INTRODUCTION
The issue of unemployment has always been a very serious
concern for many developed countries. This is because unemployment can be a
cause of destruction and delays in the development and progress of a country's
economy. Therefore, the government will always try to think of solutions to
reduce the number of unemployed in society. One of the factors causing the
increase in the number of unemployed is the limited number of available job
vacancies for job seekers. This can be triggered by the many companies that
have gone bankrupt due to the Covid 19 pandemic which
has just hit the joints of the economies of many countries. These bankrupt
companies have to fire many employees to maintain their financial condition in
order to get the stable financial condition.
One solution that can be relied upon to solve the problem
is to become an entrepreneur. This is because employees who have been fired as
well as young workers who have completed their education at various levels can
try to earn income independently without depending on companies that also get a
financial crisis. Thus, entrepreneurship is considered as an alternative way
that is very useful for saving the economic conditions of a country (Mathias et al., 2015; Wardana et al., 2020). However, it is
not easy. This is because not all people have entrepreneurial mindsets that
will be able to entail a soul and enthusiasm in carrying out entrepreneurial
activities.
The issue of the entrepreneurial mindset has always been
an interesting discussion among the public (Ferreira et al., 2015; Krueger Jr & Brazeal, 2018; Wiklund et al.,
2019). This is because
efforts to build an entrepreneurial mindset in an individual is not easy. In
fact, in Indonesia, many people are not very interested in doing
entrepreneurial activities. They are more likely to become employees in a
company. They prefer to think about getting a guaranteed salary or steady
income earned by working in a company rather than accepting the challenge of
becoming an entrepreneur without guarantees to get a fixed salary or income
every month. This is supported by the results of research conducted by (Acs et al., 2017). It is known that
Indonesia's rank in terms of the number of entrepreneurs is 94 out of 137
countries. This shows that the presence of entrepreneurs in Indonesia is still
very low to be compared to other countries.
In addition, it is also known that in 2020, the horrible
conditions are reflected in the percentage of unemployed people in Indonesia
with a population of more than 200 million people where 11.5% of vocational
high school graduates (SMK) are unemployed and 08.2% of high school graduates
(SMA) are also reported not working. This is also exacerbated by the percentage
of unemployed college graduates around 05.5% (Statistics Indonesia, 2020). This
picture is not something to be proud of for the people in Indonesia where there
are a number of intellectual unemployed people increasing from time to time.
People's reluctance to build an entrepreneurial mindset is
driven by several factors such as the influence of the family environment (Kristová & Malach, 2017; Wang et al., 2018), unsupportive
personal character (Butz et al., 2018; Murugesan & Jayavelu, 2017), and also lack of
self-confidence (Farrukh et al., 2017; Nowiński et al., 2019). These factors
have a very significant influence on the development of an entrepreneurial
mindset owned by a person. Therefore, it takes a maximum role from the world of
education to make students aware of the importance of building an
entrepreneurial mindset to avoid becoming unemployed after graduating from
school or college due to the lack of job vacancies offered by both private and
state companies or institutions.
In learning English, efforts to build an entrepreneurial
mindset can be done through writing skills. In this case, students are directed
to create ideas related to how to build an entrepreneurial mindset through
writing essays. In other words, entrepreneurial ideas can become the topic of
their writing. Thus, students will try to bring out their creativity by writing
ideas related to the entrepreneurial mindset.
Learning English cannot be separated from writing skills.
As one of the productive skills, writing skills require students to master
various things to be able to produce good essay writings. Therefore, writing
skills are considered difficult for students because there are many components
or things that students have to think about in expressing ideas and conveying
messages through their writing (Johns, 1991). Concretely,
several components of writing skills that must be mastered by students such as
spelling letters, marking pauses correctly, choosing the right vocabulary,
using grammar carefully, combining sentences correctly, and connecting between
paragraphs correctly. Thus, writing skills are activities that are filled with
the complexity of the existing components, causing not a few students to feel
deprived of motivation to write due to the complexity of writing itself (Hedge, 2005).
In connection with the above information, the teacher is
considered to be crucial in an effort to raise students' writing skills in
order to successfully produce good written works (Kroll, 1990). One of the
teacher's efforts in helping students to produce good written work is to pay
attention to writing techniques consisting of processes and products. The
writing processes include pre-writing, writing, revising, editing, and sharing.
Meanwhile, writing products consist of text modeling, writing control,
organizing ideas, and finalizing written products (Harmer, 2004; Hasan & Akhand, 2010).
Another thing that also needs to be considered by the
teacher is student creativity. Creativity is considered as the result of a
combination of interactions between dexterity, process, and environment carried
out by students to create something new and have utility or benefits in social
life (Plucker et al., 2004). Creativity comes
from a frame of mind on a given task, namely a divergent and integrative
convergent mindset (Barbot et al., 2011; Cropley, 2014). Divergent mindset
refers to the ability to view an idea from different angles so as to produce a
variety of creative ideas (Plucker et al., 2004). This is driven by
strong curiosity and flexibility in discovering and developing ideas (Greenstein, 2012). However, what
also needs to be considered is related to the originality and uniqueness of a
creative idea being developed. An integrative-convergent mindset which is the
basis of a mindset in maintaining originality and uniqueness is needed to avoid
the appearance of inappropriate plagiarism (Barbot et al., 2011). Therefore,
creativity cannot separate the mindset that leads to efforts to produce a
variety of ideas and also maintain the originality and uniqueness of the idea
itself. Thus, the domain of creativity consists of curiosity, flexibility, and
originality (Greenstein, 2012).
Creativity often becomes a bridge for students' failure in
writing, especially what will be written by students related to things or
topics that are very specific or are not familiar to students. There are
several kinds of topics that are often used by teachers to ask students to
write such as topics about environment and culture. Another topic that is still
rarely given to students is about entrepreneurship. This will be a difficulty
and a challenge for students to be able to generate their ideas through
writing. Fu-Lan (2006)
reveals that the learners' failure to write happens within two common scenarios
that are often made by the teachers. First is concerned with telling the
learners to write about the specific topic which is not familiar, and second is
concerned with the assumption that writing has something to do with the acts of
translating. When this happens, the learners will find difficulties to entail
the ideas as the basic component for starting to write.
Thus, it is necessary to have a measuring tool or
assessment that is able to lead students to be able to find out the level of
creativity they have to support their own writing. The assessment needed is
called a self-assessment. Self-assessment is an assessment used to conduct a
self-evaluation of what has been done in improving or increasing academic
achievement or student learning outcomes (Werner & Bleich, 2017). This assessment
is indeed made or created by the teacher to determine the awareness of students
in improving or increasing their competence (Poerwanti, 2015). This assessment
serves as a tool to reflect and build an autonomous learning environment or
atmosphere for students (Noels et al., 2000). Students can get
information related to what is happening to themselves in order to provide a
bridge for reflection. Reflection is very important to find out all forms of
mistakes and shortcomings that are owned by the students so that it makes it
easier to make improvements.
Thus, efforts to improve writing skills
can be done by providing self-assessment to students as a bridge of reflection
that they can do when looking for ideas related to the development of an
entrepreneurial mindset as a very specific topic to be developed. Of course,
this is not easy and has the potential to present a variety of problems and
writing difficulties for students in learning English (Alharbi, 2019; Qonitatun, 2016; Yunhadi, 2016). Thus, this can be
a very urgent matter to be researched as an illustration of education for
sustainability (Wamsler, 2020). For this reason, the author tries to formulate
research questions as follows; (1) how are the students’ creativities in
writing essays responding to their entrepreneurship mindset?,
(2) what are the students’ opinions about the entrepreneurial mindset issue for
supporting their essay writings?
METHOD
This research used a quantitative approach within a
survey design (Creswell, 2012). The participants
of this study were 25 students majoring in English Literature, State University
of Malang (UM) and 25 students majoring in English Literature, University of
Dr. Soetomo Surabaya (Unitomo)
who were taking essay writing courses as one of the compulsory subjects that
had to be followed by students.
Table 1
Demographic Profile
|
Characteristics
|
|
C
|
%
|
|
Department
|
English
Literature
|
50
|
100
|
|
University
|
UM
|
25
|
100
|
|
Unitomo
|
25
|
100
|
|
Gender
|
Male
|
15
|
30
|
|
Female
|
35
|
70
|
|
Class
Participation
|
Active
|
50
|
100
|
|
|
inactive
|
0
|
0
|
|
Age
|
18-19
|
50
|
100
|
There were 50 students who were involved as participants
in this study. 25 students came from UM and 25 students came from Unitomo in the English Literature class of 2020. There were
35 female students and 15 male students. All of these students were actively
involved in this research through the discussion activities that were held.
The research instrument used a questionnaire and
interview. The questionnaire created had an internal consistency of Cronbach
alpha, which was 0.87, which stated that the items had a high internal
consistency. The instrument was used to collect data from 50 respondents in
this study. Meanwhile, the Cronbach alpha value showed 0.815, which meant that
this instrument was very consistent. Each item used a 5-point Likert scale, which
ranged from strongly agree (point 5) to strongly disagree (point 1) without
using negative statements.
The questionnaire given to students consisted of 2 types.
The first type of questionnaire is related to the level of creativity shown by
students in generating ideas to support their essay writing. The contents of
this questionnaire are taken from the creativity assessment rubric designed by (Greenstein, 2012)
as shown in table 2 below.
The diagram above shows
that students encountered 5 various elements to become obstacles for them in
building an entrepreneurial mindset within their minds. First, 45% of the most
obstacles derived from their desire to have other plans related to the
background or knowledge they had. Second, 25% were obstacles that came from
parents. In this case, permission from their parents became a significant
obstacle for them to become an entrepreneur in the future. When their parents
did not allow them to carry out entrepreneurial activities, they also did not
have the power to refuse so they had to cancel their dream of becoming
entrepreneurs. Third, 15% of students' inhibition in doing entrepreneurial
activities was caused by a lack of skills in running a business. This could be
seen in the type of background or knowledge they have that was not to
entrepreneurship so that they did not make a good contribution to becoming
entrepreneurs in the future. Fourth, the next 10% of obstacles derived from
their lack of experience in conducting entrepreneurial activities. This was due
to the limited time for them to carry out entrepreneurial activities. Keep in
mind that they were still students whose main duties and obligations were to
study, not to work or let alone do business (Butz et al., 2018). Fifth, the last
5% of obstacles were caused by not having social relations related to the
business world. This caused them to have no information related to who can be
invited to work together in business.
C. Discussion
Creativity in writing
should be a major concern for teachers today. In addition to prevent
plagiarism, creativity is the backbone of students in finding and developing
their new ideas to support the construction of essays. Therefore, teachers must
emphasize students' creativity in writing by looking at aspects consisting of
curiosity, flexibility, and also originality or originality. Curiosity and
flexibility lead to efforts to generate novelty ideas (Cheung et al., 2001). Meanwhile,
originality leads to efforts to display certain specificities or
characteristics that deserve to be maintained (Kettler & Bower, 2017).
The findings of this
study indicated that the level of curiosity, flexibility, and also the
originality of ideas found and developed by students in supporting their essay
writing were still low. This shows that writing skills are still a scourge for
students because of the various difficulties that exist (Sukmawan & Setyowati, 2017)
(Toba & Noor, 2019). In this case,
students need good abilities to understand many things such as the ability to
find and develop ideas and ensure the authenticity of these ideas. In short,
the results of this study were in line with what was found by Yunhadi (2016)
which revealed that students were unable to compose good and coherent
paragraphs. The results of Qonitatun (2016)
also found the same things related to students' difficulties in writing essays.
Another uniqueness that
appeared in the results of this study was related to the obstacles faced by
students to build an entrepreneurial mindset through the writing skills they
did. The difficulties they felt in writing were influenced by their reluctance
to enter the world of business or entrepreneurship. Of course, this was driven
by supporting factors such as the influence of the family environment (Qonitatun, 2016; Wang et al., 2018), unsupportive
personal character (Butz et al., 2018; Murugesan & Jayavelu, 2017), and also lack of
self-confidence (Farrukh et al., 2017; Nowiński et al., 2019)
CONCLUSION
The lack of awareness among
students in building an entrepreneurial mindset is still a big challenge for
teachers today. The various obstacles that exist which include having an unsupportive
background or knowledge, permission from parents, lack of business skills, lack
of experience, and lack of access to associate with business people in a social
environment really have a significant influence on building efforts about
entrepreneurial thinking for students. The teachers are expected to be able to
make students aware of the increasingly narrow availability of job vacancies.
Thus, students are required to prepare alternative actions as an effort to
avoid themselves from the difficulty of finding a job and becoming unemployed
after graduating from school or college later in the future. Of course, the
solution is to engage in entrepreneurial activities that will provide access to
good income and well-being.
Entrepreneurial mindset can also
be an interesting topic for students to produce their written work. In learning
English, writing skills are also a barometer of student success. This is
because the ultimate goal in learning English is to have the ability to
communicate and interact both orally and in writing. Therefore, writing skills
should be a major concern for teachers and students. However, writing skills
need to be built with the creativity attached to students. Of course, this can
be seen from the aspect of creativity itself which consists of curiosity,
flexibility, and originality. The topic of entrepreneurship will be an access
to give birth to students' creativity in producing writings that are useful for
the community.
REFERENCES
Acs, Z., Szerb, L., & Autio, E. (2017). The global
entrepreneurship index. In Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index
2016 (pp. 19–38). Springer. Google Scholar
Alharbi, M. A. (2019). Saudi Arabia EFL university students’
voice on challenges and solution in learning academic writing. Indonesian
Journal of Applied Linguistics, 8(3), 576–587. Google Scholar
Barbot, B., Besançon, M., & I Lubart, T. (2011).
Assessing creativity in the classroom. The Open Education Journal, 4(1).
Google Scholar
Butz, N. T., Hanson, S., Schultz, P. L., & Warzynski, M.
M. (2018). Beyond the Big Five: does grit influence the entrepreneurial intent
of university students in the US? Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research,
8(1), 1–16. Google Scholar
Cheung, W. M., Tse, S. K., & Tsang, W. H. H. (2001).
Development and validation of the Chinese creative writing scale for primary
school students in Hong Kong. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 35(4),
249–260. Google Scholar
Creswell, J. W. (2012). Educational research: Planning
conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (4th ad.).
Boston, MA. Google Scholar
Cropley, A. (2014). Neglect of creativity in education: A
moral issue. In The ethics of creativity (pp. 250–264). Springer. Google Scholar
Farrukh, M., Khan, A. A., Khan, M. S., Ramzani, S. R., &
Soladoye, B. S. A. (2017). Entrepreneurial intentions: the role of family
factors, personality traits and self-efficacy. World Journal of
Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, 13(4),
303–317. Google Scholar
Ferreira, M. P., Reis, N. R., & Miranda, R. (2015).
Thirty years of entrepreneurship research published in top journals: analysis
of citations, co-citations and themes. Journal of Global Entrepreneurship
Research, 5(1), 1–22. Google Scholar
Fu-Lan, L. (2006). Using Computer-mediated-communication to
Overcome the Anxiety in ESL Writing. US-China Foreign Language, 4(11),
97–101. Google Scholar
Greenstein, L. M. (2012). Assessing 21st century skills: A
guide to evaluating mastery and authentic learning. Corwin Press. Google Scholar
Harmer, J. (2004). Hou to Teach Writing. England: Pearson
Education Limited. Google Scholar
Hasan, M. K., & Akhand, M. M. (2010). Approaches to
writing in EFL/ESL context: Balancing product and process in writing class at
tertiary level. Journal of NELTA, 15(1–2), 77–88. Google Scholar
Hedge, T. (2005). Writing. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar
Johns, A. M. (1991). Ll composition theories: Implications
for developing theories of L2 composition. The Pitt Building, Trumpington
Street, Cambridge CB2 1 RP, 25. Google Scholar
Kettler, T., & Bower, J. (2017). Measuring creative
capacity in gifted students: Comparing teacher ratings and student products. Gifted
Child Quarterly, 61(4), 290–299. Google Scholar
Kristová, K., & Malach, J. (2017). The impact of school
education and family environment on pupils’ entrepreneurial spirit and attitude
to entrepreneurship. The New Educational Review, 49, 101–114. Google Scholar
Kroll, B. (1990). Second language writing (Vol. 10).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar
Krueger Jr, N. F., & Brazeal, D. V. (2018). Entrepreneurial
Potential and Potential Entrepreneurs. REGEPE-Revista de Empreendedorismo e
Gestão de Pequenas Empresas. Google Scholar
Mathias, B. D., Williams, D. W., & Smith, A. R. (2015).
Entrepreneurial inception: The role of imprinting in entrepreneurial action. Journal
of Business Venturing, 30(1), 11–28. Elsevier
Murugesan, R., & Jayavelu, R. (2017). The influence of
big five personality traits and self-efficacy on entrepreneurial intention: The
role of gender. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging
Economies, 3(1), 41–61. Google Scholar
Noels, K. A., Pelletier, L. G., Clément, R., & Vallerand,
R. J. (2000). Why are you learning a second language? Motivational orientations
and self‐determination theory. Language Learning, 50(1), 57–85. Google Scholar
Nowiński, W., Haddoud, M. Y., Lančarič, D., Egerová, D.,
& Czeglédi, C. (2019). The impact of entrepreneurship education,
entrepreneurial self-efficacy and gender on entrepreneurial intentions of
university students in the Visegrad countries. Studies in Higher Education,
44(2), 361–379. Google Scholar
Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A., & Dow, G. T. (2004). Why
isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials,
pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational
Psychologist, 39(2), 83–96. Google Scholar
Poerwanti, E. (2015). Konsep dasar asesmen pembelajaran. PT.
Remaja Rosdakarya. Google Scholar
Qonitatun, Q. (2016). The Quality of Essay Writing of Indonesian
EFL Learners. ASIAN TEFL Journal of Language Teaching and Applied
Linguistics, 1(1). Google Scholar
Sukmawan, S., & Setyowati, L. (2017). Environmental
messages as found in Indonesian folklore and its relation to foreign language
classroom. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume, 8. Google Scholar
Toba, R., & Noor, W. N. (2019). The current issues of
Indonesian EFL students’ writing skills: Ability, problem, and reason in
writing comparison and contrast essay. Dinamika Ilmu, 57–73. Google Scholar
Wamsler, C. (2020). Education for sustainability: Fostering a
more conscious society and transformation towards sustainability. International
Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 21(1), 112–130. Google Scholar
Wang, D., Wang, L., & Chen, L. (2018). Unlocking the
influence of family business exposure on entrepreneurial intentions. International
Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 14(4), 951–974. Google Scholar
Wardana, L. W., Narmaditya, B. S., Wibowo, A., Mahendra, A.
M., Wibowo, N. A., Harwida, G., & Rohman, A. N. (2020). The impact of
entrepreneurship education and students’ entrepreneurial mindset: the mediating
role of attitude and self-efficacy. Heliyon, 6(9), e04922. Elsevier
Werner, S. H., & Bleich, M. R. (2017). Critical thinking
as a leadership attribute. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing,
48(1), 9–11. Google Scholar
Wiklund, J., Nikolaev, B., Shir, N., Foo, M.-D., &
Bradley, S. (2019). Entrepreneurship and well-being: Past, present, and future.
Journal of Business Venturing, 34(4), 579–588. Elsevier
Yunhadi, W. (2016). The structural parts of paragraph writing
by Indonesian EFL learners. IJEFL, 1(1), 33–43. Google Scholar
