ASSESSING THE STUDENTS PARAGRAPH WRITING PROBLEMS IN EFL CLASS ROOM: THE CASE OF GRADE 11 AT SEPERA SECONDARY AND PREPARATORY SCHOOL IN HADIYA ZON

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to assess the students’ Paragraph Writing Problems in EFL Class Room at Sepera Secondary and Preparatory School in Hadiya Zone. Descriptive survey design was used to assess their grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling skills. The participants of the study were 60 grade 11 sample students and two English language teachers chosen by using simple random sampling techniques and comprehensive sampling methods respectively. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the study employed four data gathering instruments: questionnaire, text analysis, classroom observation and semi-structural interview. Questionnaire was used to find out the area to which students give concentration to practice paragraph writing. Text analysis was employed to assess paragraph written by students. The semi-structural interview was held with teachers to crosscheck the data gained from text analysis and to gather further information on students’ paragraph writing skill. All the data collected using different instruments were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The researcher identified that the main problems related to grammatical problems includes tense, subject-verb agreement difficulty, omission and addition of spelling unnecessarily and article usage problems. In addition, those grammatical problems came from various sources i.e. students’ lack of vocabulary, lack of regular practice, lack of grammatical skill, lack of appropriate use of punctuation and so on. According to the third objective the researcher observed sample English language teachers, they did not give different methods of feedback in students written paragraph. They mainly focused on oral feedback in classroom. Therefore, in order to improve students’ grammatical, punctuation, capitalization and spelling problems in paragraph writing, students should practice writing regularly and teachers should give written, oral and peer feedback