The Portrait on Undergraduate Students’ Problems in Paragraph Development

Abstract

From time to time, many researchers have been paying attention to carry out the studies on writing skill in different aspects. This paper looks at the students problems in paragraph development. The participants in this study were twenty six English Education-students at State University of Malang which have been attending Paragraph Writing course. The researcher used two instruments to collect the data. The result showed that there are several problems found by undergraduate students in writing a paragraph. The problems are classified into three aspects; mechanic that consists of four components (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviation), grammar that consists of nine components (tense, subject agreement, regular and irregular verbs, regular and irregular nouns, article, to be, conjunction, reported speech, parallel list),  and organization that consists of three components (topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence). The recommendation given was based on the research finding.