The Contribution of Essay Writing Course in Writing Essays Scholarship Application

Writing an essay is an indispensable skill for students, especially in the current globalization era. The ability to write a good essay will provide many advantages in students' academic achievement and opportunity to open the gate to get scholarships both at home and abroad. This study aims to find out student perceptions of the contribution of essay writing courses in writing scholarship application essays. The research participants in this study were 8 participants from the Department of English Language Education at UIN Ar-Raniry who had participated in several scholarship programs with different backgrounds. This research used purposive sampling in selecting participants who meet predetermined criteria. The researcher used qualitative research method using semi-structured interviews via telephone to obtain data. The results in this study revealed that students gained contributions after taking essay writing courses, namely: Acquiring a new knowledge, Improving word choice, Enhancing Coherent and Cohesion, Improving grammar skills, Enhancing ideas development. Furthermore, students also experience difficulties in several aspects of writing scholarship application essays, namely lack of grammar knowledge and difficulty in understanding scholarship provider essay requirements, difficulty in choosing appropriate vocabulary. However, there are several ways to solve the challenges in regard in writing scholarship essay writing. The participant making an outline when writing scholarship essay in order to help them in composing ideas, choosing the appropriate vocabulary or word choice and making essay writing become coherent.