Process Paragraph
Parlindungan Pardede
A process paragraph is a series of steps that explain how something happens or how to make something. It can explain anything from the way to enrich vocabulary to overcoming insomnia to the procedure of operating a machine. It may also give tips for improving pronunciation or for answering a telephone call. Because such explanations must be clear, the process paragraph must be written in chronological order, and it must include a topic sentence that clearly states the paragraph’s purpose. It must also include transition words and phrases such as “first,” “next,” “finally,” that connect each of the steps.
There are two kinds of process paragraphs: directional and informational. A directional process paragraph explains the directions to perform a task. It provides the reader a set of instructions or a step-by-step guidance. The following is an example of a directional process paragraph:
How to Make a Good Cup of Tea
Making a good cup of tea is exquisitely simple. First, the teapot is heated by filling it with water that has just come to a boil. This water is then discarded, and one teaspoon of loose tea per cup is placed in the teapot (the exact amount may vary according to taste). Fresh water that has just come to a boil is poured into the pot. A good calculation is six ounces of water for each cup of tea. The tea must now steep for three to five minutes; then it is poured through a strainer into a cup or mug. A pound of loose tea will yield about two hundred cups of brewed tea. Using a tea bag eliminates the strainer, but it is still best to make the tea in a teapot so that the water stays sufficiently hot. The typical restaurant service—a cup of hot water with the tea bag on the side—will not produce the best cup of tea because the water is never hot enough when it reaches the table and because the tea should not be dunked in the water; the water should be poured over the tea. Although tea in a pot often becomes too strong, that problem can be dealt with very easily by adding more boiling water. (From: Scarry S. and Scary J., 2011: 422)
An informational process paragraph explains how something works or how something worked in the past. Its purpose is purely to provide information. Such writing could be found easily in history books. For instance, if you described how General Diponegoro planned his battle strategy, this would be informational process writing. The following example explains the developmental phases of the use of literature in the second or foreign language teaching. In the paragraph, the transitional words that signal the steps or stages of the process have been italicized.
—– to proceed reading, click → Process Paragraph
Universitas Kristen Indonesia 
Hi Sir, actually I’m confused why you asked us to post critique article in here, section 7. Did I misunderstand?
It is very hard to find suitable education research to be criticized. I found many, but after I read I found many difficulties to answer the questions when we criticize an article. Finally, one of my lecturers said that I can find in JET (collection of journals having FKIP- UKI). I downloaded, then I scanned, I saw tables there and also the methodology stated clearly. Then, I decide to criticize this article, “Students’ View on Grammar Teaching” by Hendrikus Male.
Since I only have little knowing about research, so I will not say that I want to criticize this article but I want to say that I want to learn from this article. So, I hope that I get knowledge how to write article, how to get literature review, how to make a research, etc.
In literature review, the writer wrote many opinions about grammar from researches conducted before. He told that a long time ago grammar had been central to foreign language teaching, a research also said that grammar teaching is necessary to achieve communicative goals, but some language researchers said that teaching grammar was not only unhelpful but might be detrimental. Some research said it was a waste of time to teach grammar. That’s why, the necessity of grammar become the center of debate now. From the explanation, we know that the writer found current knowledge about grammar is different. Some research said grammar is important in foreign language teaching but some research said it is unimportant. Therefore, in order to determine whether grammar should be taught explicitly or implicitly and what activities and techniques are best to teach and learn it; students’ views need to be considered.
The objectives of this research stated clearly that is to investigate the students’ perceptions on grammar instruction at the English Teaching Study Program of the Faculty of Education and Teachers Training of the Christian University of Indonesia, Jakarta.
The research question is not clearly stated, because the writer didn’t write in the article. But we can find it, the question is what is the students’ perceptions on grammar instruction at Faculty of Education and Teachers Training of the Christian University of Indonesia, Jakarta.
The limitation of the study clearly indicated. Because he just studied the student’s view, not teacher’s view not the other’s view. It also only studied about grammar not about many aspects of language.
The writer employed quantitative and qualitative method. It is justified, because according to Creswell et al. (2003) it enables us to gather qualitative input to explain and extend quantitative result to gain a comprehensive insight of the research. A questionnaire was used to get quantitative data, while a focused semi structured open-ended interviews was employed to get qualitative data. I think these methods and also the ways to find data are suitable to achieve the objective of the study. The questionnaire was constructed to measure the respondents’ views of the teaching of English grammar. (Likert scale was employed here to indicate student’s agreement and disagreement) The interview was conducted to understand the respondent’s point of view rather than make generalizations.
Process of purposeful selection of sampling clearly described. It is visible from the writer’s statement that : The respondents were all the fifth-semester students of the English Teaching Study Program of FKIP-UKI. They were purposively selected on the assumption that they had passed all language grammar classes and almost finished all language skill classes in which they were supposed to apply grammatical knowledge they had studied.
The setting of the study is described clearly. The writer said that there are 54 students of semester VI in the study program when the data were taken (Academic Year 2010/2011 in November 2010). Eight of them were involved in the pilot study to determine the reliability of the instrument (to see whether the wording of the questions was clear and the completion of the tasks was feasible). The other 46 students were asked to indicate their agreement or disagreement to each statement in questionnaire. The interview sessions were around 15-20 minutes, conducted with 5 volunteers (were also respondents to the questionnaire)
The researcher enhanced trustworthiness of the data through triangulation, that is the data source triangulation and the methodological triangulation. He used data source triangulation because he used two ways to find the data that is questionnaire and interview. He used methodological triangulation because he used qualitative method and quantitative method. I think they are appropriate, because finding data via interview support and enrich the data finding by questionnaire. Also to describe the result, qualitative method is needed to support quantitative findings. The quantitative finding (present by tables) really makes the result easy to understand.
Hi Yasinta,
Yes, your confusion is logical. I’ve just finishing the page on which you should post your research article critique at https://parlindunganpardede.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/research-article-critique/. Would you please repost it there?
On top of your posting, please inform the necessary brief information of the article you critiqued,
Good luck!