MidTest Reflective 7: UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ ENGLISH WRITING PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Writing is one of the important skills to be mastered in learning a language. It plays a major role in language learning. Writing helps people to express and share their thoughts, ideas, and attitudes. For the students, writing helps them to learn. It helps them have a chance to adventure with the language, and to go beyond what they have learned (Reimes, 1993). However, mastering writing skills is challenging, especially for EFL/ESL students. It requires a lot of practice and a deeper understanding of English in order to produce good writing.

In 2014, Dr. Ibrahim Mohamed Alfaki of Nile Valley University conducted a study entitled “University Students’ English Writing Problems: Diagnosis and Remedy” to identify university students’ writing problems in English and the solutions to solve those problems. This study involved 20 English language students as the sample. They were asked to write a composition to describe their hometown or village in about 250-300 words. These compositions then were evaluated twice by 10 English language instructors. The purpose was to identify the students' errors and mistakes in their writing.

From this study, it is found that there are various writing problems that encounter the students’ ability to write. The first problem is the grammatical problem. This problem concerns the errors in subject verb agreements, pronoun references, and connectors. The second problem is the sentence structure problem. It is a problem where students faced difficulties in arranging sentences to form a cohesive paragraph. The third problem is the word choice problem. Students with a lack of vocabulary knowledge will find it difficult to compose appropriate words in their writing. The last problem is the cognitive problem. This problem concerns errors in punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. All of these problems play an important role in impeding students' ability, especially EFL/ESL students, to produce good writing. 

Furthermore, there are several factors that contribute to students' poor writing abilities. The first factor is the lack of students’ motivation to write. One of the most common issues that impede students' motivation to write is a lack of interest in the topic of the writing. It is believed that when students were allowed to choose their topics, their writing quality improved, giving them more freedom to write. Another factor is the lack of practice to write. Writing is not an instant skill; it takes a long process and a lot of practice to master. Thus, the best way to master writing skills is to have more practice and write a lot. The last factor is the teachers’ feedback. We cannot deny that teachers played a significant role in students' development, including the students’ writing learning process. Therefore, the role of teachers in providing feedback is crucial to evaluating students' writing results.

From the discussion regarding university students’ writing problems and the solutions, it can be concluded that university students, especially EFL/ESL students, still faced a lot of challenges during their writing process. These problems include grammatical, sentence structure, word choice, and cognitive problems. However, there will always be a way to overcome an obstacle. From the students’ point of view, they can overcome these problems by increasing their motivation to write and practicing more in writing. Both of these aspects are crucial because it attempts to help the students to have a lot of experiences in writing activities. On the other hand, from the teachers’ point of view, they can provide effective feedback regarding their students’ writing progress. The feedback should be clear, accurate, and balanced in order to help the students in developing their writing skills. It is hoped that by applying these solutions, the students can improve and master their writing skills. 

References

Alfaki, Dr. Ibrahim Mohamed. (2015). University students’ English writing problems: Diagnosis and remedy. International Journal of English Language Teaching, 3(3). http://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/UniversityStudents----English-Writing-Problems-Diagnosis-and-Remedy.pdf