UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' PERSPECTIVES ON DIFFICULTIES IN PARAGRAPH WRITING AND THEIR STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME THE DIFFICULTIES

Abstract

This paper describes the result of student self-reflection on their writing ability and the strategies used to overcome the difficulties in paragraph writing in their academic writing class. The data was collected through a self-reflection written by the participants. The students were guided to reflect on their learning experience in two aspects: their views on their writing ability and the strategies used to overcome the difficulties in paragraph writing in the classroom. Twenty-one 4th semester students of the English literature program from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Mahasaraswati Denpasar University, were chosen as the participants for this study through a purposive sampling method. This method was suitable because these students have gone through the same learning experience with a similar context, which provided enough data for the study. The result of their self- reflection was analyzed using a qualitative approach. The findings indicate that more than half of the participants perceived grammar as their most common problem when writing paragraphs. Second to that, half of the participants stated vocabulary and small number of students stated figurative language. In terms of the strategies used, the majority of participants stated that read more literature was the best option, followed by taking notes, and the third was paraphrasing.