ASSESSING STUDENTS PARAGRAPH WRITING PROBLEMS: THE

CASE OF BEDENO SECONDARY SCHOOL, GRADE 10 ENGLISH

CLASS IN FOCUS

MA Thesis

BY

MOHAMMEDAMIN HUSSEN

NOVEMBER 2015
HARAMAYA UNIVERSITY, HARAMAYA

ASSESSING STUDENTS PARAGRAPH WRITING PROBLEMS: THE

CASE OF BEDENO SECONDARY SCHOOL, GRADE10 ENGLISH CLASS
IN FOCUS

A Thesis Submitted to the Postgraduate Program Directorate

(School of Foreign Languages and Journalism)
HARAMAYA UNIVERSITY

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN TEFL

BY

Mohammedamin Hussen

NOVEMBER 2015
Haramaya University

HARAMAYA UNIVERSITY
Postgraduate Program Directorate
We hereby certify that We have read and evaluated this Thesis entitled Assessing Students
Paragraph Writing Problems: The case of Bedeno Secondary School, Grade 10 English Class in
focus. Prepared under my guidance by Mohammedamin Hussen. We recommend that it can be
submitted as fulfilling the thesis requirement.
Jeylan W. Hussen (Assoc. Prof.)
Major advisor
Nigusie Angessa (Asst. Prof)
Co-advisor

_______________
Signature
_______________
Signature

____________
Date
______________
Date

As members of the Board of Examiners of the MA Thesis Open Defense Examination, We

certify that We have read and evaluated the Thesis prepared by Mohammedamin Hussen and
examined the candidate. We recommended that the thesis be accepted as fulfilling the Thesis
requirements for the Degree of Master of Art in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.
_____________
Chairperson
______________
Internal examiner
______________
External examiner

________________
Signature
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Signature
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Signature

_______________
Date
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Date
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Date

Final approval and acceptance of the Thesis is contingent upon the submission of its final copy to
the Council of Graduate Studies (CGS) through the candidates department or school of graduate
committee (DGC or SGC).

ii

DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to my father.

iii

STATEMENT OF THE AUTHOR

By my signature below, I declared and affirm that this Thesis is my own work. I have followed
all ethical and technical principles of scholarship in the preparation, data collection, data analysis
and compilation of this Thesis. Any scholarly matter that is included in the Thesis has been given
recognition through citation.
This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an MA degree at the
Haramaya University. The thesis is deposited in the Haramaya University Library and is made
available to borrowers under the rules of the Library. I solemnly declare that this Thesis has not
been submitted to any other institution anywhere for the award of any academic degree, diploma
or certificate.
Brief quotation from this Thesis may be made without special permission provided that accurate
and complete acknowledgment of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended
quotation from or reproduction of this Thesis in whole in part may be granted by the head of the
school or department when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the
interest of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the
author of the Thesis.

Name: Mohammedamin Hussen

Signature-----------------------

Date: ________________
Department: Foreign Languages and journalism

iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
The author was born in Bale, Sinana Woreda at a particular place called Salka on January1, 1985
and attended his primary school at Salka Primary and Junior School. He completed his secondary
school at Robe Secondary School in 2004.Then; he joined Bahir Dar University in 2005 and
graduated with Bed degree in English in 2007. Since then, he has been teaching English in
Bedeno Secondary School. He joined Haramaya University as a postgraduate student in the
School of Foreign Language Studies in June 2013 for M.A. study in TEFL.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am sincerely grateful to my major advisor Mr. Jeylan Wolyie Hussien (Assoc. Prof.) and my
co-advisor Mr. Nigussie Angessa (Asst. Prof.) for providing me invaluable, consistent and
constructive feedback, comments and suggestions.

My heartfelt appreciation goes as well to my beloved wife Rahel W/Kidan and my son Nabil
Mohammedamin for their continuous encouragement and moral support.

I acknowledge with gratitude the teachers and students of Bedeno for their cooperation during
the data collection time by answering the questionnaire. Without their support, my study would
not have been possible.

Finally, my thank goes to all my friends for sharing me their experiences and advice throughout
my study.

vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

EFL

English as a Foreign Language

ESL

English as a Second Language

NNS

None-native Speaker

NS

Native Speaker

OQ, S1, S2, S3, S4

Open ended question for Student 1, 2, 3, 4

OQ, T1, T2, T3, T4 :

Open ended question for Teacher 1,2,3,4

ZPD

Zone of Proximal Development

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION
STATEMENT OF THE AUTHOR

iii
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

vi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

viii

LIST OF TABLES

xii

ABSTRACT

xiii

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of the Study

1.2. Statement of the Problem

1.3. Objectives of the Study

1.3.1. General Objective

1.3.2. The Specific Objectives of the Study

1.4. Research Questions

1.5. Significance of the Study

1.6. Scope of the Study

1.7. Limitation of the Study

1.8. Operational Definition of Terms

2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1. The Concept of Writing Skill

2.2. Importance of Learning Writing Skills

2.3. Approaches in Teaching Paragraph Writing

2.3.1. Product Approach

10
10

viii

2.3.2. The Process Approach

10

2.4. The Concept of Paragraph Writing

2.4.1. Paragraph Structure

12

2.4.2. How to Write a Paragraph

12

2.5. Characteristics of Paragraph writing

14

2.5.1. Unity

14

2.5.2. Coherence

14

2.5.3. Adequate Development

15

2.6. Paragraph Writing Problems and Difficulties

16

2.7. Causes for Students' Problems in EFL Paragraph Writing

16

2.7.1. Inadequate Exposure to the Target Language

17

2.7.2. Lack of Practice

17

2.7.3. Problem of Writing Apprehension

18

2.7.4. Lack of Appropriate Feedback

18

2.7.5. Carelessness

19

2.7.6. Lack of Vocabulary

19

2.8. Helping Students in Developing Paragraph

3

11

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

19
21

3.1. Design of the Study

21

3.2. Description of the Study Area

21

3.3. Sample and Sampling Techniques

21

3.4. Data Gathering Instruments

22

3.4.1. Document Analysis

22

3.4.2. Questionnaire

22

3.4.3.Class Observation

23

3.5. Data collection Procedures

24
ix

3.6. Method of Data Analysis

25

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

26

4.1. Students Paragraph Writing Problems

26

4.1.1. Lack of Unity in the Paragraph

29

4.1.2. Poor Organization

32

4.1.3. Problem of Paragraph development

34

4.1.4. Grammar Problem

35

4.1.5. Punctuation Problem

39

4.1.6. Capitalization Problem

41

4.1.7. Spelling Problem

43

4.2. Causes for Students Problems in EFL Paragraph Writing

4.2.1. Student Related Factors

45
46

4.2.1.1. Lack of knowledge of strategic use

46

4.2.1.2. Students' writing apprehension

47

4.2.1.3. Shortage of vocabulary

49

4.2.1.4. Lack of regular practice

50

4.2.2. Teachers Related Factor

51

4.2.2.1. Teachers' ways of giving feedback

4.3. Writing Strategies Employed by the Teachers and Students to

Overcome the Problems
5. SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

51

53
56

5.1. Summary

56

5.2. Conclusions

57

5.3. Recommendation

58

6. REFERENCES

60

7. APPENDICE

66
x

Appendix-A

67

Appendix-B

69

Appendix-C

70

Appendix-D

71

Appendix-E

72

Appendix- F

73

Appendix-G

79

Appendix- H

83

xi

LIST OF TABLES
Table

Page

Table 1 Features of Students Paragraph Writing Problems

26

Table 2 Total Number of Ungrammaticalities Found in the Students Paragraph

36

Table 3 Observed Ungrammaticalities in the Paragraph Written by S22

37

Table 4 Observed Punctuation Problems in Students Paragraphs

39

Table 5 Observed Capitalization Problems in Students Paragraphs

41

Table 6 Spelling Problems Observed in Students Paragraphs

43

Table 7 Words that are Spelt Wrongly in the Paragraph Written by S3

44

xii

ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this study was to assess students paragraph writing problems. The study
was carried out in Bedeno Secondary School with special reference to grade10 students in focus.
Descriptive research design was employed to address the problem. To conduct the study, four
English teachers were chosen along with 50 students who were selected through random
sampling technique. In order to achieve the objectives, the study employed three data gathering
tools: document analysis, open ended questionnaire and classroom observation. Document
analysis was employed to identify features of students paragraph writing problems. Open ended
questionnaire which used to find out students paragraph writing problems and identify factors
that affect the quality of paragraph written by students. Furthermore, classroom observation was
employed to identify what the English language teachers were doing when they teach paragraph
writing. All data collected using different tools were analyzed qualitatively. The study identified
the major paragraph writing problems students encounter. These are problem of organization,
unity, adequacy, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling. In addition, factors that
were affecting students paragraph writing were divided into students related factors like lack
of knowledge of strategic use, students writing apprehension, shortage of vocabulary and lack
of regular practice, and teachers related factors such as teachers ways of giving feedback.
Therefore, since paragraph writing is a skill that could be improved through sufficient
practicing, Bedeno secondary school students should have been given chance of learning and
practicing features of good paragraph to effectively use them to write a paragraph.

xiii

1. INTRODUCTION
This part discusses background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study
research questions, significance of the study, scope of the study, limitation of the study and
operational definition of terms used in the study.

1.1.

Background of the Study

In the traditional approaches to language teaching and learning, writing is considered as

secondary skill. Because of this, it received relatively little attention compared to speaking,
reading, and listening. Silva (1997) claims that the dominant teaching method during the 1950s
put an undue focus on oral rather than written proficiency. Especially, writing skills were
neglected during Audio-lingual period. Raimes (1983) states that during audio-lingual period,
speaking was seen as the central element of language teaching, while writing was not given
similar position in language teaching-learning. However, Foley and Thompson (2003 as cited in
Misrak 2007:6), emphasize the importance of writing in second language learning by arguing
that second language learning is not only learning the oral languages i.e. speaking and listening
but it is important to consider how to learn to communicate through writing.

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of the writing skills. It has
achieved a great attention in the present EFL curriculum/ syllabus at both secondary and
preparatory levels, as an important productive skill through which meaningful messages or ideas
are transmitted. As students attain their secondary level education, they are required to generate
further written materials such as paragraph, composition etc.. According to the syllabus of grade
ten (10), grade ten students need to write compositions on a wide range of topics (MOA 2001
ii). These requirements must be in the target (English) language as it is the core language for
communication over the world. At this level, students are required to practice paragraph writing
than being engaged in writing at sentence level, phrase of word level. Accordingly the students
are expected to compose paragraph with good elements and use sentences which are correct in
grammar

within

their

paragraph

to

communicate

effectively

in

writing.

Writing a paragraph requires an overall sense of organization; each sentence must fit within
this organizational framework. In a well-written paragraph, ideas and sentences are arranged
in a clear and logical way as they are unified by the main idea of that paragraph. The more the
written paragraph are coherent and cohesive the more they it convey meaningful message to
the readers. Beside, students should be able to use a connected serious of words and sentences
which are grammatically correct. Unless students arrange words in at least their minimum
acceptable order, they may not pass the intended message meaningfully. A good paragraph is
achieved when a topic sentence is intelligently chosen; the knowledge of choosing a good
topic sentence for each paragraph helps students arrange the sequence of their information in
a logical order.
Grammar, Punctuation and spelling are essential for communicating correct and clear
meaning. As Abbot (2007:6) states that a clear thinking could not be written clearly without
using words according to definite rules. In addition, sense in a piece of writing is added by
correct punctuation marks (Hilton and Hyder, 1992). In general, writing a paragraph is one of
the initial steps of the writing process that contains some procedures, so that the learners can
follow these to produce a good piece of writing in various contexts such as at secondary
school.
The importance of paragraph writing for students is underlined by Grabe and Kaplan (1996)
who mention that students in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts will need English
writing skills ranging from a simple paragraph and summary skills to the ability to write
essay. This is because Paragraph writing is a pre-requisite course for composition and essay
writing. As a result, students need help from their teachers to develop the skills and
knowledge necessary for them to effectively write paragraph in English specially, in
secondary school learners have to pay attention to the higher level skills of planning and
organizing as well as the lower level skills of spelling, punctuation, word choice, and so on
Richards and Renandya (2002). Also Richards and Renandya surmised that if L2 learners
language proficiency are weak, L2 writers will encounter greater difficulty in writing. So,
Writing in general potentially has many benefits for EFL secondary school learners.

Though writing skill is considered extremely important, a lot of research studies conducted in
the various EFL/EFL contexts strongly suggested that EFL learners, who study in institutions
that use English as a medium of instruction, face severe problems in writing skills that hinder
their academic progress (Tahaineh, 2010; Rababah, 2003; and Bacha, 2002). One of these
difficulties is how to produce a well-connected and coherent piece of writing. Abdellah
(2000), for example, found that Sudanese university students were not able to make correct
use of written discourse properties, which eventually reduces the overall writing quality. He
adds that the average writing of student was characterized by a variety of coherence breaks
such as misleading paragraph division and irrelevance.
Like other EFL contexts, the situation in Ethiopia has also been reported poor. It is assumed
that high school students in Ethiopia have deficiency of the English language to compose up
to the expected level (Amlaku. n.d; ETEP,2010). Students seriously lack in all English skills
in general and writing skills in particular. One of the major weaknesses Ethiopian students
exhibit at different levels is writing in English (L2) (Solomon, 2001); and the situation is
worse in secondary schools in which students fail to cope with the writing requirements.
Individuals with writing problems may have difficulties in one or more aspects of writing
skill.

1.2. Statement of the Problem

The students English language ability in writing paragraph plays a great role in both
contemporary academic and future careers. Hence, the key role of English language ability in
writing has an important and encouraging impact on the academic achievement of students.
This is because the ability to write various genres of writing effectively through English is
becoming increasingly important in our global community (Weigle, 2002). In addition,
writing is an essential component of thinking and learning in school context, and writing
tasks are a crucial tool for intellectual and social development. (Bruning and Horn ,2000:30)
In the Ethiopian context, English is taught as foreign language. Learners have been learning
to write paragraphs based on the activities and tasks which are adapted in the text books.
More of the writing tasks and activities presented in the syllabus and textbook require the
students to practice writing skills under process-oriented approach; yet, the students' writing

ability is still not satisfactory. The students seem incapable to achieve the intended goals.
This is due to the fact that students have deep-rooted problem of applying important features
of good paragraph.
In the context of Bedeno Secondary School, the researcher as the English teacher in the
school observed the students are ineffective in writing paragraph. They are still not ready to
express themselves in English through writing paragraph. This failure of students in
composing paragraph can be manifested by their inability to develop short paragraph to
express themselves. It seems most learners are unable to produce short sentences, paragraphs
and letters to friends. In addition, there are complaints from EFL teachers about the students'
performance. Teachers often encounter students' exercise book with a lot of problems which
make it difficult to focus on the ideas the students are striving to express. This may lead to
loss of creativity. This study attempts to acquire some understanding about major problems
that grade ten students encounter while writing a paragraph in English. Knowing about these
challenges will help in "making principled decision in the classroom concerning the types of
skills we wish to impart and the method of imparting them" (Shanklin, 1994, p. 147).
Furthermore, understanding students paragraph writing problem is crucial for improving the
quality of EFL writing. In line with this Abdel Latif (2007) stated that for FL/L2 writing to be
developed, the factors affecting its process and product should be examined.
Researches have been conducted on different issues in relation to writing different times.
Gremew Lemu (1999) conducted a research on the requirements in writing for academic
purpose at Addis Ababa University with reference to four departments in focus. The study
indicates that there were various aspects of academic writing in which students had
deficiencies such as lack of cohesion and coherence in writing, problems of tenses and
shortage of basic vocabularies. Moreover, the result shows that many students find it difficult
to meet the requirements and expectations of their instructors. The study focused on the
students' performances in writing at university level. The study by Kebede (2013), assessed
cohesion and coherence problems and difficulties of grade 11 students with cohesion and
coherence in EFL paragraph writing using document analysis, class observation and semistructured interview. He focused on the logical arrangement of sentences in a paragraph and
the usage of cohesive devices. He found out that students encounter some problems in their

cohesion and coherence of EFL paragraph writing. He didnt investigate all features of
paragraph writing. He concentrated on only assessing of paragraph cohesion and coherence.
In addition, the study by Bifa (2012). Which focused on assessing problems students
encounter in writing practical reports through English language at Holeta ATVET College
using both closed and open ended questionnaire, interview and document analysis. The
finding of the study revealed that the students confront several problems and hence commit
linguistic errors in writing practical reports of their practical works. This study mainly
focused on linguistic problems in practical report writing. Both researchers did not investigate
students paragraph writing problem at secondary level. In accordance with what has been
reviewed above, all previous researchers conducted their research at university, college and
preparatory level. The study by Mulugeta (2014) focused on investigating the perception and
practice of assessment of writing of grade 10 teachers using descriptive survey design and
qualitative method. In addition, Interview and focus group discussion were used. The study
revealed that even though the school teachers have good attitude towards assessment of
writing, the results of the study indicated that different factors caused assessment of writing to
be a neglected area of practice. Using the above as a research gap, the current study aimed to
assess students' paragraph writing problems that Bedeno Secondary School students encounter
while writing a paragraph in English.

1.3. Objectives of the Study

1.3.1. General Objective
The general objective of this study is to assess grade ten students paragraph writing problems
at Bedeno Secondary School.
1.3.2. The Specific Objectives of the Study
The study specifically intends to:
i)

assess the major problems experienced by grade ten students in writing paragraph.

ii)

identify causes for students' problems in writing paragraph.

iii)

find out how teachers attempt to help students in overcoming the problems.

1.4. Research Questions

Based on the objectives, the following research questions are posed to be answered
throughout the study.
i) What are the major problems students faces in paragraph writing?
ii) What are the causes for students problems in paragraph writing practices?
iii) What do teachers do to help students overcome paragraph writing problems?

1.5. Significance of the Study

This study is important in the following ways:
1. It may identify the features of the problems students face when they try to write.
2. It would provide insight about the sources of the problems and how they hinder
learners learning progress;
3. It may provide teachers insights about the link between factors and what they should
do to deal with the problems.

1.6. Scope of the Study

This study was limited to assess students paragraph writing problems at Bedeno Secondary
School. The study did not touch all aspects of writing skill which has many types like writing
essay, but only on paragraph writing in a specific way. The study was limited to organization,
unity, paragraph development, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling and
problems of the text. It was limited to problems which were identified from paragraph written
by the students. More specifically, the study focused on fifty grade ten students (were selected
through random sampling method) and four English language teachers (were selected through
comprehensive sampling method) in Bedeno Secondary School. However in order to clarify
the issue under investigation, other related aspects of paragraph writing problems were
elaborated.

1.7. Limitation of the Study

It would have been better if the study had included large number of students and teachers
from Bedeno Secondary School. However, the researcher had time constrains and financial
inadequacies. As a result, the sample size of the study was limited to 4 teachers and 50
students of Bedeno Secondary School. The researcher planned to observe 8 writing lessons.
However, three teachers were observed once each and one teacher was observed twice.
Totally, 5 writing lessons were observed. That happened as a result of the researcher could not
find paragraph writing lesson. Many writing lessons were left behind because teachers were in
hurry to finish the text. Even though these limitations were there, he tried to manage this
study accordingly.

1.8. Operational Definition of Terms

Organization: How information is organized into paragraph by sequencing ideas rejecting
irrelevant information / The logical arrangement and relationship of sentences and ideas
within a paragraph.

2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

This chapter discusses concept of writing skill, approaches in teaching writing, importance of
learning writing skills, the concept of paragraph writing, characteristics of paragraph writing,
features of Students' Problems in EFL Paragraph writing, causes for students' problems in
EFL paragraph writing, and helping Students in developing paragraph.

2.1. The Concept of Writing Skill

Writing is a means of expressing thoughts, ideas and feelings. Different scholars define
writing in the following ways. For Hedge (1988:89) writing is the way in which a writer puts
together the pieces of the text, developing ideas thorough sentences and paragraphs within
over all structure. In addition, (Byrne 1988) consider writing as a process of putting ideas in
words to the target reader in mind. He said that writing is neither easy nor spontaneous; it
requires conscious mental effort. He divides the problems that make writing difficult into
three categories. The first, he calls psychological, caused by lack of interaction and feedback
between the reader and the writer. The second category consists of linguistic problems. Bryne
states that in speech, grammar mistakes can be tolerated because of the spontaneous nature of
the medium which prevents us from fully monitoring what we are saying-in particular, our
sentence construction and the inter-connection of our sentences. In writing, on the other hand,
we have to express ourselves in a clearer and more grammatical manner in order to
compensate for the absence of certain features of spoken language. By writing we may flow
out a burden occupying our mind offer our ideas and concepts to others.

In EFL/ESL education, writing has received great concern from EFL/ESL researchers and
instructors who have contributed much to the concepts of EFL/ESL writing, both in theory,
and teaching. In early EFL/ESL writing research and instruction, like those of native English
speakers writing, writing skills were measured with a focus mostly on the written products,
and thus language proficiency was taken into greater account. However, this view has
gradually shifted towards a new perspective way (Raimes, 1985). Many researchers and
instructors have realized that this focus on product may not truly reflect the complete nature
of writing, and therefore have started trying to understand the process of the act of writing in

communication (Zamel, 1982). Raimes (1985) also acknowledges that writing is not merely a
language skill as an adjunct to language learning, but an effective approach to developing
language from words, sentences, and thereafter to discourse in language

2.2. Importance of Learning Writing Skills

Writing skill is more and more important nowadays. Santos (2000) explains that there are
three reasons making writing increasingly essential which are 1) more international linguists
are promoting writing as their field of specialization, 2) more articles and journals are being
published in English, and 3) more international students are pursuing their degrees in English
speaking countries. Besides, Chen (2007) states that owing to the age of globalization; the
world seems to be smaller because of the perception of unlimited communication. For this
reason, all members of global institutions, for their own benefits in terms of education and
business cooperation, have to stay connected with one another. In order to comprehensibly
express thoughts and opinions, apart from oral interaction, writing is considered crucial.

In terms of ESL or EFL instruction, writing helps students learn. First, writing reinforces the
grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary that they taught to students. Second, when
students write, they also have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond
what they have just learned to say, to take risks. Third, when they write, they necessarily
become involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and the constant use of
eyes, hand, and brain is a unique way to reinforce learning. As students struggle with what to
put down next or how to put it down on paper, they often discover something new to write. In
addition, EFL/ESL Writing has always been considered an important skill in teaching and
learning. As commented by Rao (2007) EFL writing is useful in two respects: First, it
motivates students thinking, organizing ideas, developing their ability to summarize, analyze
and criticize. Second, it strengthens students learning, thinking and reflecting on the English
language.
Another important aspect of writing for the targeted learners is writing for the sake of writing
(Harmer, 2004). In other words, there are some other aspects of language such as punctuation

10

and capitalization that they are essential in writing. So, through writing, learners can know
more about the use of punctuation and capitalization.
In general, writing is very important for communication. It creates a communication channel
between the writer and the reader. It is needed to transfer messages, letters, and knowledge, to
take exams and to maintain learning. Because of the importance noted above, English writing
is included in all the syllabuses of Ethiopian preparatory and secondary schools. Since
English is not the mother tongue of the targeted learners, the expectations of having many
challenges associated with writing paragraphs are high.

2.3. Approaches in Teaching Paragraph Writing

2.3.1. Product Approach
The product approach of writing focuses on the finished products of the writing work rather
than the process. According to Getnet (1994), the product approach is an orientation whose
primary focus is the end result of what students produce. Formal accuracy and correctness in
grammar, spelling, use of vocabulary, convention of layout etc are given the utmost priority.
According to Byrne (1988), the product approach of writing is an accuracy oriented approach
that focuses on the control of mistakes in order to eliminate them from written works. The
writing teacher who uses the product approach will be concerned to see that the end product is
readable, grammatically correct and obeys discourse conventions relating to main points,
supporting details and so on. In addition, Pincas (1982a) sees writing as being primarily about
linguistic knowledge, with attention focused on the appropriate use of vocabulary, syntax, and
cohesive devices. In short, product-based approaches see writing as mainly concerned with
knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development as mainly the result of
the imitation of input, in the form of texts provided by the teacher.
2.3.2. The Process Approach
The process approach of writing focuses on the composing process of writing instead of on
the written final products. Tribble (1996) suggests that process approaches stress writing
activities which move learners from the generation of ideas and the collection of data through

11

the publication of a finished text . Encouraging students to have a sense of purpose and
audience, while writing about a certain topic, is the major task of teachers who teach in line
with the process approach. There are different views on the stages that students go through in
producing a piece of writing, but a typical model identifies four stages: prewriting;
composing/drafting; revising; and editing (Tribble 1996). This is a cyclical process in which
writers may return to pre-writing activities, for example, after doing some editing or revising.
In addition, Hedge (1988:9) says that good writers appear to go through certain processes
which lead to successful pieces of written work. He has proposed the following steps that
good writers should follow in the process approach of writing. These steps are thinking,
planning, drafting, and editing.

In general, the above-mentioned approaches to the teaching of writing mainly differ in the
focuses they put on writing and the ways writing should be taught. For many years it was
believed that teaching a language meant making students understand the basic structures and
vocabulary of that language. This belief has influenced teachers and students perceptions on
how to teach and learn the writing skills. But recently an approach to language teaching is
changed from form-focused to process which is more humanistic and natural approach to
language teaching (Tribble, 1996).

2.4. The Concept of Paragraph Writing

Paragraph is an important convention of written English. It has developed as a visual way of
helping the reader to follow an extended piece of writing. Paragraph helps us to understand
how the sentences are grouped together. Omisha and Ann Hogue (2006: 65) say that a
paragraph is a basic unit of organization in writing a group of related sentences develops one
main idea and consists of two kinds of sentences: a topic sentence and a number of supportive
statements. Number of sentence within a single paragraph is unimportant but it should be long
enough to develop the main idea clearly. Though sometimes for emphasis, or in dialog or
transition, paragraph may have only one or two sentences.
The paragraph starts with an indentation which means a blank space at the beginning
indicating that a new subject or a different point of the same subject is being considered with.

12

The sentences within a paragraph link up so that readers are not conscious of gaps. Elements
of paragraph should be combined to form one complete meaning in the paragraph. In addition
effective sentences involve more than starting with capital and stopping with a full stop/
period. The word or words must make sense, expressing an idea or perception or feeling clear
enough to stand alone. Since writing builds larger units from smaller ones; that is, writers use
words to make sentences, sentences to make paragraphs, and paragraphs to make such
compositions as letters, reports, and college themes (Hart and Reinking 1990:11).

2.4.1. Paragraph Structure

Meyers (2006a:25) & Khoury (2007:29) point out that the structure of a paragraph consists of
three important elements, they are as follows:
1.

The introduction contains a topic sentence which outlines the main idea of the paragraph
to which the rest of the paragraph should be focused. It must clarify one's precise attitude
towards the subject. The usual position of the topic sentence is at the beginning of the
paragraph but it can sometimes occur anywhere in such unit.

2.

The body contains supporting sentences which support, explain, and develop the main
idea expressed in the topic sentence by giving details, explanations, and examples. The
body must be unified via relating the whole sentences to the topic sentence and to each
other as well.

3. The conclusion occurs at the end of the paragraph leaving the reader with important
points to remember. It summarizes the main point of the paragraph and gives the sense of
finality
2.4.2. How to Write a Paragraph
Writing a paragraph is one of the initial steps of the writing process that contains some
procedures, so that the learners can follow these to produce a good piece of writing in various
contexts such as at secondary school.

13

1. Brainstorming: when students think carefully and organize their ideas for their paragraph
before they begin writing. It is an idea-collecting or idea-generating technique which
mainly functions as an organizer of thinking and an idea collector as well as a developer.
This is pre-writing activity. Richard (1992) pointed out that the more time students spend
on pre- writing activities, the more successful their writing will be.
2. Planning: when students outline their ideas or students exchange ideas into note form. It
functions as an organizer, a planner and a classifier of the ideas gathered in the
brainstorming exercise, is a very useful summarizing technique that students would love
to facilitate receiving the information flow in the EFL classroom be it in the form of a
long paragraph, essay, article or a long paper. It also helps establish paragraph unity (the
relevance of the paragraph ideas to the main idea_ topic sentence), which gives the reader
an introductory idea about the main topic of the paragraph.
3. Drafting: when students write down their ideas on paper focusing on content not
mechanics. Gaber ( 2003) pointed out that when writing their first draft, students should
not expect perfection or even work towards it. The first draft should be considered as a
further means of discovering ideas and what one wants to do.

4. Revising: when students look at organization, main points support for main ideas,
examples, and connections between ideas. Noskin (2000) pointed out that revising is
considered the heart of the writing process, the means by which ideas emerge and evolve
and meanings are clarified. Moreover, Manzo and Manzo ( 1995) argued that revising
should be viewed as a thinking process that helps students refine ideas, discover new
connections and explore them more deeply in an attempt to best communicate their ideas
with an audience.

5. Editing: when students check their paragraphs for mistakes and correct them. once
students have revised their writing, they move to the editing stage so as to come up with
the final version. Editing could be viewed as the process of correcting sentence structure,
word choice, spelling, punctuation, grammar and capitalization in a piece of writing. This

14

occurs after the revision process has been completed and just prior to the publishing
phase.
6. Publishing: when students produce a final copy of their paragraphs to hand in. This is the
final stage of the writing process. In this stage the writings that are revised and edited
carefully may be published. Since writing is communication, Students should read their
writings aloud to the class. This is one way of publishing students writing. Poindexter
and Oliver (1999) noted that the purpose of publishing is to share and celebrate students
finished products. By sharing their writing, students develop sensitivity to an audience and
confidence in them as authors.

2.5. Characteristics of Paragraph writing

In general, in order for a paragraph to be effective, it must have three characteristics: Unity,
coherency and adequate development of ideas.
2.5.1. Unity
Unity in the paragraph means oneness of idea. A paragraph must have unity; that is, its
sentences must stick to the dominant ideas of the paragraph. A good paragraph possesses
unity when all the sentences develop the main idea. Unity in the paragraph is achieved by the
use of (1) a topic sentence with its controlling idea (2) supporting details, and (3) a clinching
sentence.
2.5.2. Coherence
Unity in a paragraph is not enough, for even if all sentences relate to the Topic Sentence, the
way in which they are related may be muddled. Sentences must cohere; that is, the thought
contained in one sentence should be clearly related to the thought of the following sentence.
Coherence can be regarded as a connection between utterances with discourse structure,
meaning, and action being combined (Schiffrin, 1987). Coherence can be achieved by the use
of certain devices, among them Transitional words and Phrases, Pronoun Reference, Repeated

15

Key Terms or Parallelism. Primarily, coherence rests on clear logical progression of thought
from one sentence to the next.

There are many ways to make a paragraph coherent. One-way is to use linking words. There
are many kinds of linking words: coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions,
prepositions, and the transitions are common types of linking words. They are words or
phrases that help to link sentences to one another (Boardman and Freedenberg, 2002:p.36).
Consequently, to have a coherent paragraph, students keep unity of the paragraph, the
paragraph which is expressed by the relationship between sentences in the paragraph and use
different cohesive devices that are used to fix sentences together for the signal of flow of
ideas in the text. Generally, producing a paragraph is combining different sentences using
different cohesive devices to build the central idea which is anticipated to be delivered and
summarized using concluding sentences.

2.5.3. Adequate Development

Effective paragraphs are not only unified, they are fully developed, which means that they
dont leave any significant questions in readers minds. When students are writing a
paragraph, they must be sure to trace the full development of their ideas for readers so they
will understand the assumptions, evidence and reasoning students used. There are three ways
to ensure paragraph developed: by providing the right level of supporting detail, choosing the
right kind of evidence and choosing the right pattern of development for your purpose.

The controlling idea and any other subordinate ideas within a paragraph should be sufficiently
explained or illustrated; Every idea discussed in the paragraph should be adequately explained
and supported through evidence and details that work together to explain the paragraphs
controlling idea. A paragraph which lacks development is one that introduces a topic but fails
to provide sufficient information to explain it to readers (Kramer et al., 1995). Thus, an
assigned topic may require a certain method of development and this method of development
will require the use of certain patterns. Certain methods of development require certain

16

structures (Raimes, 1981: 5). Students should be guided in using those patterns that to be
practiced.

2.6. Paragraph Writing Problems and Difficulties

The writing tasks are challenging because many practical and theoretical issues are included.
Writing process is a form of problem-solving which involves generating ideas, planning, goal
setting, monitoring, and evaluating what has been composed (White & Arndt, 1991). In fact,
writing is still deemed to be an arduous task for most first and foreign language learners
(Ingels, 2006).
Problems are the real indicators of the errors encountered by the learners. According to
Shanghness (1979:415).' the major difficulties of students' are related to hand writing and
punctuation, syntax, common errors (i.e. problems in the inflection of regular verbs and
nouns, subject verb agreement and the use of articles), spelling, vocabulary and beyond the
sentence (i.e. problems in presenting and elaborating of a central idea). Hailemariam (2011)
found that students (L2 writers) conform several challenges such as vocabulary selection,
punctuation errors, idea generating and organizing problems, spelling errors and appropriate
grammar usage in writing activities. In general term, short age of vocabulary, idea generating
and organizing problem, use of punctuation, capitalization and spelling errors with poor
grammar usage are some of the problems students commonly face in developing independent
and readable texts of any type (Hailemariam 2011,pp.25-27).

From the above, it is possible to deduce that L2 students face difficulties to use appropriately
all the essential features of any different genres of writings/ unless they are deliberately taught
about where students can commit errors. Thus, similarly paragraph writing is a type of writing
activity that learners may face the same problem in developing it for academic purpose.

2.7. Causes for Students' Problems in EFL Paragraph Writing

Students writing in an EFL classroom context should show their awareness of their own
communicative goals, of the reader and of the writing context. Paragraph writing, which

17

constitutes a problem for many EFL students in Ethiopian schools, is a major challenge for
both students and teachers of English at Bedeno Secondary School.
Despite some approaches to the teaching of writing having been involved from varies
teaching methods, tackling EFL writing is still one of the perennial challenge for students in
developing English paragraph. Therefore, this ever persisting challenge that EFL students
encountered in developing good paragraph associated with varies factors such as:
2.7.1. Inadequate Exposure to the Target Language
Another factor that contributes to the contributor of the errors is the inadequate exposure to
the target language. It is admitted that many students do not have good access or conducive
environment to practice their English outside the classroom, especially both in writing and
speaking. Therefore, there are no opportunities for students to practice and develop English.
Because of this very weak students come to the high schools, with most of them are not
anywhere hear to do anything with English at all level (Alemu, 2004 and Awol, 1999). When
students have limited exposure to the language learnt, there will be a big possibility for them
to commit errors in their language.
2.7.2. Lack of Practice
Converting competence into performance requires practice. Italo (1999) states that the
learners must take the responsibility for their learning if meaningful learning is to take place.
He also adds that the best ways to learn any skill would be to practice it. To become best
driver, the best way is to drive. In addition, using the most effective approach to teaching EFL
writing is not enough if learners do not practice enough writing. Writing is a skill acquired
only through practice. It is, like dance and sport, an activity that could be improved only
through practice (Andrews, 1999). Bambang (2010) states that mastering the form of passive
voice is not the end of the story. Student should experience using passive voice themselves.
Teaching is directing students to practice the language skills. The psychology of the learning
tells as that students are not merely there to absorb knowledge as sponge takes in water
Halliday, Mcintosh and Steven, (1965:139). However learning is personal experience which
requires the active and regular engagement of the learner.

18

Despite these facts which have been stated above, students in EFL classroom, especially in
writing, are not well provided with sufficient writing activities and are not well practiced on
regular based. This problem may be emanates from language teachers belief with teaching
method, or lack of sufficient writing activities and tasks
2.7.3. Problem of Writing Apprehension
Apprehension is the feeling of being worry about something. With regard to writing, it can be
defined as the fear of writing process that out weights the projected gain from ability to write
Maclntyre (1989). Learners could be affected with the understanding of the fact that writing
anxiety clearly and negatively affects their writing performance Pajares and Johnson, (1994).
This is to mean that when students are given a writing activity they begin worrying about
writing a paragraph as psychological rather than assuming it as logistical. This indicates that
writing anxiety is distinctive to productive language particularly of writing Horwitz
et.al(1986). From the above context Scholars have become more sensitive to writing anxiety
and target language relation has recently captured more attention.
2.7.4. Lack of Appropriate Feedback

Students gain benefits from sufficient writing practice and revisions on their drafts to produce
a final piece of writing. In these processes, students often rely on feedback either from a
teacher, peer, or self. Feedback that students receive from a source, or a combination of
sources, provides them with information about what is good and what needs to be improved
so that they can incorporate and use the feedback in their revisions and in the final product of
their writing. Most EFL/ESL writing teachers would strongly agree with the statement that
teacher correction feedback is a necessary part of any writing activity. Feedback on student
writing can make learning more effective, as noted by Cardelle and Corno (1981),the more
feedback students receive of their performance the better they understand what they need to
do to correct their mistakes. Accordingly, the method of feedback provision could also be
other factor that affects their achievement in writing good paragraph. A feedback provided for
students is not creative because it doesn't inform them what they are expected to improve and
how to formulate these improvement William,(2007). Black and William (1998) elucidate that

19

students can make gains in their learning when a given feedback is focused on the specific
problems of the students work and demonstrate at them the errors with its way of correction.

2.7.5. Carelessness

Because of a variety of reason, EFL/ ESL learners may sometimes become careless in writing
or speaking in target language (Norrish, 1983 and Edge, 1989). According to Norrish,
carelessness may happen as a result of lack of motivation. This lack of motivation, on its part,
may occur when the materials to be taught and the way these materials are presented do not
suit the learners.
2.7.6. Lack of Vocabulary

In order to write quality paragraphs (or essays), students lexical knowledge or vocabulary is
also vitally important. Words carry meanings and help students communicate with their
readers effectively. Lack of words usually creates a breakdown in communication.
Researchers such as Laufer and Nation (1995) and Putra (2009) asserted that students
vocabulary knowledge and writing performance correlate significantly. As many agree,
vocabulary knowledge alone, however, cannot end in accurate and effective writing.
Communication demands the use of words in sentences; that is, the need for grammatical
knowledge is also unquestionable

2.8. Helping Students in Developing Paragraph

It is difficult to develop a skill of something without the help of somebody. To be able to
write effectively about a subject, students need to know and understand the subject matter.
They need to learn the specific vocabulary and the text structure and language features that
will help them write successfully in that subject area. They also need to be aware of the
purpose of their writing. As a result, students need help from their teachers to explore their
potential which leads to develop paragraph. Russell (1990) suggests that instead of blaming
students for their poor writing, lecturers/ teachers should support them to develop their skills.
This can be strengthened in view of vygotisky (1978: 44), "the zone of proximal development

20

(ZPD) is the distance between the actual development level as determine by independent
problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers." Then
students are encouraged to move in to the ZPD and then more than it to a new and higher
level which again provides a new ZPD, demonstrating a potential for more development at
every age. Vygotisky theory explain that through scaffoldings, students are able to use the
target language when there is a help from their teachers or peers in the classrooms to produce
that they could not yet be able to do on their own. In these students' advancement, EFL
teachers have unlimited role especially in writing activities.

To help students improve writing, teacher's role and way of teaching are essential. For
example, research strongly suggest that the most beneficial way of helping students enhance
their command of grammar in writing is to employ students' writing as the ground for
discussing grammatical concepts (Chin 2000). Other researchers also agree that it is more
effective to teach grammar related issues like variety and usage in the context of writing than
to approach the topic by teaching isolated skills (Calkins, 1980; DiStefano and Killion, 1984;
Harris, 1962). Teachers hence are encouraged to teach grammar items based on students'
major grammar errors. In other words if students have problem in verb choice in their writing,
the teacher might present mini lesson on this grammar concept. Chin (2000), therefore
comments that teachers must prioritize and offer instruction on the grammatical elements that
most affect their students' ability to write effectively.

21

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents design of the study, description of the study area, Sample and sampling
techniques, data gathering instruments, data collection procedure, and methods of data
analysis.

3.1. Design of the Study

A descriptive case study research method was employed in this study to assess grade ten
students paragraph writing practices using document analysis, open-ended questionnaire, and
class observation. According to Kumar (1996), descriptive methods attempt to describe
systematically a situation, problem or phenomenon. Therefore, the researcher used descriptive
research method since it is important in gathering data of what people think, feel and do.

3.2. Description of the Study Area

The study was conducted in Bedeno Scondary School (grade 10), which is found in Oromia
Region, Eastern Hararge zone, Bedeno Woreda. The school was intentionally chosen for this
study because the researcher works as an English teacher of the target school and the existing
situation would enable him to conduct research on the topic and come up with reliable
inquiry.

3.3. Sample and Sampling Techniques

The subjects of the study were grade ten students. There were 182 male and 148 female
totally 330 grade ten students in the school. Of these, the researcher intended to take 75
students as sample populations of the study. However, the number of students within each
class was decreased. This is, because paragraph analysis or managing the data needs more
time. As a result, he selected 50(15%) students from three sections through random sampling .
This means the total number of grade ten sections were six. Among them three sections were
selected through simple random sampling technique. In each section there were 38, 33 and 30
students. Then the researcher selected 19, 16 and 15 students from each section respectively

22

using random sampling technique. The reason why students were chosen randomly from the
three sections was to give every student an equal chance of being selected (Galloway, 1997).

3.4. Data Gathering Instruments

This study employed different data gathering instruments such as document analysis, openended questionnaire and class observation. Document analysis was the major instrument,
while questionnaire and class observation as a supportive data gathering instrument.
3.4.1. Document Analysis
The major data gathering instrument for this study was document analysis. Document analysis
is a technique which can generate both valid and reliable data from documents. (Stemler and
Bebell 1998). Besides, as Selinger and Shohamy (1989) state document analysis is one of the
data gathering techniques in qualitative research. 50 students were selected to write a
paragraph. Thus, in order to write a paragraph, the researcher listed down three topics for
writing on. Then students chose a topic of their interest. This topic was chosen among the
various writing activities were deemed to be similar to the topics studied in the assigned class,
particularly, Unit Six activity B6.8; since it did not necessitate special background knowledge.
All students were given as much time as possible to complete their task. In addition, to
encourage the students to produce well written paragraph, the researcher and sample teachers
told them that their paragraphs would be assessed and given sufficient advice not to copy
from another individual and they were expected to write their own paragraph. However, 8
students did not write when the researcher looked in to their exercise books. The rest 42
students wrote a paragraph. Later, the problems were analyzed and identified in considering
some common and essential features of good paragraph such as organization, unity, paragraph
development, grammar, spelling, capitalization and punctuation. During document evaluation,
material analysis checklists were used. This checklist were adopted from Carroll (1990) and
modified based on objectives of the study. (see Appendix D)
3.4.2. Questionnaire
In order to obtain rich information regarding students problem in achieving features of good
paragraph writing from students and experience of teachers about the problem under

23

investigation, the researcher selected -open ended questionnaire. Gillham (2000) views that
open ended question is best used when the answer is open. The open-ended questions were
designed with the purpose of yielding qualitative data through the text responses written in the
respondents own words (Jackson & Trochim, 2002). Moreover, these open-ended items can
offer graphic examples, illustrative quotes, and can also lead to the identification of some
issues not previously expected (Dornyei, 2003).
The open-ended questions used in the questionnaire of the current study included items
where no response options were offered, but rather a blank space to be filled in by the
respondents (Dornyei, 2007). Open-ended questionnaire was designed for both 4 EFL
teachers and 50 sample students to assess major problems students had in writing paragraph,
to investigate causes of students' problems in paragraph writing and to find out what English
language teachers are doing to help students write effective paragraph. This provided the
target respondents time to think about students' problems in paragraph writing. The items in
the questionnaire were mainly open ended. The content of the teachers' questionnaire was
almost similar with the content of the students' questionnaire.

However, the students

questionnaire was translated into students mother tongue language (Afan Oromo), and
administered to the students in the presence of the researcher in order to explain points which
were not clear to the students. For example, participant was asked problems that the students
have in writing English paragraph; the major causes of students' problems in writing
paragraph; the support students get from English language teachers and strategies both
teachers and students apply to improve students writing skills. This was to compare with the
data would be collected through document analysis. A questionnaire was personally delivered
to each of the fifty students and four teachers. When all teachers returned back, 7 students did
not return the paper.
3.4.3. Class Observation
The other data gathering tool was used in the study was class observation. Morrison (2000,p.
33) says that "observations are useful tools for providing direct information about language
and language learning, and it is the best data collecting technique for gaining insight into the
subject in a natural environment." This is why a nonparticipant, semi-structured classroom
observation was chosen to collect data because as Concel (2000) states in nonparticipant

24

observation, the observer dose not interact to a great degree with those he/she is observing;
the researcher primarily observes and records and has no specific role as a participant. Before
the observation was conducted, teachers who were going to be observed were asked about
their willingness and have been informed in advance. The researcher observed 5 (five) writing
lessons using the checklist which was adapted from Kebede (2013). This was to observe the
way English teachers encouraged their students when they teach paragraph writing lessons or
how students were helped while they were practicing paragraph writing so as to overcome
paragraph writing problems. In addition, what were the teachers focus areas in teaching
paragraph writing and giving feedback to their writing task. During the classroom
observations the researcher used qualitative data in the form of observation check list made by
the researcher himself.

3.5. Data collection Procedures

In this study, data was collected through document analysis, open ended questionnaire and
classroom observation. All sample subjects of Grade 10 EFL teachers and students were
identified. The researcher did not administer all data gathering tools at the same time.
Therefore, to start the study, the researcher first collected the written paragraphs by the
sample students and analyzed and problems were identified. Having collected the paragraphs,
the researcher carefully read again and again line by line to find what problems students have
in writing paragraph and in order to help him in modifying the questionnaire.

Administering questionnaire as the second phase took place right after gathering data through
document analysis has ended. The researcher distributed open ended questionnaires to both
sample English language teachers and students. Having collected the materials, the researcher
carefully read again and again each respondents response for each item in order to help him
when to observe the students and teachers during class observation.

Finally, class observation was made. English language teachers and students were observed
during paragraph writing lessons. Moreover, the problems which were presented using these
tools were identified and results were collected.

25

3.6. Method of Data Analysis

After collecting the data through different instruments, the researcher used the following
procedures to analyze the collected data. The data which was gathered through document
analysis, questionnaire and observation were analyzed using qualitative data analyzing
method. This was done by identifying the relevant data using thematically and classify in to
different categories to generate topics. This means the use of thematic codes in which the
codes (problems) were presented on the basis of data received. These were categorized for
analysis (Sapsford and Jupp, 2006). As onwuegbuzie (2010) states crossover analysis would
give the researcher to go back and forth many times and present analysis of data gathered
through different tools thematically. While analyzing the data, the researcher integrated points
that were generated through the given tools and the data induced interpretation to reach on the
relevant conclusions. Such process of organizing and analyzing the data will help the
researcher to develop and understand how each point is connected to each other. Besides,
interpretation will also be given after each analyzed item..
Finally, based on the analysis of the data, the researcher tried to summarize the research
findings, draw conclusions from the findings and suggest a few recommendations

26

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter presents the results of data gathered through document analysis, open-ended
questionnaire and classroom observation from teachers and students. Paragraph written by
students and discusses them thematically to answer the research questions raised in chapter
one. The analysis of the data from all instruments has been carried out in an integrative way
based on the major themes and sub themes of the study. The presentation falls into three main
sections. The first section deals with students paragraph writing problems (problem of
paragraph unity, problem of paragraph organization, problem of paragraph development,
grammar problem, , punctuation problem, capitalization problem and spelling problem). The
second section discuses causes of students EFL paragraph writing problems and the third and
the last section focuses on EFL teachers attempt to help students in overcoming the problems..

4.1. Students Paragraph Writing Problems

In this section, Paragraphs written by sample students were analyzed to identify the problems
students faced during paragraph writing. All categories of paragraph writing problems are
discussed and analyzed in appropriate contexts. Table 1 gives summery of students paragraph
writing problems taken from paragraphs written by sample students.
Table 1 Features of Student Paragraph Writing Problems
No

Categories of the problems

Total Errors in 42 paragraphs

Lack of Unity in the Paragraph

40 Paragraphs

Poor Organization

All 42 Paragraphs

Problem of Paragraph Development

All 42 Paragraphs

Grammar Problem

210

Punctuation Problem

134

Capitalization Problem

126

Spelling Problem

168

27
The results presented in table (1) show that the students have problem of organization; problem of

paragraph development, disunity, grammar problem, spelling problem, punctuation problem

and capitalization problem. All 42 paragraphs written by sample students have disorganized
sentences with lack of adequacy. In addition, students paragraphs suffered from grammatical
accuracy. This indicated that students have major difficulties in applying features of good
paragraph in their paragraph writing tasks. It is good to see the paragraph written by S30.
Khat chewing is not good. khat has disadvantage on human beings. Many people
love khat because increased his ability. But that is not for all times. After chewing
stop that person retarned on his first persanality. Smok cigaret also come with
khat. after finishing chewing people go to dirink. Chewing Khat only no problem.
but smok cigaret and dirinking and chewing all has big problem. Let I mention
advantage of khat, in our village many farmars has many khat. they sold and
recive money. additional advantage
The efforts made by this student to compose a paragraph were good. However, the absence of
many elements of paragraph that should be added affected his effort. As can be seen from the
above, the misuse of features of good paragraph such as correct sentence structure, paragraph
unity, spelling, capitalization, proper punctuation, flow of ideas among the sentences create
difficulty to understand the intended meaning of the text. For example, the topic sentence and
other supportive sentences are not clearly stated. Cohesive devices, which enable one to keep
logical order of supportive sentences / flow of ideas, are not appropriately used in the
paragraph. In addition, many words spelt wrongly. Words such as retarned, persanality, Smok
cigaret, farmars, and recive are words spelt wrongly. Moreover, repeations of words,
problems of subject-verb agreement, problem of tense and wrong pronoun are common
features of this paragraph.
To seek further clarification about the students difficulty to apply components of paragraph
writing, teachers and students were asked open ended question. Concerning the problems, all
the informants stated that students faced big challenges in writing paragraph. Regarding this
issue, all sample teachers agreed that students have a lot of problems in writing English
paragraph.

28

One of four sample teachers (T3) said,

learners face difficulties in producing meaningful sentences in their paragraph.
These difficulties are difficulty in writing coherent and unified paragraph. In
addition, they have problems of writing structurally correct sentences, correct
English spelling, problem in using capital letter and using appropriate
punctuation.
Another teacher expresses her views on students paragraph writing problems.
I always get a chance to mark a few students exercise book. Their written
paragraphs indicate that students have serious problem regarding to writing
paragraph. Most of the students cannot write meaningful sentences. Addition of
unnecessary ideas and omission of important points are common in their text.
Punctuation, spelling and capitalization are the area of their weakness.
(OQ: T4)
On their part, the teachers gave detailed elaboration about the problems indicated above when
they filled open ended question. Though all the respondents stated grammar, spelling,
punctuation, capitalization and mixing ideas as the main problems, they did not appreciate
coherence and paragraph development of students in their paragraph writing.
In the same way, the students were also asked the same open ended question about their
problems in writing good paragraph. Majority of the students consider writing as the most
difficult activity which cannot be achieved. One student said, I have many problems.
Starting from grammar the one I always get good score during exam but in writing I faced
difficulty. In short writing a paragraph is difficult for me. (OQ: S18) In addition, other
student also expresses his problem in writing paragraph as follow:
I face problems in connecting one sentence with the other because grammatical
mistakes affect my expression in writing. In addition, I am often confused in the
use of punctuation and spelling.(OQ:11)

29

According to this respondent, grammar errors affect the coherence of his paragraph.
Furthermore, lack of knowledge of punctuation and capitalization rules make confusion in his
writing. Overall, one can say that the students have serious problems in applying features of
good writing when they write paragraph.
4.1.1. Lack of Unity in the Paragraph
The unity of a paragraph is derived from a controlling idea around which the paragraph is
organized. A paragraph that lacks unity jumps from idea to idea, topic to topic, with no clear
sense of purpose. Creating a unified paragraph is another serious problem that is found in the
students paragraph. It seems that students ideas about the topic are good. They understood
the topic and wrote many sentences. However, when they compose their paragraph, almost
all targeted participants repeatedly mixed a lot ideas in the paragraphs examined in this paper.
Most of the sentences in the paragraph do not wholly support the topic sentence. Instead of
only writing about the advantage and disadvantage of khat they wrote about other drugs. For
instance, the paragraph written by S2:
Khat has many advantage and disadvantage. from The advantage of chat, it is good
for weedding and death. Another effect of chat is for salf relax. It increase income of
The country. most of eastern part of our country recive big income from . if you chew
chat you can finish some work in short time. Khat and coffee are the same. People eat
khat and coffee in the moring and afternoon. If you addicted to khat and coffee This
means you become energized. But khat and alcohol are not the same. again
(additionally) another advantage of chat is for shelter or building and For
beautifulness of the environment. Disadvantage of khat is not good for preginant
women. Addicted person do not work without khat.
It seems that the student intended to write about the advantage of khat during wedding
ceremony and funeral gathering. In addition, khat for self relax. And the following two
sentences explain accordingly how khat benefits the country and why people use khat.
However, the fifth and sixth sentences suddenly changed its direction, beginning to show the
relation between khat and coffee, and khat and alcohol which appear as a new idea or topic.
These sentences have no relation to the controlling idea specified by the topic sentence that

30

appeared at the beginning of the paragraph, thus causing the paragraph to break apart. In
addition, S7 wrote the following paragraph.
Chewing Khat is a source of happiness. It has speed up the activity of our body
especially our norvious system. There are different drugs in the world which drugs
can be classified legal drugs and Illegal drug . Both drugs are controlled the activity
of our body. They have contain different chemicals w/c affected our body. For
example Domestic drugs in Ethiopia are from tobacco alcohols and khats etc. Chat
has contain chemicals w/c increase the activity of our body. It has not advantage,
but It has many disadvantages. It affect economy. It has affected the use of our times
and it has affected our work and so on. khat is not good for our life.
In the above paragraph there is insertion of unrelated ideas into the paragraph. This means the
write used irrelevant ideas. Accordingly, sentences three and four do not relate with the topic
sentence given. So generally the paragraph covered three ideas, which were not strung
together by topic sentence of the paragraph. The paragraph thus lack unity, which could be
strengthened by either giving a topic sentence to cover the three ideas within the paragraph, or
developing only one of the three ideas, leaving the other two to be developed in new
paragraphs.
Disunity refers to students inability to address one main only idea in the paragraph and
writing sentences which are irrelevant to the topic sentence. Teachers and students responses
to the open ended question indicated that students have different problems in producing a
unified paragraph. Most of the time students worry about producing many sentences in their
paragraph. Concerning this, one respondent pointed out as, writing unified paragraph is
difficult for students. When they write a paragraph, most of them think of quantity rather than
quality. (OQ: T4) This means students look after writing many sentences. Another teacher
has different view. Even though his students have difficulty in writing unified paragraph, he
gave priority to producing many sentences.

31

He said,
Both are (unity and paragraph development) area of difficult for students.
However, I give attention to sentence level and I encourage students to produce as
many sentences as they can because later they will learn and sort out irrelevant
ideas from their paragraph(OQ: T3)
According to this teacher, he identified that his students have problems of unity and paragraph
development but giving attention to sentence level problems should come first and students
will learn how to write unified paragraph gradually. This shows that the teacher concentrated
on one or two components of good paragraph. Thus, the students missed the opportunity to
seek practice to write unified paragraph. As a result, the learners are likely to give less
attention to paragraph unity.
Similarly, students response to the same question in the open ended question implied that
students have problem of creating a unified paragraph. For example, one student suggested as
When I write a paragraph, I start writing many sentences about two or more different ideas at
once instead of writing only about the topic sentence this is because I simply write every idea
I think of without self edit. Beside, our teacher gives more attention to grammar. (OQ: S6)
As such, the students seemed to have much difficulty in maintaining the unity of paragraphs
in English writing. They might start the paragraph quite well, with a good topic sentence at
the beginning, as shown above S2., Nevertheless, this good beginning as the writing
continued, the topic sentence seemed to lose control gradually, more less related ideas crept
in, finally diverting from the controlling idea. It almost seemed that once the topic sentence
was out of sight (beyond certain numbers of sentences), the controlling idea was out of the
writers mind too (the topic sentence was totally forgotten). Another problem about paragraph
unity common in the students English writing was that the ideas were indeed related
somehow, but due to the lack of a controlling topic sentence, the ideas scattered around
loosely, thus damaging the unity of the paragraph.

32

4.1.2. Poor Organization

Organization is one of the serious problem areas that noticed in the students paragraphs.
Writing coherently is the first organizational problem that Bedeno Secondary students
encounter in their paragraph writing. Students had difficulty in presenting materials in a
logically organized and coherent manner. The result gained from written paragraphs of
students under study indicated that students organization problem had two forms: illogical
organization of ideas or thoughts in the paragraph and the misuses of cohesive markers. As a
result, students actual written performance is far from being well organized, as illustrated by
the following one example
Khat in our country has advantage and disadvantage. The advantage of khat it
increases social life between the societies. People need alcohol after they finished
chewing. This linked to unprotected sex. It is a means of giving and take different
information.. People used khat as income generating by seling khat. When two
people or three people chew khat together they can easily exchange different
information. If we see the disadvantage of khat affectd our health economy and our
time. People spend always a lot of money to buy khat. They use that khat to
encourage there friends when someone died ( S12)
In the above paragraph, the flow of idea from one sentence to another sentence is not smooth
and the sentences are not interrelated. This means there is information that needs to be
rearranged in order to improve the organizational problem for its coherence. For example
third and forth sentences are not followed by fifth sentence since the writer is explaining
about the advantage. Sixth and seventh Sentences are also placed in a wrong place. Besides,
the ideas of the remaining sentences are not related to one another. Students tended to write
around the topic but their writing responses looked like a serious of separate sentences within
the paragraph. They were just listing points and the appropriate connections between them
were often missing. As a result, there is no smooth relationship among sentences in their
paragraphs.
Accordingly, both teachers and students were asked about students performance on
organizing ability in their paragraph writing activities. Thus, the respondents expressed that

33

most of the students paragraph lack cohesion and coherence. Concerning this, one respondent
suggested that students face problem in writing topic sentence. Developing supportive
sentences from topic is more problematic. In addition, they do not use cohesive ties. (OQ:
T3) This means students are unable to create topic sentence which helps them to drive
supportive sentences from it. Besides, the absence of cohesive ties makes their paragraphs
disorganized.

In the same way, students response to open ended questionnaire indicated that students
found difficulty in organizing their paragraph. One student said, Since I cannot write many
sentences in my paragraph because of vocabulary problem I have, I do not worry about
putting ideas according to their logical order. I am worry about vocabulary problem I have
which blocked me to write many sentences in my paragraph.(OQ:S28) This students
difficulties basically emanates from lack of sufficient knowledge of coherence and cohesion
which mainly emerges from lack of vocabulary and sufficient practice on these features of
effective paragraph writing. The results also revealed that the students with poor organization
ability could not effectively put their ideas into paragraph and they believed that had problems
in adding new ideas to their paragraph after writing two or three sentences. One of the
respondent comments evidenced his inability in organizing his writing into paragraph: I have
some ideas when I write. I cannot write them in paragraph. I write the first sentence and I
think a lot it is very difficult to add. (OQ: S25) The relative lack of attention to overall
organization may result from their lack of second language proficiency in general and L2
writing proficiency in particular. Probably the students with low writing ability only focus on
word-level and sentence-level problems, and are not able to consider the paragraph
organization.

In general the result obtained from document analysis and open ended questionnaire indicated
that learners produced as many sentences as they could but the problem is problem of
identifying the relevant sentences and arrange them logically using different connecters in
their paragraphs. These create incoherent paragraphs. Their ideas do not move from one to the
next; hence, there is no logical transition among their sentences which are not sticked together
and are isolated from each other as well.

34

4.1.3. Problem of Paragraph development

Any successful and effective paragraph should go beyond organizing and unified whole. It
should be fully developed without cracks, inconsistence, and irrelevant support so that the
writer can address his/her assumptions, evidences, and reasoning he/she uses in his/her
paragraph. However, constructing successfully developed paragraph is one of the difficulties
EFL learners have encountered. To detect such difficulties, students were given a topic on
The advantage and disadvantage of khat and, told to construct a successful paragraph as
much as possible. Accordingly, their difficulties in writing adequately developed paragraph
was analyzed based on the criteria formulated by Engines, (1994) which emphasizes that
adequately developed paragraph comprises appropriate, accurate, and clear language, specific
purpose, but various elements of development. Besides, the paragraph analysis was made
based on the back ground information given for the students and the type of genre to be
followed by the students to adequately develop their paragraph. Accordingly, they were given
supportive information about economical, social and personal advantage and disadvantage of
khat. To this effect, the students were expected to develop their paragraph adequately.
However, the result obtained from students paragraph analysis provides that most of the
students (42) were unable to achieve adequacy which is vital element of any effective
paragraph. Students paragraph included no explanations and examples to support the points
that the learners made in their paragraph For example, the paragraph written by S:17 shown as
follows:
Khat is comman in Harar. All people eat chat. Khat give power. Khat have littile
advantage but many disadvantage. Khat farmars get money. when father and
mother eat chat children practice eating chat. This is advantage. It bloked our
appetate. When khat is expensive people spend money. This is also disadvantage.
Other advantage when people eat khat create happy. when someone hungry or
fight with other person when he eat khat he can escape from that problem.

What can be observed from the above extract taken from sample student, the paragraph was
constructed with simple sentences. In addition, the student tried to develop based on the
background given for him. Somewhat the flow of the ideas in his paragraph is also good.

35

However, the paragraph does not explain the writers purpose adequately using appropriate
language content. The sentences were not strongly tied and arranged logically. The paragraph
was not started with effective topic sentence and expanded with relevant supportive details.
More than these, it was not developed with elements of adequacy. For example the respondent
said, khat give power. then he suddenly moved to another point without more in terms of
how? response. In addition, in sentence (4) the respondent said, khat farmers get money.
Up on reading this sentence, readers probably expect to read how khat farmers get money and
how to achieve that. However, nothing like this could be found thereafter. Thus, the
respondent failed to provide sufficient supporting details for the topic in this paragraph.
In relation to this, teachers were asked and one respondent said, Students paragraphs are
not clear. It lacks sufficient support of ideas. They cannot give enough explanation to the
topic.(OQ: T1) In addition, students also responded to open ended question that due to
limited English vocabulary and grammar, students are unable to develop their ideas well. In
many cases, important ideas are missing from their paragraph. In some cases the students
paragraph provided much other information in appropriate to the topic.
In general, the results of sample paragraphs written by sample students indicated that lack of
details and examples in developing paragraph were common problems among the students.
This difficulty of developing paragraph is associated with students lack of adequate
vocabulary as teachers and students responded in open ended questions.
4.1.4. Grammar Problem
All the grammar errors found in all paragraphs were analyzed and marked to see how many
errors they made based on the various aspects of grammar structure. Accordingly table 2
depicts the total number of error identified in the students paragraphs.

36

Table 2: Total number of ungrammaticalities found in the students paragraph

No

Categories of the problem

Total errors in
42 paragraphs

Subject-verb agreement

128

Word choice

286

Tense

68

Omission of third person (s)

58

Article

180

Pronouns

158

Repetition of words

144

Passive

97

Using Subject Pronoun instead of

42

Possessive Adjective
10

Omission of verb to be

76

11

Verb form

46

As can clearly be seen from the data in table 2, word choice is the most frequent error made
by the students and article, pronouns and repetition of words take their rank from third to
fourth position respectively. Besides, subject-verb agreement, passive and omission of verb to
be take middle position. Whereas tense, omission of third person, verb form and using subject
pronoun instead of possessive adjective take the low bottom.
Grammatical ability is one of the most essential components in communicating through
writing. This can be true when students use the right structure to produce sentences. However,
analysis of students writing samples showed that students had problems with grammar. This
analysis of students grammar problems in this study was made based on the frame works of
charuporn, (2001) and Hongue,(2009) which state that effectively developed paragraph or any
text must fulfill at least features such as: subject-verb agreement, tense forms, appropriate
voices, article, preposition, mechanics, spelling, and word choice. Accordingly, the
participants were assigned to write a paragraph which was based on the course book assigned

37

for grade 10, on the topic The advantage and disadvantage of Khat? The collected
paragraphs were analyzed sentence by sentence in order to detect grammatical difficulties
made by sample students. For example, it could be evident to look the sample paragraph
written by S:22
Khat grown in many place. Khat have many negative side. People which eat khat do
not eat food, they eat in the morning. after that no food becouse of khat programm.
People somke cigara and shisha . This is bad habit. It affect our economy and our
body.. A students eat khat to improve his mental performance during exam.
Another negative side of khat is it was destiroyed our baget. The positive side is
good for relationship.
Therefore, the observed ungrammaticalities were listed into the following categories as shown
in the bellow table in which an example for each inaccuracy has been provided.
Table: 3 Observed Ungrammaticalities in the paragraph written by S22

No

Grammatical category

Ungrammaticality

Omission of verb to be

Khat grown.

Subject-verb agreement

Khat have.

Relative pronoun

Which

Article

A students

Example

Khat grown in many place.

Khat have many negative side.
People which eat khat..
A students eat khat to
improve

Omission of third person (s)

It affect..

It affect our economy and

our body.

Possessive Adjective

improve his

A students eat khat to

improve his mental

Passive

it was destiroyed..

Khat is it was destiroyed..

Based on the analysis made above, the paragraph written by this student was poorly
developed and suffered from grammatical inaccuracy. Hence, the result of this paragraph

38

analysis indicated that students paragraph was constructed with full of fragment. So that it
has problems such as:

verb to be, relative pronoun, article, tense, verb form, sentence

structure, subject-verb agreement, spelling, capitalization, run-on sentence and repetition of

words. Therefore, this grammatical inaccuracy revealed that students have great difficulties in
linguistic competence to write effective paragraph which in turn can affect the readers
understanding of the message. Understanding their written paragraphs becomes very difficult
as they are dominated by problem of grammar.

Both teachers and students responses to open-ended question indicated that students are
unable to write a short paragraph without a lot of grammatical errors. They cant express their
ideas in the context when they are required to write. For example a number of students
reported that they have difficulty in grammar usage. I dont know how to write sentences
using correct grammar in paragraph though I know some grammar rules, but I find it difficult
to apply these rules in to practice while our teacher gives us writing tasks. (OQ: S24,S25,
S27,S29, S30, S31, S32, S33, S41,) Other student declared that One of the difficulties I have
in writing paragraph is writing grammatically correct sentences, the most challenging activity
for me. Most of the time I try to write simple sentence fearing grammar mistake, but I repeat
the same mistake. (OQ: S19). To support this, as Mojica, (2010) delineated that grammar
and vocabulary problems were perceived by EFL learners sentences as the top most writing
difficulties.

Similarly, three teachers expressed that students have serious grammatical problems in
paragraph writing. For example, A common deficiency in the students writing is
grammatical problems. They always write ungrammatical sentences without any pause or
stops. (OQ: T1, T3, and T4). In addition, T2 responded as follow

Grammar is one of a

major problem area of most of my students. Although they also study grammar as a separate
lesson, but they do not relate it once they write which is a big problem. It seems that, Students
are encouraged to memories what they study rather than engage in critical and creative
thinking processes, the thing which might hinder them from writing English paragraph
adequately. From this one can realize that the common problem students have is students used
to learn grammar structures as an end rather than a means of communication. This problem

39

seems to be resulted because grammatical accuracy has been taught in discrete sentence
structure than in real communicative activities at discourse level. As a result, most of
students paragraph lacks correct Grammar.
4.1.5. Punctuation Problem
Punctuation is one of the most important aspects of language. Without it writing looks
nonsense and meaningless. Lacking of the most common forms of punctuation such as
apostrophe, (), the comma (,), the exclamation mark (!), the full-stop (.), and the question
mark (?) can cause a confusion of the reader and that may lead to a wrong interpretation. This
can be linked with Alexander L. Terego (2000), who sees that an error in punctuation can
render a sentence either meaningless or meaning something the writer did not intend.
Moreover using a proper punctuation helps the writer to present higher ideas clearly and
accurately by showing where one thought ends and another begins. It also shows relationships
between the ideas in the topic. Students tried to state their ideas about the advantage and
disadvantage of khat. However, because of the absence of appropriate punctuation marks,
their writings seem to indicate that these students do not understand how to use the
punctuation marks correctly in conveying information accurately and effectively.
Table 4 Observed Punctuation Problems in Students Paragraphs
No

Categories of the problems

Errors In 42 Paragraphs

Using Full stop instead of Comma

43

Using Comma instead of Full Stop

36

Problem of Apostrophe

Problem of Question mark

As it is noticed in the above table, students have confusion in using comma, full stop and
apostrophe while wring paragraph. As it is seen in the above table, (Table 4) students used 43
full sops wrongly when they were expected to use commas and 36 commas also used instead
of full stops. This result indicate that sample students have the problem of applying
appropriate punctuation marks in the right place during paragraph writing tasks. Moreover,

40

the paragraph written by another student was analyzed to see punctuation problems of
students paragraph writing.
The advantage of khat is many it create free talk between groups. Khat program is a
good chance to solve social problem. like Economic problems. Conflict between
relatives. Conflict between friends. Khat is medisin for many disese, disadvantage of
khat. The relationship of family is small after chewing chat no speaking between
family. When chewing khat the color of teeth is change. No good breath. In addition
why farmars graw khat. Because they collect and sell.. (S:27 )
The writer tried to produce many sentences based on background information and keep the
unit of his paragraph. However, he failed in using common punctuation marks. For example,
the first sentence should end after the word many and full stop is important. In addition, full
stops are placed in a wrong place, since Economic problems and Conflict between relatives
are not complete sentences. As a result, comma is necessary to separate the above phrases. On
the other hand, comma is placed in a wrong place after the word disese and forth sentence
can be divided into two using full stop after the word chat and new sentence begins with the
word No. Similarly, fifth sentence needs comma after time clause When chewing khat.
Finally, the last sentence which begins with expression of addition In addition should follow
comma and then question mark after the word khat.
In line with this, all the teachers (4) showed that their students have punctuation problems.
For example one respondent said, Punctuation is one of the problems my students face while
writing paragraph. They cannot use appropriate punctuation in the appropriate place. This is,
because they consider punctuation of little importance which does not affect their
writing.(OQ: T1)

Some students, according to document analysis result used commas

instead of full stops and full stops instead of commas. They do not care. Other students
neither use commas nor do full stops and they leave it. Similarly, students were asked the
same open ended question that they underestimate the value of punctuation as they said, I do
not worry about punctuation when I write. For example I know full stop can be used at the
end of statement but when I start writing I do not bother about it. (OQ: S17, S20, S38,S40)
When observing T2 and T3s writing lessons, separate sentences were taken from students

41

work and presented on the blackboard. Then both teachers had given some comments about
grammar and spelling mistakes that students made. After that they told the rest students to
give self correction by themselves. On the other hand, T1 took two students exercises those
who finished writing and wrote on the board. Then he encouraged the class to comment on it.
A few students raised their hands and commented on it. In their comment they never said
about punctuations. The teacher spent most of his time talking about indentation problem,
spelling mistake and correcting grammar problems with the class. This ways of giving
feedback to students written task may not effective as the majority of the students were left
without feedback.

In general, the above problems may be said to arise as a result of low attention was given to
punctuation from both teachers and students. In addition, lack of background knowledge
about punctuation usage from Students side leads to weakness in applying the necessary
punctuation marks in their paragraph.
4.1.6. Capitalization Problem
Capitalization is another problem of

Bedeno Secondary School students. According to

document analysis result many students use capital letters instead of small letters and vice
versa. In addition, using small letters at the beginning of a new paragraph and using capital
letters in the middle of sentences are typical examples noted in the paragraphs written by
sample students.
Table 5 Observed Capitalization Problems in Students Paragraphs
No

Categories of the problems

Errors In 42 Paragraphs

Using Capital letter instead of Small letter

40

Using Small letter instead of Capital letter

67

Using Capital within words

19

As can be seen from the above table, using small letter instead of capital letter takes the first
rank and using capital letter instead of small letter takes the second rank, whereas using
capital letters within words takes the last rank. This result indicates that students have

42

problem of using capitalization. In addition, It is good to see another students paragraph.

The following is typical example.
Chat is the one live in harar. therefore It is important For reactive your body.
The people that chew chat is complete Jop quicley or complete short period of
time . chat is important to be study longer time. Disadvantage of chat is many.
The most eFfects of chat is dead your cell. reduce your economy. You can see
each effects of chat that adapt every time is not work without chat . IT is time
killer. therefor all people stop chewing chat. (S:24)

As can be observed from the above paragraph, the student made good effort in composing her
paragraph. She understood the topic and produced sentences accordingly in her paragraph.
However, she has problem in using capitalization. For example, In the first line, the first letter
of the word harar should be capital since it is noun. After full stop, the first letter of second
sentence should begin with capital and followed by comma. Beside, using capital letters
without any reason is not important but capital letters are used in the second sentence (For),
third sentence (Jop), sixth sentence (eFfects) and ninth sentence (IT). The first letter or the
second letter or the whole letters within the word of the above words is inappropriately
capitalized in the text. As the researcher observed, similar problems were repeated. Language
problems like fragment sentence and using inconsistent words are also another problem
observed.

Sample teachers were asked in the open ended question about capitalization problems of
students in paragraph writing they know based on their experience. Regarding this, all
respondents suggested that capitalization is not appropriately used. According to them:
Many students use capital letter everywhere. They have bad habit. For example,
they use to write all their letters and words or within words capital letters. On the
other hand, when they are expected to use capital letter at the beginning of a
sentence, they forget and use small letter. This is the most difficult challenge they
face to overcome. (OQ:T1,T2,T3,T 4)

43

All of the teachers suggested that students have serious problems to use appropriate word
capitalizations at their right place because of bad practice. In line with this, one student point
out as, I have the habit of writing capital letters. When I start writing, I am not aware of
doing that. Sometimes my handwriting has its own problem. As Hilemariam (2011) argues
on the idea that students sometimes become careless and commit errors when they tend to
write through English language due to their limited knowledge of the language.

From this discussion, one can infer that students have problem of the awareness about the
proper use of capital letter in a paragraph. Failure to use writing norms appropriately may
partly be due to bad habit and handwriting of students. However, knowing to use appropriate
word capitalization, spelling and punctuation in writing activities helps one to be effective in
his/her written communication.
4.1.7. Spelling Problem
Using wrong spelling is another problem noted in this study. It ranks fifth in hierarchy. This
indicates that most of the students suffer a lot of difficulties when dealing with writing letters
within words which have negative impact on their performance in writing paragraph .
Table 6 Spelling Problems Observed in Students Paragraphs
No

Categories of the Problems

Total Errors in 42
Paragraphs

Adding Letter/s

94

Missed Letter/s

42

As indicated in Table 6, the analysis of students paragraphs show that 94 words were spelt
wrongly. This means students added unnecessary letter/s by breaking English rules. In
addition, 42 words were spelt wrongly by missing letter/s. This shows that students have
problem in writing correct English words.

44

For example, the results of the students paragraph analysis, especially, in the paragraph
written by S3, one can observe many spelling errors.
Khat is gireen plant. People use khat during fresh it is stimulant. Khat eating
person will face teeth and gam disese. He work & talk quickly when he eat chat.
People collect khat leves in one place. They chew Daily. These is wasting time. It
is not good. smoking cigaret is also bad when they eat khat. Listning music is
good.
As it observed the above paragraph has many spelling problems. For example, the following
words are spelt wrongly as noted in the paragraph.

Table 7 Words that are spelt wrongly in the Paragraph Written by S3

Correct

Written as

Not Correct

Green

Written as

Gireen

Gum

Written as

Gam

Disease

Written as

Disese

Leaves

Written as

Leves

This

Written as

These

Cigarette

Written as

Cigarete

Listening

Written as

Lisning

As can be seen above, words are written missing one or two letters. The sources of these
problems seem students carelessness as one respondent suggested the following:
My students have biggest problem when they write English words. Sometimes they
miss letter(s). Other times doubled the letters by breaking spelling rules. However, I
always write correct spelling on the board whenever they make mistake with clear
handwriting but they do not care. They make the same mistake in the next writing
task. I think this is because of mother tongue language and not giving attention.
(OQ: T2)

45

Therefore, the result obtained from all instruments: document analysis, open ended
questionnaire and observation indicate that even though attention was given to spelling
problem during feedback, still grade ten students were unable to spell English words
correctly. In the same way, students responses to open ended question reflected that students
encountered difficulty to spell English words. Therefore, one of the respondents claimed that:
I always face difficulty in spelling English words. I try to write as I pronounce the
words but that is not always correct because there are different rules between Afan
Oromo and English which create confusion on me. I refer my dictionary for correct
spelling, but I cannot solve my problem. This is the reason why I hesitate to write
when writing activity is given by our teacher.(OQ:S5)
To support this, as Moats(2000), said poor spellers often have low motivation to write. In
general, for EFL students, applying correct spelling rules during paragraph writing could be
difficult. This is because of lack of knowledge of how to spell English words and influence
from mother tongue language as Mihiretu, M. and Melkamu, D. (2011) state that English,
unlike Ethiopian languages, (Amharic, Oromo, etc), does not have the same form, both in
written and spoken form to write words. This means in Ethiopian languages, a person who
knows how to write sounds can write any word said to him without a mistake. Therefore,
because of the influence of mother tongue interference, our students try to write English
words as the words are pronounced and commit spelling errors in their written
communications.

4.2. Causes for Students Problems in EFL Paragraph Writing

The main aim of this study was to assess students EFL paragraph writing problems. The
students writing difficulties, however, could be connected to various factors and this study
also intended to obtain data if there were causes which could affect the achievement of
students effective paragraph writing. Therefore ,the major factors which trigger the
difficulties of effective paragraph writing were seen from two perspectives; the students and
the teachers related factors .To this effect, four English language teachers were asked open
ended questions to reflect on their experiences regarding the problems that students
encountered while paragraph writing. Accordingly, the four teachers responded that the

46

challenging matter for students was that how to begin writing, the strategies to follow,
organizing ideas and expressing their ideas using an appropriate language (T1, T2, T3).In
addition, T1andT4 added that writing anxiety with generating and organizing ideas, shortage
of vocabulary, lack of practice and teachers way of giving feedback are some of the major
sources of students writing difficulties.

4.2.1. Student Related Factors

Based on English language teachers and students responses the findings of the current
research portrayed that there are some factors related to students problems in EFL paragraph
writing. This is to mean that there are problems which are basically related to students
themselves. Some of these factors include; lack of knowledge of strategic use, students
writing apprehension, shortage of vocabulary and lack of regular practice.
4.2.1.1. Lack of knowledge of strategic use
Strategic use

can be viewed as the most difficulty EFL learners could not achieve in

paragraph writing due to lack the necessary knowledge. This is due to the fact that writing a
successful paragraph demands knowledge of different stages of development of a paragraph.
These seven stages of paragraph development comprises thinking, brainstorming, plan draft,
check, rewrite, and proofread through which EFL learners practice the writing process. But,
when it was observed, students could not use strategies of writing which composing a
paragraph due to lack of knowledge. Regarding this, the teachers were asked about causes of
students difficulties in writing paragraph. According to the respondents,
Students do not use the necessary steps in writing effective paragraph. For
example, they do not use thinking and planning stages effectively. As a result, they put
a lot of ideas. Some ideas are not quite relevant. They are unable to choose relevant
ideas to make coherent paragraph. In addition, they do not proofread and revise their
work. As a result, their paragraphs full of grammar, punctuation, capitalization and
spelling errors which makes their paragraphs very boring.(OQ: T3)

47

As mentioned by (T3) above, even though writing down every idea they think of is not bad,
students have to find the most important points to address during, for example, brainstorming
stage. However, as all (4) teachers responded to open ended questions, students lack
knowledge of how to put stages/ strategies in paragraph writing. In addition, T1 suggested as
follow, A big matter was that how to begin writing, and some students could spend a whole
lesson thinking of what and how to write. In the same way, students also mentioned that
they had lack of strategic use. For example, I want to write inside or outside classroom when
a writing activity is given. However, no sooner than start writing, I begun to worry about my
problems of how to begin what do next, and how to come up with the end product of a given
paragraph. Consequently, I give up writing and look for my teachers help. (OQ; S3, S7,
S13, S16, S22,)
When observing the teachers lessons, three of the four teachers were seen walking around
without helping students with their writing process. All teachers wrote all stages governed for
good writing on the blackboard and left the students to write but learners did not give
attention. Teachers should have been explaining the stages of writing to their students, and
playing a valuable part in raising awareness of the process of composing paragraph by
explaining the stages of writing instead of leaving students without any support. This is,
because, as Hedge (2005) stated that teachers efforts can be fruitful if only they involve their
students in the process by structuring activities that take account of these stages. Otherwise,
failure to achieve these strategic uses could strongly affect students performance on
producing successful paragraph. Therefore, teachers could provide them guide lines on the
strategies of producing effective paragraph as what the students should practice during
thinking, brainstorming, planning, drafting, checking, rewriting and proofread stages.
4.2.1.2. Students writing apprehension

As it was discussed in section two, apprehension is the feeling of being worried about
something. With regard to writing, it can be defined as the fear of writing process. In the same
vein, learners could be affected with the understanding of the fact that writing anxiety
negatively affects their writing performance. The data from both teachers and students open
ended question showed that students feel anxious while writing task is given by language

48

teachers. As sample students responded to open ended question that they felt intimidate while
try to write a paragraph or to accomplish any writing activities. (OQ: S5, OQ: S11, OQ: S12,
OQ: S14, OQ: S18) In addition, student 26 stated causes of her anxiety during writing as
follow:
I always think and gather information in Afan Oromo, then translate it to English
which I think is the wrong way. So, this problem is really increased my
apprehension of writing because once you translate from Afan Oromo to English,
you will get a lot of mistakes, misunderstanding the ideas, wrong grammar. Time
is also against me.
This means, this student is worried about the strategy she applied when she starts brain
storming and planning. Thinking and gathering information in her native language and try to
translate that data in to English leads to different errors. This might be the consequence of fear
to see her errors. In addition, she gets very tense when she writes under time pressure. Hence,
from this elaboration, one can deduce that shortage of knowledge of paragraph organization;
generating ideas; vocabulary limit and appropriate language are some of the reasons that
contribute to students writing apprehension.
In addition, the teachers response to open ended question indicate that students feel anxious
when writing activities are given. As they said, this is due to shortage of vocabulary, which
resulted in problem of generating ideas in writing paragraph and lack of grammatical
knowledge. These problems make the students feel anxious to write because they do not want
to make mistake. Similarly, data from class observation indicated that the time English
language teachers provide for students to write a paragraph is very little. So, they may feel
worry when they have to write under time constraints. This means the sources of anxiety have
been detected from an individuals writing ability, the degree of preparation to complete the
writing, the fear of being assessed and judged of writing tasks. In general, writing anxiety
negatively affects writing performance of students.

49

4.2.1.3. Shortage of vocabulary

Another observed cause of students problem in paragraph writing was shortage of
vocabulary. According to both teachers and students informants to open ended question,
students found themselves using a limited number of words again and again. One reason for
the limited variety of words could be a difference between English and students mother
tongue language. This is because as one informant responded, the students think in their
mother tongue language whenever they want to write a paragraph in English.
Most of the time when writing activity is given, first I think in my native
language. This helps me to generate many ideas, even when familiar topic is
given by our teacher but I start facing problem when I try to change those ideas
to English because I do not know equivalent terms, so I stop writing.(OQ: S2)
Similarly, all teachers responded to open ended question that one factor for students weak in
paragraph writing is lack of vocabulary. They are not rich in vocabulary.
Students have serious problem regarding to vocabulary. Their choice of words is not
appropriate. You always see repeat ion of the same words in their paragraph and
they use the one in the place of another one which give very weak sentences in their
paragraph. Besides, when they write in any writing tasks they do not think in the
target language which caused loss of confidence; and interruptions during
participants written productions. (OQ: T2)

This result indicates that students have a lack of enough vocabulary to put their ideas in a
paragraph form. In addition, they like to use their mother tongue language during writing
activities. In relation with this, as literature has shown that lack of vocabulary is a common
source of writing difficulty among EFL students, especially those linguistic repertoire falls
short of their aspirations to express their ideas fully and is not sufficiently ample in terms of
vocabulary base and knowledge of grammatical and syntactic structures (Nanwani, 2009).
According to the above data both teachers and students mentioned that lack of vocabulary
which emerge from students not using the target language for thinking could affect their

50

performance in writing paragraph. In line with this as Rababah (2003), clarified that students
couldnt give voice to their thoughts because lack the adequate stock of vocabulary. This
leads to unmotivated to take part in writing tasks.
4.2.1.4. Lack of regular practice
The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill; it is usually learned. It must be
practiced and learned through experience. This means that, taking time over writing is
absolutely essential part of writing. Less practice of writing is another emerged cause of
students writing problem in this study. As learners have claimed through the questionnaires
and what the researcher has collected as evidence from the observation phases, he may assert
that learners poor achievement in writing is attributed to the lack of sufficient training and
practice. Almost most of the students mentioned that they never write outside the classroom
even for homework. One student said,
I think, the reason why I am weak in writing paragraph is I dont write after
classroom because it takes me long time and I cannot do it in the right way. So, I
avoid writing after the class even most of the times inside the classroom as
well(OQ: S23)
The above data indicated that the student does not practice writing because he does not take
long time over writing to practice and he feels that he cannot do it in the right way. As a
result, he stops writing. Similarly, all teacher participants suggested in open ended question
that the process of learning a foreign language implied a series of autonomous work and
practice. However, they acknowledged that they did not give students much time to practice.
I should have given them more practice of writing in the class but the majority
of learners do not practice paragraph writing either in the class or at home
through the whole academic year because what learners just do is to copy down
identical work from the best learners or they rely on their relatives to write their
homework.(OQ: T1)
As the teacher mentioned, he does not train students to practice writing in the class room
because of fear of students copy from each other. Generally, some of the reasons might

51

account for less practice in writing paragraph is writing paragraph is mainly regulated to a
homework activity. It is perhaps not surprising that writing often tends to be an out of class
activity. As another teacher said, Students take long time to write any writing activity. So, It
is difficult to cover one writing lesson in one class Therefore, I will be forced to shorten the
time that allowed for teaching writing and let students to finish the rest tasks as a
homework. Similar to the previous participant reflection, the teacher does not provide
students enough time to practice writing. He feels that class time often scarce to provide more
time to practice. In addition, homework is writing which can then be alone at the students
own pace. However, many studies have shown that providing extensive amount of time for
language is important, especially for teaching of writing skill. This is to mean that it provides
students with practice in its use. For example, Wallace et al., (2004) stated that the more
time students have to study the facts, a principle or practice a skill, the better they learn.
4.2.2. Teachers Related Factor
4.2.2.1. Teachers ways of giving feedback

Writing is an individual effort and skill, therefore, the teachers role is to share in the process
by offering constructive feedback as well as correcting errors. It is always helpful to have
different strategies when responding to errors found in students writing. However, the results
achieved from both teachers and students indicated that inadequate correction was being
given for the students error. Their teacher also focused on the grammatical problem of the
paragraph during correction and did not want to give written feedback for the correction. This
is because of shortage of time, fed up of the teacher and challenging of the task itself. The
teachers were asked open ended question and one responded stated that;
Assessing students exercise book during writing lesson takes much time. Therefore,
I do not assess all components of paragraph because I do not have time to do that.
Besides, all students cannot finish their tasks on the time. I usually focus on the
grammatical problem of the paragraph including clear handwriting, proper use of
lines in the paper. OQ:T1

52

As highlighted in the above quotes, the teacher seems to prefer to correct grammar and
paragraph convention. This is because of class time and students do not finish writing on time.
Thus, he does not assess all features of good paragraph. He focuses on selective mistakes that
are grammar problems. In similar way, T3 also stated that he gives writing tasks. However, he
does not give feedback properly because the time he has does not allow him to deal with the
work properly. In addition, T4 explained that she believed written errors should be treated in a
way which provokes students self-reaction or encourages peer correction.
Almost all of the students are poor at writing. Every time there is a grammar
problem, I pick it up. I show the work of one or two students to the whole class if they
have finished writing their paragraphs and I encourage students to give comment for
each other to react to their errors. This will help students to produce good sentences
in their paragraph and I believe that effective composing should begin from
constructing correct grammatical clauses and sentences.
According to this teacher, students always make grammar mistakes. The teacher concerns
with correcting grammar errors with consideration. According to her assumption, giving
feedback on grammar problems will help students to produce meaningful sentences during
paragraph writing task. As a result, she encourages pair or group feedback. However, during
her class observation the teacher did not apply what she said before. She did not use pair or
group feedback. The researcher observed that she had come back to the classroom with
corrected student papers. The papers were students written assignment, which the teacher had
taken with her for home correction. After returning a corrected paper to each student, she
selected grammatically incorrect sentences from two students writing and wrote them on a
blackboard. Then she pointed out each error as she discussed it with the class: errors of verb
tense, sentence structure, and spelling.

As can be seen above, the teacher participants tend to be preoccupied with grammar when
they provide feedback to students writing. However, as Zamel (1985) criticizes that teachers
overwhelmingly view themselves as merely language teachers rather than teaching writing.
This is because, students are led to think that writing means correct grammar and may neglect
or may not understand elements of good paragraph(Wang, 2010).

53

On the other hand, students were asked the same open ended question and responded that
their teacher always give feedback to one or two students. They do not use different
techniques to meet students need. One student stated, I have not gotten written feedback on
my work from my teacher as I finish writing late. The teacher used to work with one or two
students who raise their hands. As the rest of the class, she lives the rest of the class with no
comments.(OQ: S9) Furthermore, other respondents said, The teacher always generalizes
all the common problems on all the students in the class by marking one or two students
exercise book. This is not applicable to every student because our points of weakness are
different from each other. (OQ: S15, S21, S8) Despite their writing speed, students need
feedback from their teachers. They are aware of feedback is the most important. Black and
William (1998, as cited in Mc Arthur, et al., 2008) argued strongly that teachers need to give
feedback that gives each student a specific guidance on strengths and weaknesses. The
implication for teachers of writing is that they must use feedback alongside challenging goals.
In other words, receiving no feedback is a frustrating experience for learners.

In this discussion, the respondents seem to give less attention to organization, unity, adequacy
of a paragraph and punctuation and capitalization in the paragraph during the correction of the
students paragraph. In addition, as can be understood from data gathered, most of the
teachers did not use effective ways of responding students written work. Peer correction was
not given attention because of time consuming. As it is maintained by Harmer (2006b) that
correcting is important, but it can be time consuming . . . In addition, Mi (2009) outlines
that students experience through peer review valuable opportunities to improve their reading
and writing ability as they discuss issues as writing contents, organizational patters,
grammatical structures and appropriate word choice. Finally, the feedback provided for the
students focused on sentence structure and sometimes on spelling. Thus, teachers ways of
giving feedback could affect students paragraph writing practice.

4.3. Writing Strategies Employed by the Teachers and Students to

Overcome the Problems
According to class observation and open ended questionnaire results, it became clear that both
teachers and students acknowledged the use of few strategies to help them improve students

54

paragraph writing. All the teachers responded to open ended question no. 9 that giving most
writing activities as homework gives students more time and encourage students to practice
writing outside the classroom. One example is given by T1 as follow;
For most students the place to learn writing is in the classroom. Class time is
restricted to 40 minutes. Students cannot finish the papers I require of them
because they preferred to write in Afan Oromo language which is their mother
tongue because they believed they could express their ideas and thoughts faster
and easier than writing in English. As a result I do not have much time to use
different strategies rather than giving writing as homework.
As can be seen from the above data, classroom is the only place that students practice writing.
However, the strategy is used by students to produce ideas to their paragraph takes much time.
Therefore, the teacher does not have enough time to use different strategies. So, he gives
writing task as homework. To support this idea as Italo (1999:9) states that there seems to be
a general tendency among language teachers in Ethiopia to relegate writing to homework for
fear of the amount of work and time involved in correcting students writing because of the
large number of students in a class.
On the other hand, T2 said that students lack self confidence in writing. Therefore, he uses
the strategy to give confidence to students to practice simple sentences with correct grammar.
He said, Most of the times I encourage students to write grammatically correct simple
sentences in their paragraphs. This may help them to write a paragraph but students have low
motivation to writing ability.OQ: T2. This means students are not motivated to deal with
writing. This is, because as all teachers stated most of the students view writing as a difficult
skill and they have poor foundation. So, that they are not ready to take part in writing tasks.
Besides, most of the students mentioned that even though the teachers preferred students to
practice writing at home, they never write outside the classroom even for homework. One
student said that: I always try to write in the class room but I never write outside the class
room because I do not know how to do it and once I start to write, I lose ideas from my
mind.(OQ: S14) The difficulties of struggling writers are mostly strategic problems because
most of them are not aware of appropriate strategies needed for writing. As Hadley(2003)

55

argued, good writers show some evidence of planning or organizing before they sit down to
write the first draft. Then they rescan their writing to maintain a sense of the whole
composition (p.320).
While observing participants in the class, the teachers gave comments to one student who
tried to finish writing. He wrote sentences with grammar and spelling problems on the
blackboard and asked students to comment on. However, he did not get response from
students. This strategy of the teacher may not work to help other students as one informant
expressed that generalizing all the common problems on all the students in the class by
marking one or two students exercise bookthis is not fair as our points of weakness are
different from each other(OQ:S21) As a result, students need feedback from their teacher
while they are in the process to help them improve writing skills as one student said, I need
my teacher to see me whether I am on the right track and give me feedback on my work.
(OQ: S35)
In relation to this, students response to open ended question indicated that they did not
receive help from their teachers. One informant said, I do not know what to do to improve
my writing skill. My teacher did not teach me some strategies that could help me with
paragraph writing. Furthermore, other student said, Our teacher always depends on text
book. He is not ready even to invite us to produce our topic. OQ: S23 In fact teachers cannot
expect weak writers to improve simply by equipping them with the strategies of good writers.
However, as Harmer (2007b) stated "the main task of the teacher is to motivate and provoke
the students." This is, because as one student stated that, I do not have experience of doing
something which helps me to improve my writing. Besides, we are not motivated to practice
and improve our writing skill(OQ: S43) For this reason, teachers need to explore ways of
scaffolding students learning and using knowledge of language to guide them towards a
conscious understanding of target genres and the ways language creates meanings in context
(Hyland, 2003:21). Besides, during class observation the researcher observed that English
language teachers seemed to use jotting down some notes on the blackboard and let students
to write as a prewriting strategy. Even though that is a good beginning, teachers are expected
to use additional strategies to increase the amount of encouragement to students and give
students as much support as they need in the writing classes.

56

5. SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This section summarizes the overall process of the study. It includes conclusions drawn from
the findings of the study and recommendations of how to improve students paragraph writing
problems.

5.1. Summary
Writing paragraph is an important skill that has many benefits for the targeted learners in
terms of developing better language ability, offering a better opportunity for supporting the
students future career. As mentioned earlier, the main purpose of the study was to assess
students EFL paragraph writing problems with reference to grade 10 students at Bedeno
Secondary School in Eastern Hararge Zone of Oromia Regional State. The study focused on
assessing major problems that students face when they write EFL paragraph, identifying
causes for students problems in writing EFL paragraph, and exploring how English language
teachers attempt to help to help students in overcoming the problems.

For this study, descriptive research design was employed, and in trying to address these
issues, qualitative research method was used. In this study, four EFL teachers who taught
English in the aforementioned school were selected as a sample subject comprehensively and
50 grade 10 students were chosen as a sample through random sampling technique. In order to
achieve the objectives three data gathering tools were used. These were document analysis of
paragraphs written by students, open ended questionnaire for both English language teachers
and students, and classroom observation.

The study indicated that the students had a lot of problems in writing EFL paragraph. Their
paragraphs have problem of organization, unity, paragraph development, grammar,
punctuation, capitalization and spelling. The students problems in writing paragraph were
mainly attributed to students related factors like lack of knowledge of strategic use, students
writing apprehension, shortage of vocabulary and lack of regular practice and teachers
related factor include teachers ways of giving feedback. The findings again showed that

57

English teachers were not on the position of using different strategies to assist students to
write a good paragraph and their activities to help students to write a good paragraph were
inadequate.

5.2. Conclusions
On the basis of the findings, the following conclusions are drawn:

1.

There are some problems that Bedeno Secondary School EFL learners face, namely,
problem of organization like inappropriate and illogical arrangement of sentences and
poor flow of ideas; problem of unity because most of students paragraph starts to talk
about one issue and immediately moves to another issue without concluding the former
idea; problem of paragraph development because no explanation or illustration were
given in their paragraph to make the ideas clear; grammar, punctuation, capitalization
and spelling.

2.

As data from open ended questionnaire showed, most of the paragraph writing problems
seems to resulted from different causes. The causes are grouped into two: students
related factors and teachers related factors. Students are the most stake holders and
influential person to be engaged in writing activities. However, their engagement in
writing a good paragraph was hampered by various factors. So, students related causes
such as lack of knowledge of strategic use, students writing apprehension, shortage of
vocabulary and lack of regular practice. The teachers related cause includes teachers
ways of giving feedback may cause these challenges to exist. The other causes that
hinder the students paragraph ability were the students passiveness to learning writing
in general and paragraph writing in particular, the less attention given to the paragraph
teaching and learning by teachers and students respectively. In general the student
paragraphs were impacted due to such factors and problems.

3.

When teachers give feedback on writing exercises, they mainly focused on grammar, and
spelling forgetting correcting on organization of ideas, unity, paragraph development,

58

punctuation though they know that their students have problems organizations of ideas,
unity, paragraph development, punctuation when writing paragraph.

4.

The teachers are the most important and influential person to help students to write a
good paragraph. However, the findings of the study indicated that teachers did not play
key role in teaching of paragraph writing to improve students paragraph writing skill. It
is revealed that the teachers give little or no additional help in teaching paragraph. They
did not help the students by using different strategies.

5.3. Recommendation
On the basis of the findings and the conclusions drawn from them, the following
recommendations can be forwarded.

1. Effective paragraph Writing is a skill that needs continuous practice. Taking this in to
account, the students should practice writing a lot in the class room and outside the class.
2. The students should know how to include the three parts of the paragraph: topic sentence,
supporting sentences and concluding sentences in writing a paragraph. The sentences or
ideas in their paragraph should be appropriately and logically arranged to keep the flow of
ideas.
3. The students should develop the vocabulary skill for generating ideas in order to use
consistent words and complete sentences and to reduce their writing anxiety. The detail
sentences found in their paragraph should entirely support the topic sentence and discuses
about one and only one idea by ignoring insertion of different ideas into their paragraph.
4. The findings of the current study showed that stage of writing or rules governed for good
writing receive very little attention in the Bedeno English paragraph writing classroom
because most students tended to finish writing process without practicing stages of
writing. Therefore, students should use them appropriately when they practice paragraph
writing and teachers should also try to help students to apply while writing paragraph.

59

5. The teachers should try their best to train students to practice paragraph writing more in
the class room by providing enough time so as to minimize their problems in writing in
English.

6. In teaching paragraph writing and giving feedback, the teachers should pay attention to all
features of good paragraph writing than focusing mainly on the mechanical aspects such
as grammar and spelling. In addition, teachers should use different ways of giving
feedback like peer editing, working in groups, and demonstrating how to overcome the
challenges and combine both types of oral and written feedback which is constructive and
corrective for the students error.

7. Most of the writing is done at home as an assignment which means students miss the
opportunity to practice writing in the classroom and exchange ideas with their peers. So,
teachers should use class time to help students to practice paragraph writing.

60

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7. APPENDICE

67

APPENDIX-A
Open-ended Questionnaire to be filled by EFL Teachers
Dear Teacher:
First, thank you so much for your willingness to fill this open-ended questions which are
intended exclusively for research purpose, as part of my MA study at Haramaya University.

The purpose of this questionnaire is to assess students paragraph writing problems in the case
of Bedeno Secondary School. Read each question carefully and write the correct response for
the following open-ended questions. The information you provide is valuable and your
genuine responses are very important for the success of this study. Therefore, you are kindly
requested to respond realistically.
Thank you for your Collaboration

1. What is your overall assessment about your students paragraph writing problems?
2. What types of problems do they have in writing paragraph? Would you specify the
nature their problems categorically.
3. What do you think are the major problems hindering your students paragraph
writing?
4. How about the students organizing ability in their paragraph writing activities?
Can they organize their ideas using appropriate cohesive devices at their
appropriate place?
5. What sort of difficulties your students have with writing unified and well
developed paragraph?
6. Are organization, grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization the problem areas
in your students paragraph writing? Please would you discuss how serious they
are?
7. What do you think are causes for the students paragraph writing problems through
English? Can you list out the possible factors that may impede them to use
appropriate English language features to write paragraph?

68

8. How do you give feedback to your students paragraph? Please identify and
explain briefly the method?
9. What strategies do you use to overcome the students paragraph writing problems
through English language?
10. What about your students? Have you experienced any efforts students are making
to improve their paragraph writing skill?

69

APPENDIX_B
Open-ended Questionnaire to be filled by Students
Dear Student,
First, thank you so much for your willingness to fill these open-ended questions which are
intended exclusively for research purpose, as part of my MA study at Haramaya University.

The success of the study depends on your genuine responses to these questions. For each of
the questions below, write your response on the space provided.

Thank you for your Collaboration

2. Do you have problems in writing paragraph? What sort of difficulties do you have?
3. What are the major challenges you have in terms of writing well organized paragraph?
4. How about your organizing ability in paragraph writing activities? Can you organize
your ideas using appropriate cohesive devices at their appropriate place?
5. How about writing unified and well developed paragraph?
6. Are grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization the problem areas in your paragraph
writing? Discuss how serious they are?
7. What do you think of the Causes for your paragraph writing problems through English?
Can you list out the possible factors that may impede you to use appropriate English
language features to write paragraph?
8. What does your teacher focus on while correcting/assessing your paragraph? How does
he/she give you feedback?
9. What strategies do you use to overcome paragraph writing problems through English
language?
10. What do you want your teacher to do for you to help you develop paragraph writing
skills?

70

APPENDIX C
Gaaffilee gaaffii fi deebii Afaanii barattootaaf dhiyaate
kabajamaa barata , Gaaffilee qorannoo fuulleffannaa ogummaa digrii lammaffaa hojjechuuf
fayyadan siif dhiyaatan kanneen deebisuuf waan hayyamteef, duraan dursee abbaan
goranichaa hedduu sigalateeffata. Ittiaansuun , kaayyoon gaaffii fim deebii afaanii kanaas
haala keeyyata gahaa barreessuu dadhabuu barattoota mana barumsa Baddannoo Sadarkaa
2ffaa qabanii fi gahee barsiisonni afaan Ingilizii mana barumsichaa keeyyata gahaa barreessuu
irratti barattootaaf godhan sakattauudha . waan kanataeef , deebiin ati gaaffilee kanneeniif
laattu milkaaina gorannichaaf murtessaa waan taeef deebii qulqullina qabu akka laattuuf
kabajaan sigaafata

Deggersa gumaachiteef galatoomi.

1. Keeyata barreessuurrtti rakkoo qabdaa? Rakkoo akkamii faa qabdaa?

2. Rakkoolen gurguddoon keeyyata gaarii tahe barreessuu irratti simudatan maal faa?
3. Keeyata gahaa tahe qindeesaani barreessuurratti dandeetiin kee maal fakkata? walqabsiiftoota barbaachisaa taan fayyadamuun keeyata gahaa tae qindeessanii
barreesuu nidandeessaa?
4. Keeyata wae mata duree tokkoo ibsuufii ibsa gahaa tae qabuu barreessuurrattii maal
fakkata?
5. Seerlugaa, sirnaa tuqalee,fi quubeesuun rakkolee ati keeyata barreessuu kessatti qabdu
keessa tokko?
6. Muuxxannoo qabdu irraa kauun keeyyata gahaa/gaarii tae akka atti hin barreessineef
waantootni sababa taan maal faa dha? Tarreessuu dandeessaa?
7. Barsiisaan kee keeyyata ati barreessite yommuu siif sirreessu/soroorsu maalfaa irratti
hundaaa?Akkamittis duub-deebii siif kenna?
8. Rakkoo keeyata barreessu irrtti qabduu salphissuuf tarsiimoo/ tooftaa akkamii
fayyadamtaa?
9. Barsiisan kee maal akka siif godhuu barbaada dandeetii keeyyata barreessituu kee
guudiffachuuf?

71

Appendix-D
Document Analysis
The document analysis is carried out by analyzing students paragraph. The paragraph is
written by the sample students making them to choose one from some alternative topics
presented. Then the problems in the paragraphs are analyzed. Some of the following questions
are focused for the analysis.

1. Are the sentences, ideas or information in their paragraphs appropriately and logically
arranged?
2. Are the sentences in the paragraph talk about one idea and developed well?
3.

Is every sentence complete, not a fragment?

4.

Do the subject and predicate agree in number in each sentence?

5. Is every word spelled correctly?

6. Are sentences punctuated correctly?
7. Are words capitalized properly?
8. Are all words used correctly?

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Appendix-E
CHECK LIST FOR CLASSROOM OBSERVATION

1. Do students practice paragraph writing when tasks are given by their teachers?
2. Teachers activity in the classroom to encourage students to write a good paragraph
3. How paragraph writing lessons are presented?
4. What are the teachers focus areas in teaching paragraph writing and giving feedback to
their writing task?
5. Are the students participating in all writing tasks provided by their teacher?
6. Does the teacher teach each and every writing task in the textbook without skipping?

73

Appendix- F
TRANSCRIPT OF TEACHERS OPEN ENDED QUESTIONNAIRE
Key: OQ: Open ended question
T: Teacher Respondent

1. OQ: What is your overall assessment about your students paragraph writing
practices?
T2:

Even though I did not get a chance to assess all my students written paragraph in the
class room, as I understood from their written home work and assignment, they have a
lot of problems in writing English paragraph.

T3:

My overall assessment shows that learners face difficulty in producing meaningful

sentences in their paragraph.

T4:

First of all, assessing writing is becoming difficult for me because of students low
motivation to write and shortage of time. However, I always get a chance to mark a
few students exercise book. Their written paragraphs indicate that students have
serious problem regarding to writing paragraph. Most of the students cannot write
meaningful sentences. Addition of unnecessary ideas and omission of important points
are common in their text. Punctuation, spelling and capitalization are the area of their
weakness.

2. OQ: What types of problems do they have in writing paragraph? Would you specify
the nature their problems categorically.
T1:

Students have many problems. Especially in writing, they are suffering from problems
like unable to use good grammar, spelling problem, generating ideas relevant to the
topic sentence.

T2:

Based on my teaching experience, I found out a number of problems such as spelling

problem, punctuation problem and grammar problem. In addition, they have a problem

74

in writing topic sentence, in developing details/supportive sentences, unity and

coherence.
T3:

Students have difficulties in writing coherent, unified, structurally correct sentences,

correct English spelling, using capital letter and using appropriate punctuation.
3. OQ: What do you think are the major problems hindering your students paragraph
writing?

T2:

Unable to producing enough ideas, missing ideas, absence of connections between

sentences, grammar and punctuation are a major problem area of most of my students.

T4:

According to my daily observation, writing components of paragraph is a major

challenge for students. In addition, mechanics and grammar also another students big
problems when they write paragraph.. In addition, when they are asked to write about
one topic, their paragraph is full of unrelated, disordered sentences. They suffer from
punctuation, spelling and capitalization

T3:

A lot of problems make students work unclear. Sometimes paragraphs written by

students look like a collection of phrases or words because of problem of grammar and
punctuation. In addition, spelling, capitalization and mixing ideas, poor organization
and no supportive sentences in their paragraph is another sign of their paragraphs.

4. OQ: How about the students organizing ability in their paragraph writing activities?
Can they organize their ideas using appropriate cohesive devices at their appropriate
place?
T3:

Organizing a paragraph is difficult for students. Let alone writing their own coherent
paragraph, they always face problems when they are given jumbled sentences from
their text book to arrange in a logical order. Besides, developing supportive sentences
from topic is more problematic. In addition, they do not use cohesive ties.

T2:

I know effective paragraph should include many elements. From those elements,
Organization is one. Since students have many other problems such as grammar,
Punctuation, hand writing, spelling, indentation etc which have negative effect on

75

their Organization of their paragraph, I had to give more attention to

5. OQ: What sort of difficulties your students have with writing unified and well
developed paragraph?
T2:

Paragraph unity and development are common problems in all students paragraph.
This means students are unable to produce enough details to their paragraph. They are
weak in explaining and giving illustration about the topic. On the other hand, when
they write five or six sentences in their paragraph, It is obvious to see disunity in their
paragraphs.

T3:

Both are area of difficult for students. However, I give attention to sentence level and I
encourage students to produce as many sentences as they can because later they will
learn and sort out irrelevant ideas from their paragraph and they will learn how to give
examples and develop their paragraph using different genres.

T4:

From the beginning, students do not know about unity and paragraph development
because I did not give more attention. As a result, writing unified well developed
paragraph is difficult for them. When they write a paragraph, most of them think of
quantity rather than quality.
6. Are grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization the problem areas in your students
paragraph writing? Please would you discuss how serious they are?

T1:

Punctuation is one of the problems my students face while writing paragraph. They
cannot use appropriate punctuation in the appropriate place. This is, because they
consider punctuation of little importance which does not affect their writing.

T2:

It is obvious that majority students are straggling with the above problems. For
example, my students have biggest problem when they write English words.
Sometimes they miss letter(s). Other times doubled the letters by breaking spelling
rules. However, I always write correct spelling on the board whenever they make
mistake with clear handwriting but they do not care. They make the same mistake in
the next writing task. I think this is because of mother tongue language and not giving

76

attention. In addition, they study grammar as a separate lesson, but they do not relate
it once they write which is a big problem.
T4:

Many students use capital letter everywhere. They have bad habit. For example, they
use to write all their letters and words or within words capital letters. On the other
hand, when they are expected to use capital letter at the beginning of a sentence, they
forget and use small letter. This is the most difficult challenge I face to overcome. On
the other hand, they always write ungrammatical sentences without any pause or stops
because they have grammar problem. Spelling and punctuation also a problem area of
students.

7. What do you think are causes for the students paragraph writing problems through
English?

Can you list out the possible factors that may impede them to use

appropriate English language features to write paragraph?

T1:

Different factors impede students effective writing. Shortage of vocabulary and fear
of writing are some them. Every situation around the teachers and students can affect
students writing. A big matter is that how to begin writing, and some students could
spend a whole lesson thinking of what and how to write. They do not think writing as
a process. They want to produce a paragraph at once without using rules governed for
good writing like think, plan, draftOn the other hand, Learners do not practice
writing. To be honest, I should have given them more practice of writing in the class
but the majority of learners do not practice paragraph writing either in the class or at
home through the whole academic year because what learners just do is to copy down
identical work from the best learners or they rely on their relatives to write their
homework.

T2:

I think lack of vocabulary, worry about writing, lack of practice, knowledge of

grammar and unable to use steps in writing are causes of their writing. For example,
students have serious problem regarding to vocabulary. Their choice of words is not
appropriate. You always see repeat ion of the same words in their paragraph and they
use the one in the place of another one which give very weak sentences. Besides, when

77

they write in any writing tasks they do not think in the target language which caused
loss of confidence; and interruptions during participants written productions.
T3:

Students do not use the necessary steps in writing effective paragraph. For example,
they do not use thinking and planning stages effectively. As a result, they put a lot of
ideas. Some ideas are not quite relevant but they are unable to choose relevant ideas to
make something coherent paragraph. In addition, they do not proofread and revise
their work. As a result, their paragraphs full of grammar, punctuation, capitalization
and spelling errors which makes their paragraphs very boring. Vocabulary shortages,
no motivation, fear and no writing exercise are factors for under writing.

8. How do you give feedback to your students paragraph? Please identify and explain
briefly the method?
T1:

Giving feedback and correction during writing lessons is challenging as most students
are slow writer. For example, assessing students exercise book during writing lesson
takes much time. Therefore, I do not assess all components of paragraph because I do
not have time to do that. I think this is also one factor for under writing. Besides, all
students cannot finish their task on the time. I usually focus on the grammatical
problem of the paragraph including clear handwriting, proper use of lines in the paper.

T4:

Every time there is a grammar problem, I pick it up. I show the work of one or two
students if they have finished writing their paragraphs to the whole class and I
encourage students to give comment for each other to react to their errors. This will
help students to produce good sentences in their paragraph and I believe that effective
composing should begin from constructing correct grammatical clauses and sentences.

T3:

I am sorry to say that, I am not effective in giving appropriate feedback to my students

because they are large in number. I always give feedback to one or two students who
finish first but not to the whole students. This is because I do not have time to do that.

9. What strategies do you use to overcome the students paragraph writing problems
through English language?

78

T1:

For most students the place to learn writing is in the classroom. Class time is restricted
to 40 minutes. Students cannot finish the papers I require of them because they
preferred to write in Afan Oromo language which is their mother tongue because they
believed they could express their ideas and thoughts faster and easier than writing in
English. As a result, I do not have much time to use different strategies rather than
giving writing as homework.

T3:

I always advise students to practice writing simple sentences. In addition, I keep telling
them to use correct grammar, spelling and other components of paragraph whenever
they are given writing task in the class room and outside. Most of the times I
encourage students to write simple grammatically correct sentences in their
paragraphs. Then, students create a paragraph using those sentences. Finally, I thought
that after mastering grammar, unity of a paragraph and other will come next.
However, students still have problem.

10. What about your students? Have you experienced any efforts students are making to
improve their paragraph writing skill?
T2:

Students have misconception. They always give much of their time studying grammar.
A few students try to practice writing during writing lessons.

T3:

I did not see any effort that students are making to improve their writing.

79

Appendix G
TRANSCRIPT OF STUDENTS OPEN ENDED QUESTIONNAIRE
Key: OQ: Open ended question
S: Student Respondent

1.

Can you write a paragraph when writing activities are given? What sort of difficulties

do you have?
S11:

No, I have many problems. I cannot construct topic sentence; I face problems in
connecting one sentence with the other because grammatical mistakes affect my
expression in writing. In addition, I am often confused in the use of punctuation and
spelling.

S12:

I try, but Grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization and creating a meaningful

paragraph is the difficulty I have in practicing paragraph writing.

S18:

I have many problems. Starting from grammar the one I always get good score during
exam but in writing I faced difficulty. In short writing a paragraph is difficult for me.

2. What are the major challenges you have in terms of writing good paragraph?
S4:

Grammar, Spelling, punctuation and producing good ideas are my major problems in
writing paragraph.

S7:

I have many challenges. Applying all components of paragraph is my major problem.

S5:

Over all, writing a paragraph is difficult for me because of major problems I have like
problem of grammar, unity, punctuation, capitalization and writing topic sentence.
3. How about your organizing ability in paragraph writing activities? Can you organize
your ideas using appropriate cohesive devices at their appropriate place?

S28:

Since I cannot write many sentences in my paragraph because of vocabulary problem I

have, I do not worry about putting ideas according to their logical order. I am worry
about vocabulary problem I have which blocked me to write many sentences in my
paragraph.

S25:

I have some ideas when I write. I cannot write them in paragraph. I write the first
sentence and I think a lot it is very difficult to add.

80

4. How about writing unified and well developed paragraph?

S6:

When I write a paragraph, I start writing many sentences about two or more different
ideas at once instead of writing only about the topic sentence this is because I simply
write every idea I think of without self edit. Beside, our teacher gives more attention to
grammar.

S23:

I cannot write unified and well developed paragraph because I do not have any idea
about which sentence is relevant and which one is irrelevant.

5. Are grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization the problem areas in your

paragraph writing? Discuss how serious they are?
S24:

Yes. I dont know how to write sentences using correct grammar in paragraph though
I know some grammar rules, but I find it difficult to apply these rules in to practice
while our teacher gives us writing tasks. (S25, S27,S29, S30, S31, S32, S33, S41,)

S19:

One of the difficulties I have in writing paragraph is writing grammatically correct

sentences, the most challenging activity for me. Most of the time I try to write simple
sentence fearing grammar mistake, but I repeat the same mistake.

S17:

Yes they are. I do not worry about punctuation when I write. For example I know full
stop can be used at the end of statement but when I start writing I do not bother about
it. ( S20, S38,S40)

6. What do you think of the Causes for your paragraph writing problems through
English? Can you list out the possible factors that may impede you to use appropriate
English language features to write paragraph?
S3:

I want to write inside or outside class room when a writing activity is given. However,
no sooner than start writing, I begun to worry about my problems of how to begin
what to do next, and how to come up with the end product of a given paragraph.
Consequently, I give up writing and look for my teachers help. (S7, S13, S16, S22,
S24 S27, S23)

81

S34: I think, the reason why I am weak in writing paragraph is I dont write after classroom
because it takes me long time and I cannot do it in the right way. So, I avoid writing
after the class even most of the times inside the classroom as well.
S26:

I always think and gather information in Afan Oromo, then translate it to English
which I think is the wrong way. So, this problem is really increased my apprehension
of writing because once you translate from Afan Oromo to English, you will get a lot
of mistakes, misunderstanding the ideas, wrong grammar. Time is also against me.

7. What does your teacher focus on while correcting/assessing your paragraph? How
does he/she give you feedback?
S9:

I have not got written feedback on my work from my teacher as I finish writing late.
The teacher used to work with one or two students who raise their hands. As the rest
of the class, she lives the rest of the class with no comments.

S15:

The teacher always generalizes all the common problems on all the students in the
class by marking one or two students exercise book. This is not applicable to every
student because our points of weakness are different from each other. ( S21, S8)

8. What strategies do you use to overcome paragraph writing problems through English
language?
S14:

I always try to write in the class room but I never write outside the class room because
I do not know how to do it and once I start to write, I lose ideas from my mind.

S33:

I use simple sentences not to make grammar and punctuation mistakes because if I try
to write complex sentences in my paragraph, I will make many mistakes such as
disorganizing ideas in my paragraph and the above.

9. What do you want your teacher to do for you to help you develop paragraph writing
skills?
S8:

I want my teacher to help me during writing. I am not rich in vocabulary. When I try
to translate my ideas to English, I always find difficulty in selecting appropriate
words. Besides, I keep writing grammatically incorrect sentences. So, teacher can help
me by providing equivalent words and giving me more time to practice.

82

S35: I know I have many problems. I need support from my teacher. I need my teacher to
see me whether I am on the right track and give me feedback on my work.
S43: I lack many things. For example, I do not have experience of doing something which
helps me to improve my writing. Besides, we are not motivated to practice and
improve our writing skill. So, our teacher should give us much time to practice writing
in the class room.

83

Appendix- H
SAMPLE PARARGRAPHS WRITTEN BY STUDENTS
S30

Source: A Paragraph from student 30 s exercise book

84

S2

Source: A Paragraph from student 2 s exercise book

85

S7

Source: A Paragraph from student 7 s exercise book

86
S12

Source: A Paragraph from student 12 s exercise book

87

S17

Source: A Paragraph from student 17 s exercise book

88

S22

Source: A Paragraph from student 22 s exercise book

89

S27

Source: A Paragraph from student 27 s exercise book

90

S24

Source: A Paragraph from student 24 s exercise book

91

S3

Source: A paragraph from student 3s exercise book

92

1.