Thai students’ Efforts in Improving Writing Skill at English Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta

Abstract

This paper aims at describing the efforts of Thai students in improving their writing skills. The objective of the study is to describe ways of Thai Students to improve their writing skills in English Department of Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta. Many Thai students come to Indonesia without strong English knowledge and skills because almost all of them cannot communicate in English. However, some of them entered English department in Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta and then all of them had a difficulty to adjust for a new environment and faced cultural problems in Java, Indonesia.This study is a descriptive qualitative study which employed interviews and Questionnaires as techniques of collecting data. The data in this research are analyzed by data reduction, data display, and drawing conclusion Miles and Huberman (1994). Based on analysis, it is found that the efforts of improving writing skills in class by Thai students include doing rehearsal and a lot of practice to improve their writing, asking peers and lecturers and learning from social media.