INVESTIGATING EFL STUDENTS’ PARAGRAPH WRITING PROBLEMS: THE CASE OFTWO SELECTED PREPARATORY SCHOOLS IN GODE DISTRICT,SHEBELLE ZONE, SOMALI REGIONAL STATE

Abstract

Though paragraph writing is an essential part of communication through words, it is very difficult to master. Thus,the main purpose of this study was to investigate EFL students‟ paragraph writing problems. The study was conducted in Said Mohamed Abdille Hassan and Gode Preparatory Schools. In order to address the problem under investigation, mixed research method which contains both qualitative and quantitative method of data collection and analysis was employed. In order to achieve the first objective of the study, text analysis was used. To address, the second, third and the fourth objectives, questionnaire for the students and semi-structural interview for the three English teachers were used. Text analysis was used to investigate EFL students‟ paragraph writing problems. The researcher analyzed the paragraphs written by 84 students. The questionnaire was used mainly to collect data about the factors affecting students‟ paragraph writing skills from 69 respondents. The semi-structural interview was employed to triangulate the information gained from the students about the causes for EFL students‟ poor paragraph writing and gain data about students‟ paragraph writing problems. That is it was used to identify the factors influencing students‟ paragraph writing problems and the kind of problems students have in paragraph writing. All data collected from the three instruments were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The researcher identified the major problems students have in paragraph writing. The first problem is related to the three parts of paragraph in which students have a problem of identifying these parts and cannot write according to it. The other problem is related to students‟ inability to write paragraphs that can fulfill the quality of good paragraph such as organization, unity and adequacy. Furthermore, spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization are the other most serious problems students encounter. In addition, factors that affect students‟ paragraph writing were divided into three sub-topics. These are students‟ related factors, teacher related factors and writing resource related factors. Therefore, in order to eliminate these students‟ paragraph writing problems, English language teachers should use active learning method and give the students different writing tasks. Besides,to improve their paragraph writing skills, the students should be eager and actively involve and practice with the language.