Enhancing Academic Writing Skills through Mastery of Effective Sentences and Diction: An Exploratory Intervention Study on Students of Universitas Islam Bandung Asri Nuranisa Dewi- Irma Yulita Silviany
Universitas Islam Bandung
Abstract
This study investigates the impact of mastering effective sentence construction and diction on the academic writing skills of undergraduate students at Universitas Islam Bandung. The research involved 120 first-year students from the Management Study Program who were enrolled in an Indonesian language course. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining a pretest-posttest experimental design with an exploratory case study to capture both quantitative and qualitative insights. The instructional intervention was delivered contextually through group discussions, text analysis, and structured writing exercises aimed at improving students^ ability to produce clear, coherent, and academically appropriate texts. The quantitative results demonstrated a significant improvement in students^ performance, with the average score increasing from 56.28 on the pretest to 81.64 on the posttest. A paired sample t-test confirmed the statistical significance of this gain (t = 21.67, p < 0.0001), indicating that the mastery of fundamental linguistic elements substantially contributes to the enhancement of academic writing skills. Qualitative findings further revealed that students developed greater awareness of sentence effectiveness and lexical precision, which improved their overall confidence in academic writing. The study highlights the importance of integrating explicit and contextual instruction on effective sentence construction and diction into Indonesian language courses at the tertiary level. Specifically, it emphasizes the need for curriculum adjustments at Universitas Islam Bandung to better equip students with essential writing competencies required for producing high-quality academic texts.
Keywords: effective sentences, diction, academic writing, language instruction, Universitas Islam Bandung
