second Edition by Karen Blanchard and Christine Root, Introduction to Academic Writing and Writing Academic English 4th Edition by Alice Oshima and Ann Hogue, Effective Academic Writing 2: The Short Essay by Alice Savage, and Effective Academic Writing 3: The Essay by Jason Davis. Bringing a lot of books in writing class seems unpractical and less efficient. Moreover, a lot of books do not indicate that students have a lot opportunity to write a lot during the writing session. Textbook evaluation by Ghufron and Saleh (2016) have proven that the book selected is not always suitable to the students' need and curriculum in which it is applied. The selection of materials/course book should pay attention to several aspects, such as the language level of learners and the goals of course program.
Writing activities and practices currently applied in writing class are various from making isolated sentences and developing paragraph through the writing process.
While not all activities and practices used in writing class are considered effective for both students and lecturers. Concerning to the techniques in writing class, both students and lecturers agree that writing story and take-home assignment are the most frequent activities applied in writing the class as well as outlining paragraph/essay, copying, and form filling. Unlike the students, lecturers feel that they also frequently deliver sentence combining and jumbled words for their writing classes. Related to writing techniques, individual work is preferable than pair and group works.
At the same time, either students or lecturers also feel individual writing more effective. The skilled writers will improve their competence, and weaker writers will not rely on the stronger ones. However, this is not consistent with the study by Tutyandari (as cited by Cahyono & Widiati, 2011). She finds that pair or group work in writing class is useful to encourage passive students to be more actively involved in writing. Table 2 shows the frequency and the effectiveness of writing activities/practices.  3,0 Paragraph/essay outline 1,6 1,5 2,5 3,0 Individual work 1,6 1,5 2,1 2,5 Pair-work 0,8 1,0 2,4 2,5 Group-work 0,8 1,0 2,4 2,3 Group-discussion 0,8 1,0 2,7 3,0 Take-Home Assignment 1,0 1,3 Frequency : 3 = often 2 = seldom 1 = never Effectiveness : 2 = very effective 1 = effective 0 = not effective In addition to writing activities in Table 2, processoriented approach in which students are asked for outlining, drafting, revising, and editing is also preferred and considered effective particularly in developing paragraph and essay. Some researchers have suggested the model of writing as the process for writing class. Antoni and Gunawan (as cited by Cahyono & Widiati, 2011) have reported that writing process is effective as it could empower students to revise their writing through multiple drafts before they eventually produce their final product. Related to feedback or writing evaluation, both students and lecturers prefer teacher feedback/review to peer review. They find teachers/ lecturers experts; as a result, they deserve to give judgments on students' work. In contrast, peer review sounds doubted and questionable. The challenges in implementing peer review in writing class have been revealed by Widiati (2002). She has reported that peer response activity, at the same time, meet student language proficiency and cultural aspect related to teacher's role in the classroom.
Setting goals and objectives for writing course is the ongoing process of gathering data. Through interviewing lecturers and stakeholders, constraints in writing classes are probably caused by student competences and the teaching resources. Then, the writing orientation is addressed to academic writing with a small portion of other orientations. The writing content should be conceptualized based on some principles. Firstly, writing purposes is formulated in a series of competences. And the second is the contents distributed gradually from simple to complex in the form of developing sentences, paragraphs, and essays. Writing activities and practices do not only give students ability to solve writing problems in the classroom but prepare them to be skilled writers outside the classroom as well. Writing competences of the students attain in writing class may be helpful for them to find jobs; moreover, they can probably create jobs from what they write. This may support the vision of the university with the respect of entrepreneurship. The writing content should be adaptive and relevant to global and national issues. As a result, writing class will be meaningful and have long-term benefits for students.
Related to the topics for writing class, the interviewees agree that local contents and values are included in instructional materials. As an international language, English has been spoken by more than 1,5 billion people around the world from different countries and cultures (Crystal, 2003). In fact, nowadays people speak English not to communicate to native speakers; nonetheless, they use it to make the global communication to other people in their own cultures. Consequently, materials in writing class should be authentically containing local values and cultures. This thought supports the study by Gunantar (2016). Her study shows that local cultural content has become the purpose of EFL teaching, combined with foreign Her study shows that local cultural content has become the purpose of EFL teaching, combined with foreign cultures. Teaching writing using multi-media has also arisen as an alternative strategy. Using technology in writing class has been studied by some researchers. For example, Soedjatmiko and Taloko (as cited by Cahyono & Widiati, 2011) have reported that e-portfolio could provide a great amount writing tasks, enable the students to read structural works and learn how to revise their own. The use of technology sounds high and sophisticated, yet some factors, such as tools, connection, and cost should be considered.
Based on some conclusions on need assessment, a proposed syllabus is constructed based on some characteristics: proposed syllabus rationale, setting goals and objectives, determining methodology, selecting and sequencing content materials, determining evaluation. The first, proposed syllabus is designed based on task-based principles. The needs of students in writing the class to be independent language learners as well as language users using their language resources may be consistent with the features of task-based learning (TBL). TBL carries students to use language through communicative tasks. By doing the tasks, particularly writing tasks, students develop gradually their writing proficiency. In other words, writing or learning outcomes as targeted competences can be achieved through language, rather than linguistic items. Learning can be more effective with the involvement of language use in relating to form and meaning (Wilis and Wilis, 2001).
The goals of writing course are set in the term of general goal and specific goals. Generally, the writing course at the university has particular purposes, such as academic. In the proposed syllabus, the general goal is to enable students to develop skills in writing various kinds of academic texts effectively, accurately, and appropriately. In addition to the general goal, writing course is set up to enable students to (1) build sentences, (2)

CONCLUSIONS
This present research aims at exploring the needs of EFL writing course for university and designing a model of the proposed syllabus. The needs cover some aspects; importance, difficulty, and orientations of writing course. Students' current performance can be categorized as fair. The students can do all writing activities and practices, yet some errors, ineffectiveness, and inaccuracy have also arisen in the respect with grammar, vocabulary, sentence patterns, and mechanics. Academic writing is preferable to a small portion of other types of writing to support students' final paper. Developing sentences, paragraphs, and essays are gradually discussed and practices to achieve writing competences. Individual writing work is preferred with feedback and evaluation from lecturers. The learning outcomes in line with the vision of university should be relevant to real needs in working world. Based on these needs, the principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT) is considered appropriate to underpin a proposed syllabus. The components of syllabus consist of general and specific goals, content materials, a set of tasks and activities, and evaluation. Tasks and activities are designed for selfstudy in which students are expected to practice and use the tasks and activities without lecturer's monitor.