Compositions in English: Comparing the Works of Monolinguals, Passive Bilinguals, and Active Bilinguals*

Abstract: This study tries to see whether the subjects ’ “monolingualism” and “bilingualism ” (monolinguals learning an L2 and bilinguals learning an L3) influence their study on English, especially writing. The term “bilinguals ” also means “multilinguals ” in this study. Bilinguals in this paper are classified into two; first, passive bilinguals who are only exposed to another local language, besides speaking Bahasa Indonesia at home, and second, active bilinguals who are exposed to and also speak other language(s) and Bahasa Indonesia at home. The findings show that the monolingual and the active bilingual are better than the passive one; the active bilingual is better than the monolingual. However, if the passive and the active bilingual are combined, the monolingual is better than the bilinguals. Key words: writing, monolinguals, passive bilinguals, active bilinguals Bilingualism has been people’s concern since last century; this is proved by a lot of research that experts have conducted. The earlier period tends to see bilingualism as something harmful to thinking. One of the reasons that still made people question whether learning two languages were good or not was that whether learning two languages made the place for storing information full or not. Recent research shows almost no case that bilingualism brings bad effect to thinking. However, further research still needs to be conducted with lots of revision coping with the limitations of previous research so that conclusions taken from the research really dea