INVESTIGATING EFL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION AND PRACTICE OF WRITING SKILLS: THE CASE OF MODJO GRADE 11 PREPARATORY SCHOOL EAST SHOA ZONE, OROMIA REGIONAL STATE

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to investigate EFL students’ perception and practice of writing skills in case of Modjo preparatory school grade 11 students. The study employed descriptive and correlation case study designThe study used qualitative and quantitative research method. This has been done through classroom observation and interviews. 36 male and 36 female totally 72 students participated in the study to identify how do they perceive and practice the writing skillsIn order to achieve the objectives, the study employed Questionnaire, interview and observation for data collection. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research procedures were employed to analyze the collected data through the above data collection instruments.The findings revealed that most of the student believe that writing is a challenging or difficult skill to deal with, and, they also believe that their past experience affect their performance. As the result, they lose interest when they write. Therefore, this shows that student’s perception and practice of writing skills correlated to each otherBased on the findings it can be concluded that students need to be aware that as much as they make efforts writing is a skill that can be achieved easily but most of the students seem to have prejudice that writing is a challenging skill to learn. Whenever students begin to write they bother too much about their errors. Based on the findings it can also be recommended that it is the responsibility of stake holders to aware the students that writing is a skill that can be practiced and improved. In this regard teachers have great responsibility in convincing students to minimize the prejudice that writing is the challenging skill. It is also the great responsibility of the researcher that he let the concerned teachers know the study and its result of the study by preparing action planto bring some changes. A lot of writing activities should be included in the text so the curriculum developers have responsibility in considering the appropriate and contextualized writing texts in the process of text book preparation.