The Correlation between the writing ability and self-esteem of BP2IP Surabaya students.

Students of BP2IP Surabaya are the candidates of deck or engine officers who will be on duty on board ship and will encounter many tasks which require English communication skills such as speaking and writing. In order to facilitate those skills, Maritime English has been taught to the students and writing in English also has been one of the requirements to pass the seafaring courses on BP2IP Surabaya. Thus, according to the students, writing is an essential skill to be improved. Recently the issue of self-esteem widely investigated and found correlated with the improvement of writing ability among students. Based on that, this study was conducted. The present study is an attempt to investigate the correlation between EFL writing ability and self-esteem of BP2IP Surabaya students. The data were collected using two instruments; Test of English Writing and Questionnaire of Self- esteem which covers three sections of questionnaire; global self-esteem, situational self-esteem and task self-esteem. The instruments were distributed to 107 students of BP2IP Surabaya who were adolescents and high school graduates. The first instrument administered was the Test of English Writing and the second was the three sections of Questionnaire of Self-esteem. Subsequently, the data were analyzed using Pearson Product Moment. The result revealed the highest number of students were in good to average writing ability level, the second highest number of students lied in fair writing ability level and the third in poor writing ability level, meanwhile the lowest number of students were in very poor writing ability level and the second lowest were in excellent to very good writing ability level. It was found that in general the students' writing ability level was fair which is generally experience great difficulty while they are writing in EFL, they are also not yet feasible to compete with the native writers. Concerning the self-esteem level of BP2IP Surabaya students, the level of global self-esteem, situational self-esteem and task self-esteem were all in moderate level. The correlation between overall self-esteem and writing ability of BP2IP Surabaya students was shown significantly positive. The highest level of correlation appeared between situational self-esteem and writing ability, meanwhile the lowest level of correlation appeared between global self-esteem and writing ability. Consequently, it can be concluded that the effort of building student’s self- esteem will lead to the improvement of their writing ability. A preparatory course is needed to improve the writing ability as well as the other skills in English. It was recommended for the EFL teachers to facilitate a healthy learning environment within the semi-military circumstance by supporting a non-threatening interaction between teacher and students or among students