Selfie: Engaging Life Experiences into Writing

English language writing has always been a problem for second language learners to master. Developing learners’ ability in writing is one of the major problems faced by educators in tertiary education. The learners will only use English language when they are asked to and only when the opportunity arises during classroom lessons. Generating ideas for writing has always been a major difficulty faced by learners in English language learning. This had led to many studies by researchers in suggesting ways in helping learners to write in English language. This study was carried out to examine the effectiveness of selfie photo in generating ideas for narrative writing among 40 undergraduate students undertaking an English proficiency course at a local university in Malaysia. The findings had shown significant improvement in learners’ writing in term of ideas coherency and text length. It was observed that the learners had had the ability to come up with more number of words in writing when narrating self-experiences related to the captured selfie photo compared to normal classroom writing. As a whole, the use of selfie photo had improved learners’ writing ability in terms of not only language proficiency, but also their level of confidence and classroom participation.