Writing Problems among the Tertiary Level Students in Bangladesh: A Study in Chittagong Region (original) (raw)
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North South University, 2020
This paper aims to conduct a secondary research on the problems of developing writing skills at the tertiary level of Bangladesh. Writing is an advance language skill. It has great significance at the tertiary level. English as a global language is the international medium of scholarship and trade. A good English writing skill gives ESL students an opportunity to use their cognitive abilities to the fullest and express their ideas effectively for a wider audience. The state of English language teaching and learning in Bangladesh is not conducive to developing the writing skills of the students. This study reviews a number of secondary empirical studies on the research topic. The secondary data is acquired from previous research works and books relevant to the topic. The analysis finds several influencing factors responsible for academic writing difficulties at the tertiary level— using vernacular in the classroom, faulty teaching method, low proficient instructors, gap between language policy and implementation, limited vocabulary, overgeneralization of Bengali grammar rules with English, weak grammatical foundation, and a lack of writing courses at the tertiary level are some of the crucial factors. The research sheds light on some of the recurrent writing errors of the students. The tertiary students of Bangladesh struggle with grammatical mistakes, punctuation errors, spellings, coherence and cohesion, paraphrasing, structural problems, and referencing or citation. On the basis of these empirical literature, the current study recommends some solutions to improve the writing skill of the students. An effective ELT curriculum for secondary and higher secondary levels in the need of the hour. Moreover, a separate academic writing course guided by efficient instructors may help improving the writing skills of the students at tertiary level.
English Writing Problems and Remedies of Bangladeshi Undergraduate Learners
2024
English writing proficiency is the most commonly used metric for assessing student performance across nearly all educational levels. In Bangladesh, university students encounter significant challenges with English composition. The study was conducted with a sample of 100 participants. These learners engaged in writing practice at various stages of collegiate preparation; however, this extended practice did not yield substantial improvements in their writing skills. Although grammatically accurate, their compositions exhibit repetition, inadequate organization, parallelism, brevity, lack of variety, imprecise language, and insufficient information, resulting in incoherent writing. This research aimed to investigate the English writing difficulties of Bangladeshi students. For this purpose, first-year students from two universities, one public and one private, were evaluated. To identify the barriers, data were collected using open-ended questionnaires and written samples. Additionally, semistructured interviews were conducted with ten instructors to reflect their perspectives on students' English writing issues. The analysis revealed that many of the students' challenges were attributable to inappropriate writing approaches. Furthermore, recommendations were formulated based on these findings. This study can assist educators and curriculum developers in addressing problems and devising strategies to enhance students' English writing proficiency.
English Language Teaching, 2020
The goal of this study is to examine difficulties in and outside the classrooms which are the real obstacles to the writability of teaching and learning in the secondary level Bangladesh system. The secondary level tests writing skills by summary, paragraph, letter, application, story, conversation, composition, report, e-mail etc. Students who study at the high school level face serious writing complexities. The major problems in the examination are the vocabulary and grammar complexities. In this study, the reasons for the complexities of writing skills were examined. This study was conducted at Jahangirnagar School & College, Savar, Dhaka to find out the strategies for writing skills. Important questions of research have been developed to identify writing skill complexities. Data were taken from teachers, students and parents based on questionnaire survey. Teachers and students were encouraged to participate actively in the survey. Following collection of data, the practical advi...
2020
English is taught as a mandatory subject in Bangladesh from primary level to higher secondary level. However, Bangladeshi undergraduate students cannot articulate their thoughts in English properly. Regardless of d iscipline, writing in English for academic purposes is still a challenging task for many undergraduate students. Particularly for EnglishMajor students, writing in English is vital and the ability to write proper English determines one’s academic success. Academic writing capabilities are often linked to the growth of linguistic ability of students, which many English Second Language learners would consider as a difficult task. The key objective of this study is to explore the numerous difficulties faced by English Major students in academic writing in the regular university graduation scheme. Specifically, this study aims at identifying the challenges encountered by English Major undergraduates at BAIUST. Data were collected via a questionnaire and circula ted to twenty six students majoring in English Literature at BAIUST. Findings from the questionnaires revealed that most of the English Major undergraduates are having some type of problem in writing English. It also shows that students are facing challenges developing ideas, defining and generating concepts, maintaining the logical order of ideas. Among all the problems, using vocabulary and proper sentences tops the list of the writing challenges accompanie d by a lack of understanding of academic writing techniques. This research recommends strategies and programs to address the issues and develop writing curricula with the focus on the creation of concepts, content knowledge, critical and creative thinking.
Journal of Research and Multidisciplinary, 2019
Students who come from non-English background and pursue study in English at tertiary level in Asia, particularly in Bangladesh face great difficulty in their academic writing classes. In order to improve learners' academic writing, teaching of academic writing in classrooms plays a vital role in English language classrooms/higher education since in most of the language courses, academic writing skill is never taught at tertiary education in Bangladesh. Considering the backdrop into consideration, this study aimed to investigate the academic writing difficulties encountered by Bangladeshi students at University Utara Malaysia (UUM). To this end, under survey design, primary data were collected by conducting survey questionnaires; 38 Bangladeshi students were selected by using non-probability purposive sampling technique. Data of this study were analysed, employing SPSS (22 version) software package. From the significance test of the first hypothesis, the study found that the influencing factors had significant impact on academic writing difficulties of Bangladeshi students at UUM. And from the second hypothesis, the current study found that the potential problems had also significant impact on academic writing difficulties of Bangladeshi students at UUM. Finally, some recommendations have been proposed to overcome academic writing difficulties of Bangladeshi student at UUM.
IJSRP, 2021
The aim of this research was to investigate students' writing problem among tertiary level students of DEML (Department of English and modern language) at NSU-One of the leading private universities in Bangladesh. A mixed method research approach was applied: qualitative and quantitative. A survey questionnaire, focus group discussion, and an interview protocol were designed for collecting data. The population of this research were tertiary level students and from where 20 students were selected as a sample of quantitative data collection and in qualitative data collection, 10 students were participated on online interview and at digital focus group discussion. The questionnaire consists of 52 survey questions, 30 interview questions, and 10 themes for group discussion. The survey questions consist of 13 type's problems with 5 alternative answers. SPSS (Statistics package for social science) was used to analyze the data. Writing problems were categorized into two main types: Mechanical problem and Rhetorical problem. Research revealed that students face 13 types of writing problems in total: 5 types writing problems in mechanical grammar and 8 types writing problems in rhetorical grammar. The overall mean of tertiary level students' writing problems was (X=3.74038) that leveled as "low problem". It was observed that university students' problems in punctuation were (X=3.4875), problems in purpose (X=3.2625), problems in audience(X= 3.225). All the four categories are leveled as 'Medium' for university students. All other problems were leveled as 'low problems'. It means students did not have too many problems in terms of using mechanical grammar and rhetorical grammar in their writing.
This study would attempt to find out the techniques used in the different schools of Bangladesh for the improvement of the students' writing skills in English (L2). In Bangladesh, most of the cases, it is seen that students fail to acquire the proficiency over writing skills. As a result, they fail to overcome the challenges of writing different things in every steps of their life properly. Again, they by studying so many years in academic levels do not have that much control over writing skills. That's why this study would investigate the issue of using teachers' techniques in the classroom to overcome the grammatical problems, vocabulary problems, spelling mistakes and some other issues regarding the writing skills. The purpose of this study have been cleared by the investigation of the data analysis and sampling. The paper would conclude by stating some scopes for the further investigation.
The Teaching of Writing Skill at the Undergraduate Level: A Case Study in Bangladeshi Pesrpective
2017
This small study investigates the ways or techniques teachers generally adopt in their writing classes at the undergraduate level in one university. Two separate questionnaires have been used to elicit information from students and teachers to know how they handle the writing tasks in the class. All the interviewees both students and teachers have been interviewed individually so that transparency and confidentiality is maintained throughout the data collection process. The research questionnaires mainly stress on the approaches of the writing skill: product approach, process approach and genre approach. The extracted information shows that students have a tendency towards product approach to writing as a skill rather than process approach. At the same time, regarding the teaching of writing, the research has brought to light a number of issues such as pre writing activities, erratic practice of giving feedback, and negligence of taking preparations including a good lesson plan, lac...
Causes for the Failure of Students in Developing Writing Skills at the HSC Level in Bangladesh
2016
This dissertation presents the actual causes of students' failure in developing writing skill at the higher secondary level. To perform this research, the researcher selected four institutions to observe classes, interviewed students and teachers and to collect sample writings. In relation to this, the researcher has analyzed HSC question paper and syllabus. The researcher discovered a contradictory picture between the statements of students and teachers and the real scenario in classrooms. Guidelines given in the textbook are hardly followed. Many teachers are still unable to come out of their traditional outlook of teaching-learning process. The researcher observed no writing tasks or activities which match Communicative Language Teaching Approach and it results in students' poor writing competence. Lack of motivation, inadequate training facility, poor socioeconomic set up and large classroomsall these deteriorate the condition further. Nevertheless, the researcher concludes this dissertation with an optimistic view regarding writing skill, provided that proper initiatives are taken by authorities concerned.
Teaching writing: An Analysis of the Writing Tasks Used at East West University in Bangladesh
2013
This paper presents an analysis of the writing tasks used at East West University in Bangladesh. At the outset, what is presented here is a general introduction to what writing means, components of writing, and the different stages that writing involves. Pointing out to the needs of teaching academic writing to university graduates, the common writing tasks required at university level are listed. After a thorough analysis of the writing tasks used at East West University, techniques devised by Raimes are suggested (1983) for task modification. Finally, a conclusion is drawn emphasizing teacher's role and task appropriation in writing instruction. What is Writing? Writing, broadly put, is a cultural invention which has at least two dimensions: at one level, writing is simply a system of storing knowledge information for future references and retrieval. On the second dimension, writing appears to be a thinking process or a tool for thinking. If one focuses on the first dimension,...