FACTORS AFFECTING THE PRACTICE OF GRADE 10 STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPH WRITING SKILLS. A CASE IN MIESSO SECONDARY SCHOOL.

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to investigate factors affecting the practice of grade 10 students’ paragraph writing skills in English writing classroom. The study was carried out in Miesso Secondary School with special reference to grade10. Mixed method research design was employed to address the problem. Three English teachers and 80 students were involved in the study. In order to achieve the objectives, the study employed three data gathering tools: questionnaire, semi-structured interview and classroom observation. Questionnaire was used to find out the extent to which students give attention to practice paragraph writing, find out students’ paragraph writing problems and to assess the factors that affect their paragraph writing skills. Semi-structured interview was employed to discover students’ paragraph writing practices and to assess the causes of their problems. Furthermore, classroom observation was employed to observe the practices of writing paragraph and the roles teachers and students play during writing classes. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The study identified the major paragraph writing problems students’ encounter. These are problem of organization, unity, coherence, vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling. In addition, factors that were affecting students’ paragraph writing skills were identified. These were lack of appropriate use of paragraph writing approach, technique and strategies, students’ writing anxiety, lack of regular practice in FL writing, teachers’ ways of giving feedback, and shortage of time to practice paragraph writing, lack of students’ topic knowledge, and lack of adequate assessment on paragraph writing skills, students’ lack of motivation and reinforcement and students’ poor reading background. Therefore, since paragraph writing is a skill that could be improved through sufficient practicing, students should be given chance of practicing paragraph writing skills to become effective writers.