Tunisian EFL Students’ Perceptions toward Their Writing Difficulties

The present study aims to explore Turkish EFL students’ major writing difficulties by analyzing the frequent writing errors in academic essays. Accordingly, the study examined errors in a corpus of 150 academic essays written by Turkish EFL students studying at the Department of English Language and Literature at a public university in Turkey. The essays were written on assigned topics as take home exam papers or assignments in the context of a first year academic writing course. The corpus consisted of essays of various lengths ranging from 500 word essays to 1500 word essays. The essays were compiled into a corpus and analyzed by using a concordance program. The essays were also checked for plagiarism using the online plagiarism detection software and plagiarized essays were excluded from the analysis. Errors were classified by using an error classification system which was organized according to lexico-grammatical categories. The resulting categories consisted of mostly syntactic and lexical categories of error but academic style errors were considered as well. As a result of the analysis, in terms of error categories, the most frequent errors were observed in the verb related error categories. When considered individually, the most frequent errors were observed in noun modification and were mostly interference related.

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Investigating writing difficulties in essay writing: Tertiary students’ perspectives

English Language Teaching Educational Journal ◽

10.12928/eltej.v4i1.2371 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 61

Author(s):

Suhaimah Bulqiyah ◽

Moh. Arif Mahbub ◽

Dyah Ayu Nugraheni

Keyword(s):

Undergraduate Students ◽

Academic Writing ◽

Teaching And Learning ◽

Structured Interview ◽

Writing Difficulties ◽

Essay Writing ◽

Writing Course ◽

Efl Students ◽

Language And Education ◽

Cognitive Problems

This study is primarily designed for investigating the tertiary students’ perspectives on the writing difficulties of essays. This study was conducted in explanatory research in which quantitative and qualitative data were obtained from the web-based questionnaire and semi-structured interview, then analyzed separately. 21 undergraduate students have enrolled in the survey and 6 of them were invited to the interview section. This research reveals tertiary students' problems in essay writing course are categorized into: affective problems which raise from students’ and lecturers’ attitude while teaching and learning Essay Writing Course, cognitive problems that considered as the difficulties in the areas of writing viewpoint, transferring language, and the process of writing, and linguistic problems in the area of lexico-grammar, vocabulary, and the structure of the essay. Due to the findings, those aspects of academic writing should be serious attention for both EFL students and teachers to overcome the problems. The findings of this study have implications for EFL writing course designers as basic data of material improvement and for researchers particularly in the realms of language and education.

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Analysis of Errors Made by First Year Secondary School Students in Writing English Sentences: A Case Study of Libyan EFL Students

International Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.5296/ijl.v10i6.14134 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (6) ◽

pp. 206

Author(s):

Mohamed Farhat Mehdi

Keyword(s):

Secondary School ◽

Secondary School Students ◽

First Language ◽

First Year ◽

School Students ◽

Writing Difficulties ◽

Efl Students ◽

Writing Errors ◽

Verb Tense

The aim of this study is to identify, classify and explain the reasons behind the written errors and difficulties encountered by First Year Secondary School Students, Al-Jufra Region, Libya. A random sample of students and teachers is selected. The sample is thirty students and ten teachers. The data is collected through three tools: written task by students and two questionnaires; one for the teachers and one for the students. The data is analyzed by using a descriptive method. The findings reveal that First Year Secondary School Students encounter difficulties in writing English sentences including verb tense and form, subject verb agreement, word order, prepositions, articles, plurality and auxiliaries. It is also revealed that students are not motivated enough to engage into written activities. These writing errors are mainly due to first language (L1) interference. The study concludes with some recommendations that will help First Year Secondary School Students to minimize their writing difficulties.

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Investigating the Effect of Social Media on EFL Students’ Written Production: Case of Third-Year EFL Students at Tlemcen University, Algeria

10.31235/osf.io/e5ya9 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Arab World English Journal ◽

Kamila GHOUALI ◽

Smail BENMOUSSAT

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

English Language ◽

Research Work ◽

Assessment Tools ◽

Writing Difficulties ◽

Written Production ◽

Efl Students ◽

New Form ◽

Use Of Social Media ◽

The Impact

The combination between technology and education has given birth to a new form of assessment called: e-assessment. The latter assesses learners using different digital means one of which are social media. The present study investigated the impact of social media, as being one aspect of e-assessment tools, on EFL students’ written production. It tried to highlight the nature of this impact, enquired about the reasons behind their writing difficulties, and explored whether these errors were caused by social media or not. This research work relied on a case study that consisted of 31 third-year undergraduates and 22 English teachers at the department of English at Tlemcen University, Algeria. The data were gathered through the use of two questionnaires administered to both learners and instructors plus two writing tasks, one assigned on social media and the other in the classroom. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively through error analysis. After identifying the different errors produced by the students, the findings revealed that a relationship existed between learners’ use of social media and their writing issues. Their intensive use of social media led to a significant decrease in the writing level of the learners who have developed a new form of writing that includes linguistic habits which reflect the informalities often found on a social media environment, and do not necessarily follow the norms and rigours of the English language. They have become unable to distinguish between the formal and informal context to the point that certain linguistic aspects have become fossilized.

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Whatsapp Messenger as a Mobile Media to Learn Writing for EFL Students

JIKE Jurnal Ilmu Komunikasi Efek ◽

10.32534/jike.v1i2.156 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 156-165 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Linda Linda ◽

Ida Ri'aeni

Keyword(s):

Information And Communication Technologies ◽

Teaching And Learning ◽

Communication Technologies ◽

First Grade ◽

English Department ◽

Instructional Media ◽

Mobile Media ◽

Efl Writing ◽

Information And Communication ◽

Efl Students

Abstract The objective of this research is to find out the use of Whatsapp Messenger as a mobile media to learn writing in EFL classes.Several researchers have attempted to prove applicability of mobile learning as modern ways of teaching and learning (Naismith, 2004:115). Moreover, applying portable technologies have been demanded by most of the modern learners who oftentimes are forced to study anywhere, and anytime, for example, at work, in the bus or at weekends (Evans, 2008:115).The research was motivated by the studentsâ€™ difficulties in writing. The sample of this research was three classes of first grade students of English Department of Unswagati. The instrument of this research was questionnaire sheet. Data from questionnaire sheet was analyzed based on the frequency studentsâ€™ answers and then was calculated and interpreted into percentages. The result shows WhatsApp Messenger attracts the students interest and also the students have positive responses towards the using ofWhatsAppMessenger. In applying WhatsApp group, the writer concluded that, learning using WhatsApp group has effective to develop their creativity in writing skill. On the other hand, the result from the questionnaire sheet indicated that almost of students is active in learning to writing recount text. Students can learn out of the classroom. Beside WhatsApp can be used privately, it can be used for studentsâ€™ education. The students can use their gadget positively for their ability in learning English. The students can improve their knowledge in learning ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies). Keyword: WhatsApp Messenger,EFL writing, Instructional Media, ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies).

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Study of Consonant Pronunciations Errors Committed by EFL Learners

English Literature and Language Review ◽

10.32861/ellr.55.48.56 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 48-56

Author(s):

Ali Akbar Khansir ◽

Afsaneh Salehabadi

Keyword(s):

English Language Learners ◽

Foreign Language ◽

Language Learners ◽

English Language ◽

Age Group ◽

Efl Learners ◽

Listening Skill ◽

English Pronunciation ◽

Efl Students ◽

Knowledge Of Language

As the topic suggests, the research paper presents Study of Consonant Pronunciations Errors Committed by EFL Learners. Error analysis always tries to resolve language learners’ problems in acquiring second or foreign language setting. Learning to English pronunciation is perhaps as important as learning listening skill, speaking, and spelling. Errors in English pronunciation create several problems for English language learners in their works. In other words, most of the English language errors of pronunciation are due to the lack of knowledge of language learners. However, all the students in our sample are of age group (16-25) at Bushehr language institute and they are all Iranian nationals. In addition, all of them were female learners. An English pronunciation (consonant) test was used to get information about the knowledge of the learners in English pronunciation. Findings of this article indicated that the first and second hypotheses of this article were accepted, but the third hypothesis was rejected. However, the findings of this paper showed that the Iranian EFL students have problem to pronounce English sounds correctly.

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