Culture and Innovation in Essay Writing Project: EFL Students’ Perceptions

Abstract

Two important concepts in education nowadays are “culture” and “innovation.” Culture is important as it goes along with the way people think, feel, and do and their phases of life, while innovation is important as it suggests development. In the context of education in the globalization, culture reflects identity, while innovation reflects creative products beyond conventional practices. This small-scale study examined EFL students’ perceptions on the essay writing project incorporating both culture and innovation. It involved 25 students attending an essay writing course in the English Department of a state university in Indonesia, Following the completion of the teaching and learning actvites: the students’ perceptions were elicited on the basis of three criteria: development of idea for writing, meaningfulness of the writing project, and writing competence of the students. The results showed that the EFL students perceived combination of local culture and innovation in the form of video making helped them developing essays. They also thought that the essay writing project was meaningful and they felt that their writing competence improved after following the writing project.