An Investigation into EFL secondary school Pupils’ paragraph writing problems factors and suggested solutions
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Date
2019
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University Of Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
Writing is by far the most challenging skill for language learners and the task is even more complex for foreign language learners. The complexity of this skill lies in the fact that it is not only a matter of producing syntactically and grammatically correct sentences and transforming them to words on paper. Writing requires students to gain control over multiple communicative and linguistic competencies. Hence, a lot of students fail at making effective pieces of writing such as paragraphs. In this regard, the aim of this work is to investigate on the paragraph writing problems faced by Algerian EFL secondary level pupils, to clear up the factors causing those difficulties and to provide some suggestions that would help students to develop their paragraph writing skills. To achieve the objectives of this research, data collection was done via three different tools: a questionnaire for students, an interview for teachers, and a document analysis of thirty (30) students' paragraph samples. The findings obtained from this research revealed that when writing paragraphs, students mainly encounter difficulties at the level of vocabulary, spelling, grammar, punctuation and most importantly, they fail to respect the English paragraph structure. It was found that these difficulties are due to: learners' lack of practice and poor reading habits, low interest in writing, weak English proficiency and teachers' limited feedback, as well as to the insufficient time devoted to the teaching of writing at the level of secondary schools. Therefore, it was suggested that students should practice writing more often and ameliorate their reading habits. In addition, teachers should put more focus on pupils' writings by giving more feedback on paragraphs, and raising their awareness on the English paragraph structure. Moreover, curriculum designers should consider adding more sessions devoted to the teaching of writing especially to foreign language stream students.
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Paragraph writing, Writing