Students’ Processes of Gathering Information for Writing Report Texts at Darul Falah Sei Kamah II Private Islamic Senior High School

Abstract

Information gathering is an essential component of academic writing because students need to identify, evaluate, and synthesize relevant information before constructing a coherent report text. Nevertheless, students learning English as a Foreign Language often encounter difficulties in managing information systematically during the writing process. This study investigates how eleventh-grade students at Darul Falah Sei Kamah II Private Islamic Senior High School gather information for writing report texts using the Big6 Model as a diagnostic framework. Employing a qualitative case study design, the study collected data through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and analysis of students’ written texts and analyzed them using Miles and Huberman’s data reduction procedures. The findings reveal procedural weaknesses across several stages of the Big6 Model: students frequently bypassed task definition, relied on limited information sources, and encountered linguistic barriers when selecting and processing relevant information. These difficulties resulted in report texts that lacked systematic organization, coherence, and adequate information development. The study concludes that weaknesses in information-gathering processes directly influence the quality of students’ report writing, highlighting the need to integrate information literacy instruction into English as a Foreign Language writing pedagogy.