Preparing Intensive English Course Participants with Limited English Language Proficiency to Qualify for Writing IELTS Test: The Writing Module Sample

Presented in TEFLIN Conference 2013IELTS Preparatory English Language Course for lecturers of universities in the eastern part of Indonesia was conducted at Hasanuddin University in 2011. I was involved as one of the instructors responsible for Writing Module. 25 lecturers with disparate level of English attended my class. Most of them, however, were identified at the beginning of the course as ???weak???, i.e. having limited English Language Proficiency. The course lasted 3 months, with the intensity of 6 contact hours a week, was intended to improve the participants??? English Language Proficiency to qualify for Writing IELTS Writing module. The ultimate aim was for them to score 6.5 in the IELTS Writing Test. \ud This study aims to report the progress the participants made during the course in learning how to write academic text and the challenges I faced throughout the course in helping the participants learn how to write academic text. Samples of their writing texts in the first half of the course will be presented to illustrate their disparate level of proficiency. Conversely, samples of their writing texts towards the end of the course will be presented to illustrate the development stage of their learning. Approximately 20% of them successfully achieved the target score, more than half of this number was those who were identified at the beginning of the course as ???strong??? participant