Essay Writing and Its Problems: A Study of ESL Students at Secondary Level (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
The aim of this empirical study is to explore O level English language teachers' perceptions regarding teaching practices and methods used in teaching English essay writing. The population of study comprised O Level English language teachers (N=131) schools of Karachi. Through simple random sampling technique, data were collected from (n=58) participant schools which forms approximately 44% of the targeted population. Total sample size was n=73 (n=22 male and n=51 female) teachers. To carry out the cross sectional survey of the chosen sample, two instruments i.e., Factors Affecting English Essay Writing for Teachers (FAEWT) and teachers' structured interviews were developed to collect the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Data were tabulated, calculated, analyzed, and interpreted through SPSS Version 20, in the light of objectives of the study, and the research hypotheses. Central tendency i.e. mean and measures of dispersions i.e. Standard Deviation and t-test were used for testing hypotheses. Results revealed that students were lacking in understanding the principles of English grammar, difficulty in word spelling and use of punctuation marks in writing essays. On the basis of these findings, it is recommended that Cambridge-affiliated schools' management should provide Cambridge professional development training to teachers continually and also provide well-furnished library, language laboratory and classrooms so that teachers can provide quality input to develop students' written discourse. This study plays an important role in contributing to researchers, policy makers, curriculum developers, teachers and students to enhance students' skills of writing an essay with no errors and coherently.
Teachers' Perceptions Regarding the Factors Affecting English Essay Writing of O Level Students
The aim of this empirical study is to explore O level English language teachers' perceptions regarding teaching practices and methods used in teaching English essay writing. The population of study comprised O Level English language teachers (N=131) schools of Karachi. Through simple random sampling technique, data were collected from (n=58) participant schools which forms approximately 44% of the targeted population. Total sample size was n=73 (n=22 male and n=51 female) teachers. To carry out the cross sectional survey of the chosen sample, two instruments i.e., Factors Affecting English Essay Writing for Teachers (FAEWT) and teachers' structured interviews were developed to collect the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Data were tabulated, calculated, analyzed, and interpreted through SPSS Version 20, in the light of objectives of the study, and the research hypotheses. Central tendency i.e. mean and measures of dispersions i.e. Standard Deviation and t-test were used for testing hypotheses. Results revealed that students were lacking in understanding the principles of English grammar, difficulty in word spelling and use of punctuation marks in writing essays. On the basis of these findings, it is recommended that Cambridge-affiliated schools' management should provide Cambridge professional development training to teachers continually and also provide well-furnished library, language laboratory and classrooms so that teachers can provide quality input to develop students' written discourse. This study plays an important role in contributing to researchers, policy makers, curriculum developers, teachers and students to enhance students' skills of writing an essay with no errors and coherently.
EFL Students' Difficulties and Needs in Essay Writing
Proceedings of the International Conference on Teacher Training and Education 2017 (ICTTE 2017), 2017
Having observed the writing class and EFL students" essays in previous semester, the researchers found that their essay were in poor quality. This situation portrays the fact that writing is a complex skill to learn in English language acquisition. This study is aimed to investigate the difficulties faced by EFL students in essay writing as well as exploring their learning needs to have better quality of English composition. Examining essays and administering open-ended questionnaires were done to 33 students of English Department at Widya Gama Mahakam University, Indonesia, to find students" difficulties in broad-spectrum. In addition, semi-structured interview to the writing lecturer was also conducted to dig his perception related to challenging matters about teaching essay writing. The findings showed that students have major difficulties in grammatical, cohesion and coherence terms. Moreover, minor aspects also had been revealed regarding to students" writing, namely paragraph organization, dictions, and vocabulary misspelling. Considering its complexity in accomplishing essay writing task, the students expected more intense guidance from the lecturer, such as continuous consultation regarding to the lecturer"s feedback in their essay draft. The interview result confirmed this issue. The lecturer admitted that limited time and big number of students in one class became his great barriers to improve the quality of the students" essay. These facts drive new challenges for the writing lecturer in two ways; 1) the lecturer should guide students properly by using step-by-step procedures so that the students feel comfortable in writing the essay, and 2) explicit explanation related to the revision given is needed. It is important to note that this issue demands a new and effective teaching essay writing strategy to achieve fruitful outcomes of teaching and learning process especially in essay writing context.
VEDA PUBLICATIONS, 2023
This study talks about the importance of learning better writing skills and the challenges faced by English students at Samtah College, Jizan University. It discusses the main reasons behind the problems and gives a few remedies to the students, if they want to write in English successfully and want to promote their communicative competence. Writing is one of the very important communicative skills, there is no doubt that it is a very complex process. The difficulties faced by the students in mastering this skill are discussed in this article. If students are not able to write well it could lead to a major drawback in their performance in college as well as in their career after completing their education. They have to learn the art of error-free writing to excel at academic and professional levels. This study is learner-centered in which the problems faced by students, the reasons behind them, and their solutions are discussed. Writing is not just a talent that is the exclusive domain of those good at English. It is a skill, which can be taught, practised, and mastered like any other skill.
An Analysis of Difficulties in Writing Essay at Second Grade of Education College of Stkip
2018
Writing as one of the four skills in English has an important role for undergraduate students. This is because writing is productive skill which can build and rebuild the student’s motivation in mastering language. Writing is a basic skill for students, because it can improve students’ abilities in mastering language. In the process, writing skills has so many problems and solutions to enrich student’s capabilities. According to Harmer (2007), “writing is used as practice tool to help students practice and work with language they have been studying”. For example, ask a class to write five sentences using a given structure, or using five of the new words or phrases they have been learning. Writing activities like this are designed to give reinforcement to students. Another kind of writing for learning to occur is when we have students write sentences in preparation for some other activities. Brown (2001) claims that writing is a way of life, it means that in order to succeed in a cou...
INVESTIGATING THE PROBLEMS FACED BY THE TEACHERS IN DEVELOPING ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS
Teaching English writing skills involves developing linguistic and communicative competence of the learner which is quite a challenging task. Many factors hinder the process of teaching and learning these skills. Most of the students of public sector institutes do not perform well in English writing tasks and ultimately face average or poor results in academics. The purpose of this study is to highlight the problems which hinder the teachers in developing English writing skills. Government sector institutes of district Sargodha are the focus of this study. These institutes contain students from both rural and urban areas. The Population of this study comprises 9 English language teachers. The data has been collected through the tool of structured interviews. The collected data has been analyzed descriptively. This study is not only to point out the problematic factors but also suggest some remedial measures to improve the situation. The research findings and suggestions would facilitate the teachers and the concerning authorities to improve the ELT situation in public sector institutes.
ESL Learners' Writing Skills: Problems, Factors and Suggestions
Writing is an important skill for language production. However, it is considered a difficult skill, particularly in English as a second language (ESL) contexts where students face many challenges in writing. Therefore, the present study was conducted with an aim to investigate problems in Pakistani undergraduate ESL learners' writing and factors that hinder their writing skills. It also aimed at obtaining suggestions on how to improve Pakistani ESL learners' writing skills. For this purpose, focus groups of Pakistani English language teachers'and undergraduate ESL learners were conducted. Writing samples were also collected from 30 ESL undergraduate learners to find the major problems in their writing. The interviews and essays were analyzed using thematic content analysis. The findings reveal that the major problems in Pakistani undergraduate ESL learners' writing are insufficient linguistic proficiency (including command over grammar, syntax and vocabulary), writing anxiety, lack of ideas, reliance on L1 and weak structure organization. These challenges are influenced by various factors including untrained teachers, ineffective teaching methods and examination system, lack of reading and writing practice, large classrooms, low motivation and lack of ideas. The study also sheds light on the remedial measures such as increased reading, conscious and incidental vocabulary teaching, writing practice, trained teachers, reforms in the examination system, and writing competitions.
Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review, 2023
This study is an in-depth effort to investigate issues and contributing factors usually faced by Pakistani ESL learners in learning writing skills. Learning English language writing has always been a daunting task for second language students to master, especially in high schools as the nature and amount of written work in English increases at this level. Not only that, but Pakistani ESL high school teachers also do face many challenges in teaching writing skills. The study investigates problems and issues faced by public high school students in learning writing skills along with the strategies teachers can use to cater the problems. This study identifies problems faced by students and offers suggestions for improvement. The challenges, issues, contributing factors, and suggested solutions are based on the personal reflections of the researchers. The researchers have a great deal of experience of teaching English at public high schools in Pakistan. Its findings not only reveal the problematic factors but also suggest some practical solutions. The findings and recommendations may help ESL teachers reflect on their teaching practices and assist them in supporting their efforts to help students improve their writing skills.