NEEDS ANALYSIS OF INDONESIAN FRESHMEN’S WRITING AT UNIVERSITY OF INDONESIA: PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Indonesian university students have limited background knowledge about writing in English. They do not have enough exposure to writing when they are in high school, since the focus in the high school curriculum is on the rerceptive skills – listening and reading. Writing is limited to producing loose sentences, while the skill to develop ideas is not developed. These limitations hamper their writing skills in higher education and cause problems when they study English for Academic Purposes at the university. This study focuses on the inadequate writing skills of freshmen at the University of Indonesia and what should ideally be done to address the issues. In an attempt to analyze what students need to develop ideas as well as writing skills, an analysis toward their writing has been done. To further find information about their writing background, a sixteen-item questionnaire was completed by 50 students at the University of Indonesia. The study concludes that students need to be facilitated more to write since they are in high school