Using PTWS Approach to Improve Secondary School Students’ Essay Writing Skills

This study addressed writing problems among Malaysian Form 3 school students. This is because second language writing has always presented serious difficulties for language learners. Furthermore, writing is one of the main skills tested in Malaysian English syllabus. In order to solve this problem, a student-centred approach, ‘Pair-Think-Write-Share (PTWS)’ was invented. It is a technique that encourages students to learn writing through working with their friends. It consists of three stages of essay writing: writing together, peer editing and peer reviewing. The study was carried out on a group of Form 3 students in one of the secondary schools in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. In order to triangulate the data, it was collected through analysis of past documents, a set of pre-test and post-test, questionnaires and semi-structured interview. The paired T-Test conducted in this study showed that students had improved significantly in the post-test compared to the pre-test. Students also showed favourable responses towards the use of Pair-Think-Write-Share (PTWS) in the questionnaire and interview conducted. Thus, Pair-Think-Write-Share (PTWS) approach is suitable for teaching writing as it involves students to write together through activities such as brainstorming, discussion, peer editing and peer reviewing. It is recommended that future research should include the use of PTWS technique with other age group of language learners as well.