Issues Faced By Students from Minority Ethnic Groups to Discover Their Vocabulary Proficiency in Writing

Abstract

This research sets out to discover the issues faced by students from minority ethnic groups in writing classes. This research based on the premiss of qualitative research with thick description, questionnaire, interviews, and by employing Voyant Tools concerning about the vocabulary proficiency in writing skills of minority ethnic groups students. By employing Voyant Tools that mainly focuses on vocabulary density and average words per sentence, the researcher able to investigate the students of minority ethnic groups’ vocabulary proficiency. Next, after found out the result taken from Voyant Tools the researcher compares the result to their counterparts, the students of majority ethnic groups in the university. Afterwards, the researcher discovered the learning method in vocabulary proficiency in writing of students from minority ethnic groups before entering college, their methods to cope with issues found in vocabulary proficiency in writing. By accentuating the valued found in their learning method before college, and the way the students overcome their issues in vocabulary proficiency in writing skills during college, the researcher employed Thick Description to emphasis on the response of the students from minority ethnic groups. The response from this group of students assisted the researcher to make conception regarding the vocabulary issues in writing. The results revealed that students from minority ethnic groups were having lack of supporting sources of knowledge in their home-city and from their current host university; ironically the researcher also discovered that another hindering aspect is verbal abuse towards their ethnicity. In addition, although this research primarily focused on the issues found in writing skills among the students from minority ethnic groups, this research also emphasised on the importance social policy to ensure equality education among students regardless their ethnicity origins.