A study of oral communication and writing comprehension among UiTM students in Pahang / Hamizah Aminudin, Athira Ilyanni Mohamed Rawi and Nadirah Liyana Hamzah

English has been used as a medium in learning process and consultation between students and their lecturers in UiTM indicating the advancement and development of learning of UiTM students. However, it does not mean that UiTM students were excellent in using English language to communicate. This study was designed to identify oral communication and writing comprehension in English among UiTM Pahang students. The respondents were the students from three programs which were Diploma in Office Management and Technology Program (OM114), Diploma in Business Management Program (BM111), and Diploma in Banking Management Program (BM112). This study was a descriptive study that concentrated on two dimensions of English competency which were oral communication and writing comprehension. On oral communication, it focused on the students' feeling when talking in public and when dealing with others while in writing comprehension it focused on how the students convey ideas through writing and their confident levels on writing in English. Based on the analyzed results of the findings, it showed that when talking in public most students tend to forget the facts while giving speech. Students also felt tension while giving speech in public. When dealing with others, students liked to join group discussion and felt calm when joining discussion in group, felt relax when involved in group discussion with new members and liked to give opinion in group discussion. Based on the confident level in writing, students thought that they were more excellent in writing class than oral class. They also found out that writing in English was enjoyable, and they liked their English work being evaluated. When expressing ideas through writing, students felt happy to send their written work to lecturer to be evaluated and discussing English writing with other is an enjoyable experience to them. Several recommendations have been suggested to improve the students' English language. There were several party involves such as top management, academic staff and faculty/unit. The researchers recommended that this parties should concern on communicating in English when dealing with the students, proposed English Day, events and extra classes for the students. Further research on the actual academic English language on oral communication and writing skill and more in depth research through various methods such as experimental or relationship studies should be conducted in order to get a more accurate or reliable results about the English competency among universities students.