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Introduction

"Essay writing courses were introduced at Janus Pannonius University in 1986" (Horváth, 1996 p.88) in order to develop English majors' writing skills. During these courses students become familiar with the stages of the writing process through several useful and interesting activities. These activities include both in-class and take-home assignments. Students are given splendid ideas and helpful pieces of advice about how to write an essay, and this way each of them can develop his or her individual methods and style.

This paper will examine what writing techniques English majors at JPU used in the academic year of 1996-1997, during in-class and take-home essays. First of all, I asked students whether they devoted time to planning the essay, and if yes, how. I also studied which component of the writing process they considered the most important. Then I made inquiries about their revising methods. Finally, I gathered information of the difficulties they faced during essay writing, and the advantages of attending a course of "Writing and Research Skills".

I made the survey on the basis of three hypotheses:

1. English majors at JPU do plan their essay, but they have different strategies for take-home and in-class essays.
2. Students do not pay attention to the same factors when writing at home as in class.
3. English majors do not revise their essays before turning them in.

Both English majors and teachers of writing skills at the English Department at JPU may benefit from this assessment. Students can compare their own methods with others', and implement some good ideas in their strategies. On the other hand, professors can gain information about students' attitudes towards essay writing, and about the difficulties they meet.

Methods

During the survey, I worked with questionnaires. First I designed the 17 questions, in April, 1997, and then I distributed the questionnaires among English majors at JPU. All of them attended the course of "Writing and Research Skills". At random, I selected representatives of all the five grades. I asked 22 students all together to answer my questions: 4 girls and 2 boys from the first, 4 girls and 1 boy from the second, 2 girls and 3 boys from the third, 3 girls from the fourth, and 1 girl and 2 boys from the fifth grade. After they had filled in the questionnaires on their own, I summarized their several replies.

Results

The evaluation of the answers in connection with planning shows that all students said they spent some time on thinking about the topic before writing the essay. The amount of this time depended on the length of the essay and the topic itself. At home, seven respondents devoted about thirty minutes to planning, another seven a few hours; and the rest spent more than a day brooding over the theme. In class they meditated for 5-10 minutes.

Fifteen of the students even wrote outlines; half of them used only words and expressions, the other half full sentences as well. They said their reasons were that they wished to remember useful ideas and to have a global view about the content. The rest did not deal with putting down any ideas, because it would take much time. As for an in-class essay, the results were very similar, but only four students constructed full sentences. There were 12 English majors who even designed the chain of the paragraphs in order to insert them logically into the context. Others wrote the essay spontaneously, letting the theme develop by itself. They should take this advice: "An outline will help you to see the relations among all your points before you start your first draft" (Heffernan & Lincoln, 1982-1986 p.29 ).

The research shows that except for three students who did not care about topic sentences at all, the majority (16) constructed them within the writing process. They did not write them into the outline, because it was enough to be aware of the content of paragraphs.

For the question, if they wrote the essay right away in English, or at first they composed it in Hungarian, 21 students answered yes. Only one out of 22 insisted on translating the Hungarian version, because gathering ideas in the mother tongue was less complicated. Another English major admitted that he was thinking in Hungarian, but then translated the ingenious thoughts in his mind. Those who drew up the essay in English said that it was more easier and quicker to compose in the foreign language than translating. They asserted that the essay would have a different meaning otherwise. As far as the in-class essay was concerned, everybody wrote it in English at once, because of lack of time.

In the second part of the questionnaire I examined which stage of the writing process English majors considered the most fundamental. First I asked them about the title. Most of the participants (15) decided on the title of the essay after having finished it. As for a take-home assignment, fewer respondents (5) invented its title before writing the text than in an in-class essay ( 9 students). Then I asked the participants to grade different elements: focus, paragraph organization, topic sentence, revision and planning, from 1 to 5, giving better marks to the most essential ones. Summing up the grades, the averages indicate that focus (4.77) was the most important when writing either a take-home or an in-class essay, because this is that holds the parts of the text together. As for the take-home essay, the next in the order of importance was revision (4.14) , then planning (4.00), paragraph organization (3.91) and at last topic sentence (3.45). As far as in-class essays were concerned, the second element was planning (4.14) which was followed by paragraph organization and revision (3.95) and the last one was topic sentence (3.54).

Then I asked students to decide which factor they laid the most emphasis upon. Eleven of them paid attention, first of all, to grammar, because this is what affects and influences the teachers. Furthermore, correctly used grammar is the most essential aspect of an academic work.
According to the survey, the style of a take-home essay was more considerable than of the in-class essay. Elegant style raises the standard of the writing. Nevertheless, in class, students are usually not allowed to consult any dictionaries, so they have less chance to express their thoughts in a well-polished manner. Under such circumstances, content is the second most important after grammar. Form was pointed out by only three students, while focus and paragraph were mentioned by merely one.

The next question was about what English majors did in the interest of a more elegant style. As it turned out, 18 of the students made a great effort to avoid using redundant expressions, repeating words or padding. During the exercise they consult a dictionary or thesaurus, if possible; furthermore, they read books, magazines, and seize every opportunity to talk to native people, so as to grow their vocabulary.

In spite of the fact that form was not mentioned among the most important factors, like grammar and style, many students endeavour to provide the essay a fine and exacting appearance. The opinions varied between handwriting and typing. The majority, 15 out of 22, preferred using word-processors, so that they could make the essay legible, re-order paragraphs easily, delete unnecessary parts. Computers even provide a spell-check module. However, three students admitted that they were averse to using PC-s; handwriting was faster and less complicated for them. Another three respondents said that they would willingly hand in a printed essay, but computers were not available for them.

Having assessed the methods of planning and writing processes, I asked participants about revising the essay. First of all I wanted to know whether they executed this final step, and if yes, why they revised, when, and how many times. Everybody except for one gave a positive answer. Each respondent claimed that revision was extremely useful to reveal mistakes and inaccuracies, to supplement the text with new ideas and to have an overall view. Nineteen participants scanned the text right after finishing it (and even during it), but 10 out of 22 checked the essay later as well. Students skimmed through their works usually once or twice, four of them more times. Almost half of the participants, 10 out of 22, asked another person - usually friends, groupmates, parents or teachers - as well, in order to check the essay, since they could notice mistakes omitted by the author. These acquaintances were generally sincere, so they could give frank advice. The other half did dot like bragging about their works, or did not want to disturb people who had their own duties. Although most students revised the essay, every second admitted that they could not always find the mistakes. The proportion was even bigger concerning the in-class essay. The participants often revealed grammatic, stylistic and spelling errors that can make the content unintelligible.

In the last but one question, English majors were interviewed about what kind of difficulties they met during essay writing. According to the answers, the respondents can be divided into three groups (although there are overlaps). One of them include those 8 students who had problems with the composition itself. They usually found it hard either to invent a topic or to construct the first and last sentence. Very often words and expressions did not spring to their mind. One participant admitted that the way of giving reference was still not clear. The second group consists of 5 respondents for whom limit of time and length caused nervousness. They frequently ran out of time, or produced the essay hastily. This problem was emphasized especially in connection with in-class essays. In the third group there are 13 students who showed very negative attitude towards essay writing. Many times they found the topic unchallenging and boring, so it caused them trouble to buckle down to work.

Finally, participants were asked to give their honest opinion about the effectiveness of the course "Writing and Research Skills". Only two students considered it absolutely unnecessary. According to the others, it was useful, for the reason that they had plenty of opportunities for practising, learned many rules of academic writing, and became aware of punctuation rules.

Discussion

The results of the assessment partly refuted my hypotheses. Regarding the answers, there were much fewer differences between the technique of writing in-class and take-home essays than I expected. The divergence I could find was the consequence of different conditions. When writing an in-class essay, students had to produce a shorter composition in a shorter time than at home. Furthermore, the title and topic of in-class essays are usually given. Under such circumstances, it was obvious that students spent less time on planning and revising an in-class essay than a take-home essay; however, the way of planning, writing and revising them was almost the same. The third hypothesis was also proved wrong, since it turned out that the respondents did revise their texts before handing them in, although they did not always recognise their mistakes.
During the evaluation, I discovered some connections. There were three students who did not care about topic sentences at all. I recognized that each of them had a negative attitude towards essay writing itself. Moreover, they were among those who declared that the course "Formal Writing" contributed to their development only in very small measure. They did not spend time on planning the order of paragraphs; and as far as revision is concerned, it had been done once at the very most, right after students had finished the essay. These respondents had never asked anybody to check their work.

According to my supposition, those who omit the process of planning do not pay much attention to revising. Regarding three students, this assumption is proved. One of them did not check their essays at all; the other two scanned the work only once. Each of them showed negative attitude towards writing essays; their aim was to get rid of them as soon as possible. However; there were four students who, although, did not plan the essay, devoted more time to revising it. They checked the text more than twice, right after writing it, and later as well. If they had the opportunity, they even asked a friend or parent to correct the mistakes.

There were five students admitting that the process of composing (including, for example, gathering of ideas and using grammar correctly) caused them difficulty. In order to facilitate essay writing, all of them except for one made a sketch of the text first, and even planned paragraph organization. It is interesting that none of them showed the essay to another person; probably, they feel ashamed of their errors.

Conclusion

Considering the data of this survey, professors can select components of writing process they should emphasize in teaching. First of all, the attitudes of students should be changed. However, according to the answers, most students tend to do their best and solve the problems, even if they do not really like writing essays. This statement is proved by the efforts they made to plan and revise the work, to grow their vocabulary and to use correct grammar and elegant style; in a word, to acquire the skills of academic writing.