Abstract
The study investigated L2 learners’ self-evaluation of their writing skill, having completed an Intensive English Program (IEP), which was offered by a private university in Malaysia. The focus was on three different aspects of the students’ writing skill, including lexicon, morphology and syntax. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. The data were collected through interviews and a questionnaire. To find out their areas of L2 writing difficulty a group of undergraduate international students (n = 30) in a private university in Malaysia responded to the questionnaire while 4 students were interviewed. The qualitative results indicated that the majority of the students perceived themselves as able to produce correct sentence structures in English language. Overall, the qualitative results illustrated the challenges faced by these students regarding L2 writing skill after completing the course. Additionally, based on the quantitative results, on average the students were at a moderate level regarding the three aspects of their L2 writing skill. Further in-depth research is required before findings of the study can be generalized. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s1p22
Highlights
A huge body of literature is available on English as a Second Language (L2) courses
The Intensive English Program (IEP) that is the focus of the present study is a short course designed to prepare L2 learners who intend to improve their level of English language proficiency before they pursue the tertiary level
The current study was conducted to explore the areas of difficulty these students have in L2 writing after completing the program as well as investigating the students’ self-evaluation of their writing ability
Summary
A huge body of literature is available on English as a Second Language (L2) courses. Recently, intensive English programs have attracted the interest of researchers who aim at investigating the effectiveness of these courses. The Intensive English Program (IEP) that is the focus of the present study is a short course designed to prepare L2 learners who intend to improve their level of English language proficiency before they pursue the tertiary level. This program is divided into three levels which can be completed over an academic year. The learners are international and come from a variety of countries They are not required to go through the course if they obtain an overall score of 520 in TOEFL or a band 5 in IELTS. No previous study is available on the students’ evaluation of their own L2 writing ability after completing the program.
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