STRENGTHENING TERTIARY STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILLS THROUGH T.R.E.N.D. APPROACH PRELIMINARY STUDY

Abstract

Writing has been subjected as a burden for the students taking Proficiency English subjects during their first two semesters studying in the university. For these students, writing a composition has been a task they would prefer not to do. As many of them are not sure how to first generate and organise their ideas, how to express themselves fluently or to be able to write grammatical correct sentences have become a problem to the English lecturers teaching the subjects. Realising the importance of writing skills among undergraduates in the
tertiary education, a preliminary study was carried out on 50 undergraduates who attended a day Malaysian University English Test (MUET) seminar to examine students’ writing ability through T.R.E.N.D. approach. The findings had shown significant improvement in learners’ writing in term of coherency and development of ideas. As a whole, the use of T.R.E.N.D. approach had helped to improve students’ writing ability in terms of not only language proficiency, but also their level of confidence.