SOURCE-BASED NEWS WRITING AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS: STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE AND CHALLENGES

ABSTRACT: students’ interest in writing must be increased, especially writing based on sources. Therefore,this study would like to find students’ perspectives and perceived challenges in writing based on sources. Thisresearch was based on a case study. The research involved 68 students from one of the Universityy of PGRISemarang, and it analyzed 20 selected news writing papers written by students. The instruments for datacollection included questionnaire and observation. The results of this study found that 59% of studentsperceived that writing news writing papers is very difficult. The students found it difficult to find suitablesources for writing material and develop their ideas. They tended to use articles as the sources from the internetwhose originality is unclear. One reason this happens was because 80% of students did not know where to findor get indexed journals to use as references for their writing. In addition, many students also preferred not to usejournals that were majorly English-based because of their limitation of English skills. The implication is thatstudents should be given further understanding of how to access journals and use reference sources in writing. Itis expected that every lecturer will give more source-based news writing assignments so that the ability ofstudents to write and develop ideas based on existing sources can be further improved.

KEYWORDS: source-based news writing, teaching writing, writing