The Students’ Perceptions of the Strategies in the Process Approach

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to examine the students’ perceptions of the strategies in the
Process Approach. The subjects were 30 English Department students of Riau University taught
using Process Approach. A set of questionnaire and semi-structured interview were used to collect
the data. The level of perceptions was differentiated into three: Highly Positive, Positive and
Negative. The results showed that all students had Positive and Highly Positive level of perception
and no students had Negative perception of the strategies in the Process Approach. From the results
of the interview, five categories were found. All of them reported positive opinions on the Process
Approach and considered the editing and revising strategies as most useful. Besides, they stated
that the steps in Process Approach were more systematic, specific, comfortable, more meaningful
and livelier than other approaches. They all perceived that their writing performance had improved
after the Process Approach intervention. The area of improvements were in collecting ideas,
editing strategy, choice of words and the way how to write an essay. They also suggested on the
application of the Process Approach for other writing classes. The findings from the interviews
were in line with the findings from the questionnaire which revealed that students had favorable
perceptions of the Process Approach. In light of these findings, it can be suggested that the Process
Approach has the potential to be used as alternative instructional tools to improve students’ writing
performance.