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Running head: EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS

Observing Writing Classes to Explore Students’ Writing Problems: A Secondary Level

Scenario of EFL Class

Nabeela Sanjana Chowdhury

ID: 12103020

Department of English and Humanities

December 2015

BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

 ii

Observing Writing Classes to Explore Students’ Writing Problems: A Secondary Level

Scenario of EFL Class

A thesis submitted to the

Department of English and Humanities

of

BRAC University

by

Nabeela Sanjana Chowdhury

ID: 12103020

In partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree

of

Bachelor of Arts in English

December 2015
 iii

Declaration

I declare that the work presented in this research paper is my original work and it reflects

the best knowledge of mine. Wherever I have used other’s work and contribution I have

acknowledged their work. I have not submitted this work previously or currently in any

institution.

________________________

Nabeela Sanjana Chowdhury

December 2015
 iv

Acknowledgement

My first and foremost thanks go to the Almighty for giving me the strength to complete

this research paper. I give my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Asifa Sultana for her

precious comments, observations and guidance. Without her guidance it would not be possible

for me to complete this research. I would also like to thank all the faculty members of ENH

department for inspiring me. Lastly, I want to thank my family members especially my father

and my husband and also my friends who supported me throughout this journey.
 v

Abstract

This research paper attempts to find out students’ writing problems at secondary level.

Students of this level face many problems but grammatical errors are the biggest problem for

most of the students. Apart from grammatical problems, problems with information organization,

translation problems, spelling mistakes and using inappropriate vocabularies are common

problems among the students. For data collection and data analysis the researcher observed three

different classes of one school, took 30 students’ interview and assessed 30 scripts. After the data

collection and data analysis the researcher found that students face writing problems not only due

to inabilities but also for the drawback in the education system. The paper concludes by stating

some limitations of the study and scopes for the future investigation.
 Table of Contents
Declaration………………………………………………………………………………………..iii
Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………………………..iv

Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………..…….v

Chapter One: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1

Chapter Two: Literature Review .................................................................................................... 2
2.1. Developing Writing Skill ..................................................................................................... 2
2.2. Approaches of Writing Skill ................................................................................................ 3
2.2.1. Product Based Approach ............................................................................................... 3
2.2.2. Process Based Approach ............................................................................................... 4
2.3. Methods applied in Writing Classes..................................................................................... 5
2.3.1. Grammar Translation Method ....................................................................................... 5
2.3.2. The Audio- Lingual Method .......................................................................................... 5
2.4. Writing Problems ................................................................................................................. 6
2.5. Creative Writing ................................................................................................................. 10
2.6. Feedback on Writing Task ................................................................................................. 11
Chapter Three: Research Methodology ........................................................................................ 13
3.1. Background Information .................................................................................................... 13
3.2. Institution and Settings ....................................................................................................... 13
3.3. Participants ......................................................................................................................... 13
3.4. Research Tools ................................................................................................................... 14
3.4.1. Class Observation ........................................................................................................ 14
3.4.2. Students’ Interview ...................................................................................................... 15
3.4.3. Assessment of Students’ Writing ................................................................................ 15
3.5. Nature of Research ............................................................................................................. 15
3.5.1. Qualitative Research .................................................................................................... 15
3.5.2. Quantitative Research .................................................................................................. 16
3.6. Obstacles ............................................................................................................................ 16
Chapter Four: Research Findings.................................................................................................. 17
4.1. Class- 1 ............................................................................................................................... 17
4.1.1. Findings from Class Observation ................................................................................ 17
4.1.2. Findings from Students’ Interview .............................................................................. 18
[Link]. Open-ended Question and Answer .......................................................... 18
[Link]. Multiple-choice Question, Answer and Percentage ................................. 20
4.1.3. Findings from Students’ Script Assessment ................................................................ 21
4.2. Class- 2 .............................................................................................................................. 22
4.2.1. Findings from Class Observation ................................................................................ 22
4.2.2. Findings from Students’ Interview .............................................................................. 23
[Link]. Open-ended Question and Answer .......................................................... 24
[Link]. Multiple-choice Question, Answer and Percentage ................................. 26
4.2.3. Findings from Students’ Script Assessment ................................................................ 27
4.3. Class- 3 ............................................................................................................................... 28
4.3.1. Findings from Class Observation ................................................................................ 28
4.3.2. Findings from Students’ Interview .............................................................................. 29
[Link]. Open-ended Question and Answer .......................................................... 29
[Link]. Multiple-choice Question, Answer and Percentage ................................. 32
4.3.3. Findings from Students’ Script Assessment ................................................................ 33
Chapter Five: Analysis.................................................................................................................. 35
5.1. Class Obsevation ................................................................................................................ 35
5.2. Interview............................................................................................................................. 40
5.3. Script Assessment .............................................................................................................. 42
Chapter Six: Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 45
References ..................................................................................................................................... 47
Appendix ....................................................................................................................................... 50
Part 1 ......................................................................................................................................... 50
Part 2 ......................................................................................................................................... 51
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 1

Chapter One

Introduction

Writing is one of the most popular ways of expressing emotions and thoughts. Through

writing people can take time and can state their emotions clearly. Moreover, writing tasks are

applied broadly during language practice for learning foreign languages. Yet, students of all

levels face many problems while writing any task. Though writing is one of the best ways of

expressing thoughts, students often cannot make sense or convey the meaning to the reader

through their writing tasks. Tirumalesh (1991) suggested some reasons why people have limited

knowledge about English writing. Lack of proficiency in the language, large classes, unqualified

teachers, unmotivated novices, lack of resources became the part of the etiology. From his point

of view, the problem can be solved by mobilizing more materials or by an appropriate use of the

existing resources (Tirumalesh, 1991, pp. 2670-2671). Moreover, at secondary level, students of

Bengali medium school believe that grammatical errors hinder their writing performance more

than any other problems in their second language classes. However there are many other factors

which are responsible for creating writing problems in second language classes. The purpose of

this study is to explore Bengali medium students’ writing problems through class observation,

interview and script checking of the students. Using three different formats such as, class

observation, students’ interview and scripts assessment the researcher tried to discover the

answers of the research questions below.

1. Through which productive skill students feel more comfortable to express their thoughts?

2. Which is the biggest problem they face in writing?

3. Do they consider target language as a major issue while writing?

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 2

Chapter Two

Literature Review

2.1. Developing Writing Skill:

Coe and Gutierrez (1981) identified some principles for the learners to find out their

writing problems, to set their goals and to evaluate their progress.

1) Changing the process is the best way to improve the quality of written product.

2) In case of developing writing skill, active learning is more useful than passive learning and

goals which are set by the students are more prone to be achieved than the goals required by the

teachers.

3) Students can learn significantly from fellow students.

4) Identifying the exact problem can lead to solve the problem successfully.

5) Stating goal accurately, applying the best strategy, maintaining a perfect time frame and the

ability of verifying the procedure will ensure to achieve the goal (Coe and Gutierrez, 1981, pp.

262-263).

Widodo (2006) stated that a genre based approach to teaching L2 writing focuses on the

gatherings of an individual text type and try to help students to understand what is the purpose of

writing text, who is their audience or for whom they are writing and how to organize a text (as

cited in Chen and Su, 2011, p. 185).

Manchón (2011) believed that writing is used widely in language practice for learning

foreign language. For this reason scholars made a difference between writing to learn content
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 3

and writing to learn language. Moreover, it is clear that all types of writing in foreign language

education contribute to the progress of language skills. Both learning-to-write and writing-to-

learn tasks help to develop the learners’ foreign language skill (as cited in Lund, 2015, p. 2).

Ur (1996) identified that the purpose and principle of writing skill is to express ideas and

convey the message to the reader. Moreover, the writers should be aware of some formal aspects

such as, neat hand writing, correct spelling, proper use of punctuation and vocabulary and

acceptable grammar. These aspects are needed because in higher standards of language are

usually demanded in writing than in speech. He also mentioned that more careful construction,

more precise and varied vocabulary, more correctness of expression is also the important aspects

of wring. When a student submits a piece of original writing then the most important thing is to

see whether the ideas and events presented there is interesting and significant or not. In addition,

the writer should organize his thoughts and ideas and present them through his writing in a way

so that the readers can read that easily and feel pleased to read that. However, one of the

problems in teaching writing is maintaining a fair balance between content and forms (Ur, 1996,

pp. 163, 170).

2.2. Approaches of Writing Skill:

2.2.1. Product Based Approach

Pincas (1892) stated that in product approach there are four stages to learn writing and

they are familiarization, controlled writing, guided writing and free writing. The goal of the

familiarization stage is to make learners attentive of specific features of any particular text. In the

controlled and guided stage the learners keep practicing their writing in a controlled way and

eventually increase their freedom of writing until they are able to write authentic activity freely
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 4

like letter or story or essay. The product approach largely focuses on the knowledge of the

learners regarding the structure of the language. This approach basically see the development of

writing in terms of imitating the input that students get from their teacher in the form of text (as

cited in Badger and White, 2000, p.p. 153-54).

Isaacson (1989) describes that there are two roles involved in writing, author and

secretary. When students are playing the author’s role, then they have to be concerned about

inventing ideas, arranging thoughts, and organizing selected words and phrases suitably or

efficiently. When the students are in the secretary role, then they are more concerned with the

technicalities of writing like exercising correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. The

writing process approach recognizes the importance of both the author and secretary roles ( as

cited in Alber-Morgan et al. 2007, p. 109).

2.2.2. Process Based Approach

Hedge (1988) and White and Arndt (1991) suggested that the process approach is mostly

about linguistic skills like planning and drafting on the other hand this approach is less concern

about grammatical rules and structure. They also mentioned four stages of process approach like

prewriting, composing/drafting, revising and editing. In prewriting stage learners will think about

the topic based on something which is given to them. In composing/ drafting stage learners will

organize their thoughts to make a plan for describing their topic. Lastly they will revise their first

draft and will modify or edit it they need it (as cited in Badger & White, 2000, p. 154).
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 5

2.3. Methods applied in Writing Classes:

2.3.1. Grammar Translation Method

Freeman (2000) claimed that Grammar Translation Method focuses only teaching and

learning the rules. From GTM perspective learning a language means learning all grammatical

rules. In GTM accuracy is more important than fluency. Students need to learn all grammatical

items correctly they do not need to be fluent in the use of grammar while talking. In GTM

method deductive learning is a must, student need to learn rules and definitions first and later

they learn examples. Through this method student can learn grammatical rules correctly and they

do well in writing. He also claimed that this method is good for beginners and for large classes

also, it required fewer resources. On the other hand, in this method the teacher is the

authoritative figure to make decisions and the participation of learners is very less. Although the

Grammar-Translation Method often creates frustration for students, it makes few demands on

teachers. It is still used in situations where understanding literary texts is the primary focus of

foreign language study and there is little need for a speaking knowledge of the language

(Freeman, 2000, pp. 11-16).

2.3.2. The Audio-Lingual Method

Freeman (2000) claimed that there is dependence on imitation, memorization language

and over learning. It drills students in the use of grammatical sentence pattern. This method talks

about habit formation. The more students will repeat the more they will learn. They make errors

due to the formation of bad habit; errors should be corrected immediately by the teacher. Positive

reinforcement helps students to build right habits. Grammatical rules are taught by inductive

learning rather than deductive learning (Freeman, 2000, pp. 11-16).

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 6

2.4. Writing Problems:

According to O’Donnell, some students are less careful about their performance and

some students have learning disabilities and these issues hinder students’ writing performance. It

is very common to almost every class that students’ have different spelling style; handwriting is

not clear and sometimes their writings do not make any sense. The reason can be, some of the

students are just not concerned and show less care towards their writings and some of the

students might have any kind of learning disabilities (O’Donnell, 1980, p. 802).

There are two categories of writing mistakes; one is error characteristics and the other is

non-error characteristics. The teachers can simply find out error characteristics from students’

writing. There are eight major problems that students face in error characteristics and they are,

spelling problems, pronoun usage, agreement between subject and predicate, the avoidance of

run-on sentence, capitalization, punctuation, usage of slang or nonstandard terms and

modification problems. But if there is no mistake in writing still that particular writing cannot be

considered as a good piece of writing. There are some nonerror characteristics which make

difference between skilled writing and non-skilled writing and they are density of ideas, variety

of referents and variety of expression in repeated concepts (Marzano, 1982, pp. 408-9).

Writing is just not expressing thought it is also conveying the thoughts to the reader,

therefore writings should be meaningful. Flower (1979) pointed out a question that is, if writing

is considered as the act of what the writer thinks or what the writer means then why writing is

such a hard thing to do. Or why writers fail to communicate with the readers. The author also

mentioned that writers’ mental struggle and readers’ misinterpretation prove that writing is just
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 7

not expressing what writers think or means it is more than that. From the authors perspective

writing is just not expressing the thoughts but also transferring the thought to the readers.

Some common problems in academic and professional writing is the absence of referent,

immature and imprecise ideas, some senseless discussions and being unsuccessful to convert

private thoughts into a public (Flower 1979, p. 19).

Students’ writing performances often depend on teachers. If the teachers give the students

more writing tasks and make them practice writing tasks several times then students can develop

their writing skill. Evans (1959) said that in school it is very common that the quality of students’

writings depend on teachers’ expectation. If the students were given more writing task like

assignments and reports on a particular topic or themes then the students would get more

opportunity to write and practice. He also stated that students’ writing will be more matured as

long as they will practice writing on narrowed topics and work on outlines and organize

materials (Evans, 1959, p. 14).

Brown (1982), and Flower and Hayes (1977, 1980, 1981) pointed out some factors which

may create problem in writing and most of the writers are not aware of those factors. From their

point of view, most of the writers can be experienced or inexperienced do not follow the

instruction of traditional writing textbooks. Writers do not follow a linear plan involving distinct

steps of prewriting, writing, and rewriting activity (as cited in Shah, 1986, p. 109).

Shah (1986) in his article mentioned about a survey done by The National Assessment of

Educational Progress (1980) reported that the writing skills of 13-year olds began a turn down in

1974 and stayed mostly undeveloped by 1979. Moreover, the number of mechanical errors and

the amount of sentence complexity remained about the same throughout the 1970s. NAEP (1980)
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 8

also reported that in the average classroom of 30 students, a half dozen or more are prone to have

little confidence in their writing ability and negative attitudes toward the tasks.

Grammatical correctness is not compulsory to communicate with the readers through

writing. Most of the foreign language teachers give importance on grammatical accuracy which

is not a mandatory issue in ESL classes. Holley and King (1974-81) stated that even though

grammatical correctness is not always compulsory of an ESL student to achieve communication,

teachers of ESL have persisted for many years on grammatical correctness in student

performance. Foreign language teachers have been trained to correct students’ inappropriate

response instantly when it is about grammatical and pronunciation errors, because it is being

assumed that correcting errors instantly will help to learn. Teachers who emphasis more on

grammatical accuracy they might not encourage students when they are communicating in

foreign language (as cited in Tomiyana, 1980, p. 71).

Bloomer (1956) pointed that he was uncertain whether the authors of text books consider

two variables of word length and complexity or not. He found in a study that authors not only

considers these two variables but also consider variables of frequency of occurrence and

meaningfulness. Petty (1955) also pointed that; there is no precise relationship between

representation of individual sound and persistency of spelling difficulty. He ended up with the

result that main importance should be on learning each word as an individual problem (as cited

in Schmieder, 1958, p. 121).

Proper use of effective materials can solve many problems of the students. Tirumalesh

(1991) revealed some reasons why people have limited knowledge about English writing. Lack

of proficiency in the language, large classes, unqualified teachers, unmotivated novices, lack of
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 9

resources became the part of the etiology. From his point of view, the problem can be solved by

mobilizing more materials or by an appropriate use of the existing resources.

His findings also showed that writing something in mother language is an automatic

process. On the other hand, writing a in second language is a self- defeating process. One non-

native person from different cultural and geographical area cannot become native English by

writing in English. Though one may try to achieve perfect command on L2, there will always be

a difference. A person always has a prior formation from his mother language therefore this

formation cannot be changed by his second language. New thoughts and ideas always get mixed

with the existing pattern. It is not possible to fully swap the old by the new. When someone

believes that he can write in his second language as good as he does in his mother language, he

makes the mistakes (Tirumalesh, 1991, pp. 2670-2671).

Rifkin (1992) claimed that grammar cannot be granted as the only factor or the most

important factor for language teaching. He added that there should be a balance between

grammar-oriented and communication-oriented activities in the successful foreign language

classroom (as cited in Lagerberg, 1995, p. 116).

Teachers should give the attention to the each students based on the students’ needs.

Moreover, teachers should make the students clear about the subject matters; if they do so then it

will help the students to find their own problems. Lagerberg (1995) emphasized on some issues

like, in foreign language teaching classrooms teachers think that the metalanguage they use to

teach students is understood by them which is a big mistake. Weaker students need more

clarification and examples to get into the topic. Moreover, students need to be cleared about the

topic which is taught to them by themselves first and then they can find out their own problems
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 10

by themselves. Another problem is teachers try to make the students accurate in terms of using

grammatical rules (Lagerberg, 1995, pp. 114, 117).

2.5. Creative Writing:

Ur (1996) suggested that students should get the chance to increase their curiosity and

being ambitious. Even if they make mistakes while free writing, teachers should encourage their

learning. While giving feedback teachers should draw students’ attention in what they have

written, that can be both right and wrong. He also pointed out that teachers need to explain

frankly to the students that mistake is nothing to be ashamed of rather it plays an important role

in learning (Ur, 1996, p.169).

In creative writing all the ideas should be original and not the imitation of others’ idea, in

this point LaBrant (1967) claimed that until a child does not copy someone else’s work whatever

he writes is creative writing (as cited in Pikulsk, 1975, p, 183)

Paul McKee (1960) stated that if there is no uniqueness in ideas, if there is no original

thought and if there is bad expression in a piece of writing then that writing will not be called as

creative writing (as cited in Pikulsk, 1975, p, 183)

Hounsell (1987) categorized three core elements of essay-writing formations. First one is

Data which is the theme or material of the essay; second one is Organization which is organizing

the essay material in a structured way and the last one is Interpretation the connotation or sense

which is given to the material by the students (as cited in Light, 2002, p. 258) .

Summary writing is a very structured writing where information needs to be organized

and synchronized in a proper way in this point Irwin (1986) emphasized on some points about
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 11

summary writing. Summarization is defined as the procedure of incorporating and arranging sole

idea into a summary or structured sequence of related broad ideas (as cited in Chen and Su,

2011, p. 184).

2.6. Feedback on Writing Task:

Ur (1996) suggested that grammatical errors and spelling errors draw the attention most

and these mistakes cannot be ignored so that correction of these errors needs to be corrected first.

Students demand their language problems to be corrected. In addition, it takes less time and hard

work to find language mistakes than correcting the content and data organization. Moreover,

rewriting is very important because it reinforces learning and it is an integral part of whole

writing process as well. As teachers want students to rewrite like the same way students also

want the teachers to reread and evaluate their work, it motivates the students to rewrite (Ur,

1996, pp. 170-171). .

Motivational feedback like praising helps students to write and revise their activities in

this point, Brown (1932); Symonds and Chase(1929) claimed that some feedback can be

motivational like praising can work like a motivator in terms of writing and revision activities

and this kind of feedback is called motivational meaning (as cited in Nelson and Schunn, 2009,

p. 376).

On the other hand, positive and negative reinforcement can also help students to do their

writing task according to Thorndike. Thorndike (1927) ( As cited in Nelson and Schunn, 2009, p.

376) another type of feedback on writing task can be reinforcement meaning where reward and

punishment will be available for some particular writing task like spelling error or particular

approach of to conclude a paragraph.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 12

Third type of feedback is given by Pressey (1926, 1927), feedback can be combination of

information given by the teachers to the students just to show the right direction for any kind of

writing activities (as cited in Nelson and Schunn, 2009, p. 376).

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 13

Chapter Three

Research Methodology

3.1. Background Information:

The primary focus of the researcher is to identify various types of writing problems

experienced by students and also to understand the reason behind such problems.

3.2. Institution and Settings:

The research is solely based on a school in Dhaka. The researcher being a former student

of the institute found it convenient to manage the permission from the school authorities. The

data to be examined in this paper were obtained by the researcher from.

The number of students was large in almost every class. Most classes had a typical

classroom setting with seating arrangements for students facing a black board, table and chair

where a teacher usually took his/her position. The teachers did ample movement during the

lectures explaining various topics and also providing individual attention to students and their

queries. The researcher was seated strategically in order to clearly hear the teachers and at the

same time effectively observe the students. There was a sound learning atmosphere as the

environment of the classrooms was very good with sufficient air, light and space.

3.3. Participants:

The participants of this research were the students of the class six and seven and the

teachers. There were 73 to 80 students in almost every class. The researcher observed 3 classes

and took interview of 20 students. Two classes were observed of standard seven and one class

was observed of standard six. The ages of the students were within 13 to 14 years. Most of the
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 14

participants were quite helpful and were matured enough to understand the purpose of the

researcher. The students’ curiosity in the research led to their overexcitement regarding the task

and interview. As a result the teachers at times found it difficult to maintain order among the

students. Nevertheless, both the teachers and the students were polite and very cooperative with

the researcher. Like several other Bengali medium schools in Dhaka, the medium of instructions

in this school was Bengali. A verbal feedback given was also predominantly in Bengali.

3.4. Research Tools:

The researcher used three tools in this research; class observation, students’ interview and

assessment of students’ writing. These three tools were essential in finding out various writing

problems different students experienced. Observing various classes, conducting numerous

interviews and assessing scripts have all resulted in the authentic collection of information and a

successful undertaking of the research. Moreover teachers’ speech was also recorded in a mobile

phone.

3.4.1. Class Observation:

Being present in the classes and observing those helped the researcher to get the

information she needed to explore the writing problems of the students. The researched needed

to establish a connection between what students got from the teachers as input and what they

wrote on script as output. Hence, observing the writing classes was a mandatory way of

collecting data. Moreover, by observing the classes the researcher could witness the actual faults

of teaching that later lead students to face the problems.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 15

3.4.2. Students’ Interviews:

The researcher conducted interviews (Appendix) among 20 students in three classes.

Identifying the problems they faced while writing was the main part of this research paper.

Direct information from the students helped the researcher to know more about writing

problems. Interviewees explained various kind of writing problems they face to the researcher.

3.4.3. Assessment of Students’ Writing:

As it was already mentioned that the researcher wanted to establish a connection between

students’ input and output so it was mandatory for the researcher to assess some of the scripts of

the students. Moreover, script checking also gave a clear view about the writing errors that

students made. The researcher checked 20 scripts of those students who were the interviewees.

3.5. Nature of Research:

In this research the researcher applied two types of research methodology. So the nature

of research was mixed.

3.5.1. Qualitative Research:

The researcher’s observation included detailed explanation of what the various classes

were all about. Based on the output received the researcher had to draw a connection between

what was being taught in class and the students learned, understood and could inculcate.

Moreover there were interviews of students where most of the questions were open ended and

students had to describe their opinions to the researcher. Moreover, the researcher has checked

some of the scripts of the students and stated their problems of writing by explaining some facts.
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 16

Hence, the detailed opinions and in-depth explanation of the research gives it a qualitative

nature.

3.5.2. Quantitative Research:

While taking interview there were very few questions where students had to give answers

by saying either they agreed or disagreed. These kinds of information were numerical and go to

under the quantitative research. The researcher showed that numerical data in a chart.

3.6. Obstacles:

There were few obstacles that the researcher encountered while conducting this research

and collecting data. The researcher was a student therefore she had regular classes alongside.

Moreover, while observing classes there were some interruption from other classes. Students

from other classes came to the teachers for their purposes and the teachers had to solve their

problems. Furthermore, during class observation some students did not cooperate. While taking

interview some of the interviewees were imitating the answers of others. So the researchers told

them and made them understand repeatedly not to imitate others and to give their own answers.
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 17

Chapter Four

Research Findings

The researcher used three different formats for collecting data such as class observation,

students’ interview and scripts assessment to collect the data. Through these three formats she

also tried to find the answers of the research questions.

4.1. Class -1:

The researcher chose class seven as the first class to observe. The number of the students

was 73 and all the students were girls. It was English 2nd paper class where writing grammar

were taught. The duration of the class was 45 minutes.

4.1.1. Findings from Class observation:

In the first class the teacher introduced the topic which was paragraph writing. After

explaining the rules the teacher used an example. He talked about a topic “A Teacher” he

explained to the students that if a topic like “A teacher” is given to students then the students

would write the main idea in the very first line. He also explained to them this way, such as the

students should write their thesis statement “a teacher is a person who shares his knowledge with

his students”. Furthermore, the teacher said them if that sentence is your thesis statement then

rest of the paragraph should have the supporting details. The teacher also mentioned to the

students that the last line of their paragraph should be the restatement of the thesis statement.

Again he made the students aware that they cannot copy the same line of the thesis statement

from their topic sentence. The tone would be the same but the language will be different.

The teacher gave a topic to the students to write a paragraph and the topic was “A Chair”.
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 18

There was 15 minutes allocated for the students to write a paragraph. The teacher gave them the

instruction of writing the paragraph within eight to ten lines. While the students were writing the

paragraph the teacher was observing the students and went to them when anyone was asking

questions. None of the students asked anything regarding the structure of the paragraph and

organizing the information. All of them were asking either the spelling or grammatical rules. The

teacher became busy to solve their spelling and grammatical problems. After 15 minutes the

teacher and researcher collected the scripts, few of them could complete writing the paragraph

and few of them wanted some more time.

4.1.2. Findings from Students’ Interview:

After class observation, through random selection the researcher chose ten students to

have an interview and also collected their scripts. The researcher asked the question to those ten

students and took the answers one by one.

[Link]. Open ended question and answer:

Most effective productive skill to express thought:

While answering the question seven students said that writing skill was the most effective

skill to express emotion and thought. From their point of view while writing on a topic they

could take time to think. They did not need to write instant and that is the reason they can

express their thoughts easily. On the other hand three students said through speaking they could

express their thought more comfortably.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 19

Grammatical problems vs. problems regarding information organization

Among ten students eight students said that they face more difficulties with grammatical

items while writing on a topic. They became more conscious about their grammatical problems.

Two students think that organizing data or creation connection between two kinds of information

was the biggest challenge for them while writing.

Biggest problem students face in writing

Three kinds of problems were mentioned by the students. Five students said that they

often did same grammatical mistakes repeatedly like forget to use “es/s” after third person

singular number. Three students mentioned that they faced difficulties while they tried to create

relevance within the information. Lastly two students think their marks got deducted due to

spelling mistakes.

Problems in writing with own idea vs. problems in writing with memorized information

Among ten students eight students think they made fewer mistakes when they got chance

to write about an incident by their own language. When they needed to memorize the

information, particular vocabulary or grammatical items then they became more conscious and

did mistakes. On the other hand, two students think they did better if they had to write on a topic

which was memorized. Because then they could use limited grammatical items, information and

vocabulary which was already memorized.

Translation from first language to second language is a problem

Except the problem with vocabulary items none of the students think translation was a

big deal for them. All of them agreed to the point that if they had experienced an incident or they
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 20

had the information of a certain topic then they could translate their thought from Bengali to the

target language.

[Link]. Multiple choice questions, answers and percentage:

Table 1

Interview Findings (MCQ) of Class- 1 to Explore Students’ Writing Problems

Number of

MCQ Questions Yes/No students Percentage

MCQ-1: Writing is the best way of Yes 7 70

expressing thought No 3 30

Total 10 100

MCQ-2: Students get blank and Yes 6 60

clueless while writing in English No 4 40

Total 10 100

MCQ-3: Target language (English) Yes 8 80

is the major issue for creating No 2 20

problems while writing Total 10 100

MCQ-4: Problems regarding Yes 3 30

spelling and punctuation are major No 7 70

problems Total 10 100

MCQ-5: Only teachers can solve Yes 2 20

writing problems No 8 80

Total 10 100
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 21

From the table it is clear that most of the students think writing is the best way of

expressing thoughts but it is tough for them to write in English which is their second language.

Moreover, most of the students do not face spelling and punctuation problems often. In addition,

from students’ point of view only teachers cannot solve their writing problems they also need to

work on it.

4.1.3. Findings from Students’ Script Assessment:

The researcher noticed that except few students, most of the students did not write the

thesis statement. In many scripts there was not any specific thesis statement; most of the students

wrote some basic information about the given topic “chair”. As an example, one of the students

started her paragraph by writing that “we use many furniture in our daily life”. While writing a

paragraph on a chair this cannot be the topic sentence of the paragraph. Students should write

their topic sentence related with the topic.

Students who wrote their thesis statement did not give the supporting details according to

the thesis statement in the body paragraph. As an example, the thesis statement was “a chair is

very useful furniture in our life” but the student explained different kinds of chair in her body

paragraph rather than explaining the usefulness of the chair.

The most common problem in writing was repetition of information. Students wrote one

line several times in different language. As an example, “a chair is an useful furniture”, “a chair

is a necessary furniture”, “a chair is very important furniture of our life”. Same kind of

information was written in several times and it shows they have less knowledge about chair or

whatever they have on their mind cannot be translated in English.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 22

Grammatical errors were common in every script. Using proper preposition seemed a

tough job for the students. As an example, someone wrote, we use chair “into” our dinning

space. It shows she had less knowledge about the use of “in” and “into”. Many of the students

did not restate their thesis statement in different language in the conclusion. Moreover, using

irrelevant words were found in several sentences like someone wrote,” a chair is seriously useful

furniture”, she might have tried to mean, “a chair is a useful furniture indeed”.

The findings from three research instruments suggested that the points the teacher taught

about the paragraph writing were not reflected in the students’ scripts. Moreover, the writing

problems appeared through students’ interview was clearly found in their scripts as well.

4.2. Class -2:

The researcher chose class seven to observe for the second time. The numbers of the

students were 80 and all of the students were girls. It was also English 2nd paper class which

includes completing story writing.

4.2.1. Findings from Class observation:

In the second class the topic was completing story. This section of writing is considered

as the creative writing section. The teachers want the students to write or complete the story with

their own words and ideas rather memorizing from the book. From teacher’s lecture it was clear

that the students already knew the instructions of writing completing story and it was just a

revision for them.

There would be three parts of completing story, introduction; body paragraph and lastly

conclusion. These three parts should have three separate paragraphs. The introduction would be
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 23

given by the teacher and according to the given introduction the students had to draw a picture of

the story and would explain the main story in the body paragraph. Lastly the teacher mentioned

that the conclusion would always carry a moral. The students also needed to give the appropriate

title based on the story. Moreover, if the students wanted to quote any line or statement then that

line should be within inverted comma.

After explaining the rules the teacher gave the students a title “The Hare and the

Tortoise” to write a story. Usually the introduction of the story was given by the teachers but due

to time limitation the teacher gave them the title. While writing the story students seemed

confused about spelling and grammatical rules. They were very much conscious about these two

things that some of them were keep asking some spelling and grammar items to the teachers and

to their peers. Students had 15 minutes to complete writing the story. Meanwhile, the researcher

asked the teacher the reason behind student not having any question or confusion regarding the

title. Then the teacher said that students knew about the title before. There are only three titles of

the story given in their syllabus and one of them will surely come to their exam.

4.2.2. Findings from Students’ Interview:

There were also ten students in the interview of the second class. The researcher took the

students out of the class. Then the interview was arranged in another class. There were also the

same ten questions which were asked in the first class. There were five yes/ no questions and five

open- ended questions.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 24

[Link]. Open ended question and answer:

Most effective productive skill to express thought:

Writing was the best way to express the thoughts. While writing students got enough time

to think about what they are going to write. They could focus on their grammatical confusion and

could chose appropriate words to write their thoughts, this is how eight students thought. On the

other hand, two students thought that through speaking they can express themselves more

quickly and they do not need to be worried about spelling mistakes.

Grammatical problems vs. problems regarding information organization:

Among ten students six students thought they faced grammatical problems more in whole

writing task. They faced grammatical problems like tense, using appropriate prepositions, using

articles, subject- verb agreement and so on. However, four students faced problem regarding

information organization. From their point of view, sometimes they went blank while organizing

the information. They could not create coherence between the sentences and words.

Biggest problem students face in writing:

Ten students mentioned that their biggest problem was grammatical problems while

writing. Along with grammatical problems spelling mistakes and lack of vocabularies were big

deals for them as they said. Three of them also said that creating logical connection between the

sentences was also big trouble for them.

Problems in writing with own idea vs. problems in writing with memorized information:

Three students out of ten students think they face more problems while writing something

from their own ideas. It happened due to lack of confidence and lack of vocabulary. They
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 25

thought if they have produced a piece of writing by their own words often they failed to organize

the whole thing and teacher cannot get what they try to express. On the other hand, seven

students think if they have memorized a paragraph or essay then there was a chance to forget it

due to their bad memory. They also said memorizing grammatical rules was not their cup of tea.

So if they tried to do this they made mistakes.

Translation from first language to second language is a problem:

All of the students agreed that they face problems while translating their thoughts from

Bengali to English. They again agreed with the point that, not being able of applying

grammatical rules and lack of vocabularies were the reasons behind this. They said structure of

Bengali sentence is completely different from English sentence that was why they often made

mistakes. Moreover, often they could not find a suitable English word for a particular Bengali

word due to lack of vocabulary.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 26

[Link]. Multiple choice questions, answers and percentage:

Table 2

Interview Findings (MCQ) of Class- 2 to Explore Students’ Writing Problems

Number of

MCQ Questions Yes/No students Percentage

MCQ-1: Writing is the best way of Yes 7 70

expressing thought No 3 30

Total 10 100

MCQ-2: Students get blank and Yes 7 70

clueless while writing in English No 3 30

Total 10 100

MCQ-3: Target language (English) Yes 7 70

is the major issue for creating No 3 30

problems while writing Total 10 100

MCQ-4: Problems regarding Yes 8 80

spelling and punctuation are major No 2 20

problems Total 10 100

MCQ-5: Only teachers can solve Yes 0 0

writing problems No 10 100

Total 10 100
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 27

The table shows that a good number of students find writing as the most effective way of

stating thoughts. Furthermore, many students think that they face more problems while writing in

English. For them spelling mistakes and punctuation errors hinder their writing performance.

Moreover, none of these ten students think that only teachers can solve their writing problems

rather they also need to try to solve their own writing problems.

4.1.3. Findings from Students’ Script Assessment:

Apparently all the writings looked very structured, students tried their level best to follow

all the rules they knew for writing completing story. However, none of the students tried to draw

different picture of the story under the given title “The Hare and the Tortoise”. The starting and

the ending of the story were almost same in every script. In interview most of the students

mentioned that their biggest problem is grammatical problems and it could be understood from

their scripts. Apart from grammatical errors, wrong use of punctuations and absence of

punctuation was another problem that the researcher found. Moreover, incomplete sentences,

wrong choice of words and irrelevant sentences were the common problems in the scripts.

In the starting line among ten students, nine students used the word jungle and only one

student use the word forest instead of using jungle. It was visible that students did not want to

play with words and their learning of vocabulary was very limited. On the other hand, all the

scripts showed that students strictly followed the instruction of the teacher. They wrote some

starting lines or introduced the characters in the introduction part, elaborated the main story in

the body paragraph and lastly ended up the story with a moral. One thing many of the students

did not do is many of them did not make separate paragraphs for the three parts.
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 28

Most of the students started their story with the phrase “once upon a time”, and ended the

story using the story title. It proves that they seldom used their own ideas while writing the story.

Students used simple sentences to write the story and it shows that they have less knowledge

about other kinds of sentences. Lastly silly grammatical mistakes like choosing inappropriate

tense, degree, voice change and many more were reflected in their scripts.

The findings from three research instruments suggest that though the teacher wanted this

particular task to be a task of creative writing but his way of teaching did not permit so. He had

already given the students a sample of that story and wanted to follow that. Therefore, there was

not any creativity in the story writing. As students hardly get any opportunity to write something

from their own that is why many students mentioned in interview that they felt unconfident while

writing something from their own words and ideas.

4.3. Class -3:

Third class was standard six, there were 75 students. The topic of third class was

summary writing. It was English 1st paper class. The duration of class was 45 minutes.

4.3.1. Findings from Class observation:

In the third class the teacher started his lecture by stating that summary writing is taking

the main theme from the passage and writing those ideas in few sentences. Then he pointed five

rules of writing summary and later explained the rules one by one orally. The very first rule of

summary writing was that the summary would be shorter than the real passage or paragraph. It

would be one third of the original passage; students would write the summary within few lines.

Secondly, the summary should be written by the theme of the original passage. Students first

have to understand the subject or theme of the given passage and then based on that theme they
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 29

would write the summary. Thirdly, in summary writing there would not be any quotation or

example. The teacher pointed that in summary students could not use any moral or any kind of

quotation. Using own idea or using ideas from outside the text is strictly prohibited. Again he

said that using any kind of example was also not allowed in summary writing. He made it clear

to the students that they never could use “as an example” in summary writing. Fourthly, the

students could not use any direct line from the given passage. Coping or imitating sentence from

the passage was not allowed while writing the summary. He said students to take the main theme

from the passage and write the main ideas of the passage in their own language. Lastly the

teacher said that whatever they wrote in summary it should be conceptual and structural. In this

point he explained that their writing should be structured, there should be logical connection

between the sentences. He also wanted the students to be grammatically correct. Once explaining

the rules of summary writing was over the teacher gave a task to the students. He selected one

passage from the book and told them to summarize that passage.

4.3.2. Findings from Students’ Interview:

Just like two other classes in this class there were ten interviewees. In this interview there

were also the same ten questions which were asked in the first and second class. There were five

yes/ no questions and five open- ended questions.

[Link]. Open ended question and answer:

Most effective productive skill to express thought:

All of the interviewee thought that writing was the best way to express their thoughts.

While writing they can take enough time and could organize their thoughts properly. Moreover,

for them speaking in English was a big thing to do. Most of them were scared of speaking in
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 30

English because from their point of view they made more mistakes and felt nervous while talking

in English.

Grammatical problems vs. problems regarding information organization:

Among ten students seven students thought they face grammatical problems more

because there were too many rules to memorize. They thought even if they could translate their

ideas from English to Bengali, their main obstacle was applying appropriate grammatical rules.

On the other hand three students believed that they faced problems with organizing information.

Often they could not organize sentences one after another.

Biggest problem students face in writing:

Students mentioned lots of problems while answering this question. Individual students

mentioned individual problems, like grammatical problems, translation problems, spelling

problems and organization problems.

Problems in writing with own idea vs. problems in writing with memorized information:

Six students thought they faced problems when they wrote with their own ideas. Because

they needed to translate from English to Bengali by themselves, they needed to apply correct

grammar by themselves moreover they needed to choose appropriate words by themselves. As

they were not confident about their capability of producing a piece of writing by their own ideas

therefore they prefer to memorize. Four students answered that they did better with their own

ideas. Because if they memorized anything then they needed to write exactly what they have

memorized and often they forgot information and grammatical rules. They thought they got more

marks if they have memorized information.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 31

Translation from first language to second language is a problem:

All the interviewees agreed to the point that they faced many problems while translating

their thought from English to Bengali. As students were tend to memorize paragraphs, essays,

summaries and completing stories therefore they did not need to translate their thoughts. This

habit made them unable of translating their own ideas from Bengali to English. Moreover, lack

of English vocabularies and different syntax style created problems in translation.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 32

[Link]. Multiple choice questions, answers and percentage:

Table 3

Interview Findings (MCQ) of Class- 3 to Explore Students’ Writing Problems

Number of

MCQ Questions Yes/No students Percentage

MCQ-1: Writing is the best way of Yes 10 100

expressing thought No 0 0

Total 10 100

MCQ-2: Students get blank and Yes 10 100

clueless while writing in English No 0 0

Total 10 100

MCQ-3: Target language (English) Yes 1 10

is the major issue for creating No 9 90

problems while writing Total 10 100

MCQ-4: Problems regarding Yes 9 90

spelling and punctuation are major No 1 10

problems Total 10 100

MCQ-5: Only teachers can solve Yes 1 10

writing problems No 9 90

Total 10 100
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 33

It is clear from the table that all the students prefer writing as a medium of conveying

their thoughts. All the students believe that sometimes they get blank while writing in English

but it is not tough to write in English. Most of the students have problems regarding spelling and

punctuation and almost all of them think it is their job to find out their own writing problems and

solve by themselves with the help of the teachers.

4.3.3. Findings from Students’ Script Assessment:

The main passage of summary writing was about an ideal teacher who is friendly to her

students. The story was about teacher students’ relationship and also about the personal life of

that teacher. However, most of the students were able to summarize the story according to the

instructions. It proved that students did prefer writing which are related to their own life or which

they have experienced. In other words it was easy for them to learn their lessons from authentic

material. On the other hand, some of the students wrote a new story adding their own ideas rather

than summarizing the story. As an example, one of them wrote the whole summary by describing

her favorite teacher which had no connection with the original passage.

In the scripts it was clear the students had severe grammatical problems. They could not

use prepositions properly, as an example one of the students wrote; the teacher was very popular

with her students. This line showed she did not know the difference between “with” and

“among”. Moreover, many students did mistake in using “es/s” after third person singular

number, chose wrong pro-noun while writing the summary.

Though the teacher explained the rules of summary writing in the very beginning many

of the students did not followed the rules. In the last sentence many students gave their opinion

about an ideal teacher, copied same lines from the original passage which were strictly
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 34

prohibited in summary writing. Many of the students did not summarize the whole story,

repeated same lines and also used inappropriate words in inappropriate places which had

happened due to lack of vocabulary .

The findings from three research instruments suggest that most of the students were

capable of writing summary as summary writing is a very structured and controlled writing.

They followed the instructions given by the teacher and could write a good summary. Moreover,

six students feel that they can do better if they get opportunity to write something they have

memorized and structured and this is the reason they did well in this task.
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 35

Chapter Five

Analysis

5.1. Class Observation:

From the analysis of class observations it appeared that the teachers followed GTM

(Grammar Translation Method) while teaching the students paragraph and summary writing. The

teacher taught the rules first and then presented examples to the students so it can be said that the

teacher was using deductive learning method. The teacher was the authoritative figure in the

class and there were very few interactions between the teacher and students. From the lecture of

the teacher it was quite clear that he wanted the students to be able of writing a paragraph

accurately. For teaching the students’ accurate paragraph writing he emphasized more on

grammar and literary language. While he went to check what they were writing, he corrected the

use of articles and prepositions. Freeman (2000) claimed that Grammar Translation Method

focuses only teaching and learning of rules. From GTM perspective learning a language means

learning all grammatical rules. In GTM accuracy is more important than fluency. Students need

to learn all grammatical items correctly they do not need to be fluent in use the use of grammar

while talking. In GTM method deductive learning is a must, student need to learn rules and

definitions first and later they learn examples. Through this method student can learn

grammatical rules correctly and they do well in writing. Freeman (2000) also proposed that this

method is good for beginners and for large class also, it required fewer resources. On the other

hand, in this method teacher is the authoritative figure to make decisions and the participation of

learners is very less. Although the Grammar-Translation Method often creates frustration for

students, it makes few demands on teachers. It is still used in situations where understanding
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 36

literary texts is the primary focus of foreign language study and there is little need for a speaking

knowledge of the language (Freeman, 2000, pp. 11-16). The teacher taught the students grammar

first and then explained an example. From this way of teaching students might have a good

command on grammatical rules but they would have less exposure in communicative skill.

The researcher observed that most of the students were very conscious about their

grammatical mistakes. The students called the teacher to ask the grammatical structure, spelling

and vocabulary. Someone was asking the teacher in Bengali whether it will be a chair has four

legs or a chair has four stands. Someone asked whether it will be a chair is made “of” woods or

made “from” woods. Moreover, many students were asking the spelling of furniture, plastic and

so on. In this point Marzano (1982) mentioned that there are two categories of writing mistake

one is error characteristics another one is non-error characteristics. Teachers can simply find out

error characteristics from students’ writing. There are eight major problems that students face in

error characteristics and they are, spelling problems, pronoun usage, agreement between subject

and predicate, the avoidance of run-on sentence, capitalization, punctuation, usage of slang or

nonstandard terms and modification problems. But if there is no mistake in writing still that

particular writing cannot be considered as a good piece of writing. There are some non-error

characteristics which make difference between skilled writing and non-skilled writing and they

are density of ideas, variety of referents and variety of expression in repeated concepts (Marzano,

1982, pp. 408-9). Focusing only on grammatical rules, correct spelling and appropriate use of

vocabulary is not enough to produce a good piece of writing. Even if a student writes a piece of

writing without any grammatically error but still cannot create any sense in his writing then it

will not be considered as a skilled writing piece.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 37

The teacher also wanted the summary to be very structural therefore in the beginning of

the class he mentioned 5 rules of writing summary. He chose one of the passages from the text

book and gave that to the students to exercise. So it can be said that he utilized the text and

exercise in a constrained way. From the previous study it can be found that summary writing

depends on organizing the information in a structural way, in this point Irwin (1986) emphasized

on some points about summary writing. Summarization is defined as the procedure of

incorporating and arranging sole idea into a summary or structured sequence of related broad

ideas (as cited in Chen and Su, 2011, p. 184). The teacher explained five rules of summary

writing like, summary will be shorter than the real passage or paragraph, the summary should be

written by the theme of the original passage, in summary writing there will not be any quotation

or example, students cannot use any direct line from the given passage and lastly whatever the

students write in summary it should be conceptual and structural. Most of the students were

capable of writing summary as summary writing is a very structured and controlled writing. On

the other hand, some of the students added their personal experiences in summary writing which

is strictly prohibited in summary writing.

In this task there were less interaction between the teacher and students. From the lecture

of the teacher it was quite understandable that the main focus of summary writing was on

grammatical rules and structure. The concentration was not on the purpose and the audience of

the writing but from Widodo’s point of view concentration should be on these two issues.

Widodo (2006) stated that a genre based approach to teaching L2 writing focuses on the

gatherings of an individual text type and try to help students to understand what is the purpose of

writing text, who is their audience or for whom they are writing and how to organize a text (as

cited in Chen and Su, 2011, p. 185). In this class the teacher did not mention to the students
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 38

about the purpose and the reader. If he would tell them then it would be easy for the students two

write the summary according to the purpose and audience.

Techniques of Audio-Lingual Method were applied in one of the classes. Firstly the

teacher started his lecture with a set of rules which should be followed by the students. Then he

gave a title of a story and told the students to write a story based on that title. However, the

teacher provided three fixed stories in the syllabus and wanted the students to write same like the

given stories which were considered as imitating the story. The teacher wanted them to write the

story in a certain manner, like starting the story with “once upon a time” or using the moral of

the story in the very last sentence of the story. In this situation the role of the students was

imitator and the role of the teacher was an orchestra leader providing a good model for imitation.

From the previous study, techniques of Audio-Lingual Method can be found which matched the

techniques of the teaching style of that class. Freeman (2000) claimed that there is dependence

on imitation, memorization language and over learning. It drills students in the use of

grammatical sentence pattern. This method talks about habit formation. The more students will

repeat the more they will learn. They make errors due to the formation of bad habit; errors should

be corrected immediately by the teacher. Positive reinforcement helps students to build right

habits. Grammatical rules are taught by inductive learning rather than deductive learning

(Freeman, 2000, pp. 11-16). The teacher previously gave samples of completing story and he

picked up one from them. Though it was a creative writing task but students already knew the

story and read it several times. Therefore it was easy for them to write the same story that they

have already memorized. Students get less opportunity to write something from their own ideas.

So it can be said that the teacher wanted the students to build a habit of using some fixed

phrases or structures by repeating them in every stories they write. A student’s writing habit or
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 39

writing pattern is very much dependent on teacher’s expectation; Evans (1959) in his study

explored students’ dependence on their teachers. Evans (1959) reported that in school it is very

common that the quality of students’ writings depend on teachers’ expectation. If the students

were given more writing task like assignments and reports on a particular topic or themes then

the students would get more opportunity to write and practice. He also said that students’ writing

will be more matured as long as they will practice writing on narrowed topics and work on

outlines and organize materials (Evans, 1959, p. 14). If the teacher trains the students t build a

good habit then the students will grow up with that habit. Teachers should encourage the students

to complete the stories in their own way.

Writing completing story is one of the ways of producing creative writing. However, in

Bengali medium schools this is also controlled by the teachers and becomes controlled writing.

The students should have the freedom of taking the picture of the story to anywhere they want.

They are allowed to use their own ideas and imagination while writing the story. They have their

own individuality of finding different morals from different stories. To give a clear

understanding about creative writing, the researcher incorporated a previous study on creative

writing. Paul McKee (1960) said that if there is no uniqueness in ideas, if there is no original

thought and if there is bad expression in a piece of writing then that writing will not be called as

creative writing (as cited in Pikulsk, 1975, p, 183). From the very beginning students are learning

wrong way of writing completing story. They were bound to imitate the given stories and could

not show their own creativity. They were just memorizing the words and the structure of the

story and writing the same thing on their exam. Who can imitate more appropriately will get the

better marks. This is the reason students from Bengali medium schools are scared of writing

something in English on an unknown topic. Because, they even do not know how to construct
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 40

own ideas on mind in English, they are not able to write anything they have not memorized due

to the faulty system of the education.

5.2. Interview:

From the result of interview it was quite clear that most of the students believed that they

could express their thoughts more efficiently through writing. From their point of view they

could take time and could state their emotions and thoughts properly. From their perspective they

could not express their thoughts through speaking fluently, as they had to deliver their thoughts

instantly and make mistakes. They also mentioned that through writing they could have good

command over English language. The researcher demonstrated a previous study in this point.

Manchón (2011) believed that writing is used widely in language practice for learning foreign

language. For this reason scholars made a difference between writing to learn content and

writing to learn language. Moreover, it is clear that all types of writing in foreign language

education contribute to the progress of language skills. Both learning-to-write and writing-to-

learn tasks help to develop the learners’ foreign language skill (as cited in Lund, 2015, p. 2).

Writing tasks are mandatory in foreign language teaching classes as writing tasks enhance

students’ language learning ability.

While writing students face grammatical problems more than data organization problems.

Students were more conscious about grammatical mistakes because they usually get feedback on

grammatical mistakes from the teachers. Moreover, for most of the students memorizing

grammatical rules is the major problem in writing task. From their point of view their writing

tasks are marked based on usage of grammar. Nevertheless according to Rifkin (1992) grammar

cannot be granted as the only factor or the most important factor for language teaching. He added
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 41

that there should be a balance between grammar-oriented and communication-oriented activities

in the successful foreign language classroom. The teachers should not only focus on grammar

rather they should focus on both grammatical rules and content. Moreover, they should find out

whether the students are able to communicate with the reader through their writings or not. That

means, whether they are able to make sense in their writings or not.

Some of the students also think that they face problems regarding information

organization along with grammatical problems. Often they cannot organize sentences one after

another. They know what to write but sometimes they do not know how to write. In this case an

earlier study can be stated. Flower (1989) pointed that some common problems in academic and

professional writing is the absence of referent, immature and imprecise ideas, some senseless

discussions and being unsuccessful to convert private thoughts into a public. In schools teachers

focus more on grammatical errors and spelling mistakes and often students do not get feedback

on their content. Therefore, problems like using irrelevant information or unorganized

information never get solved. Moreover, it hinders students’ writing capability.

All of the students had the same opinion that while translating their ideas from L1 to L2

they faced problems due to different sentence structures. Previous studies of Tirumalesh’s (1991)

findings also show that writing something in mother language is an automatic process. On the

other hand, writing in second language is a self- defeating process. One non- native person from

different cultural and geographical area cannot become native English by writing in English.

Though one may try to achieve total identification in L2, there will always be a difference. A

person always has a prior formation from his mother language therefore this formation cannot be

changed by his second language. New thoughts and ideas always get mixed with the existing

pattern. It is not possible to fully swap the old by the new. When someone believes that he can
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 42

write in his second language as good as he does in his mother language, he makes the mistakes

Tirumalesh, 1991, pp. 2670-2671). There are two different structures in Bengali language and

English language; therefore often students make mistakes in sentence level. Like in English

“Verb” comes after Subject but in Bengali “Object” comes after Subject.

5.3. Script Assessment:

While checking the scripts the researcher noticed that the students’ writing was not

organized. Repetition of information, absence of thesis statement, using irrelevant information,

lack of creative writing and producing controlled writing and lastly many silly grammatical

mistakes were seen in their scripts. From the previous study of Hounsell (1987) it can be stated

that categorized three core elements of essay-writing formations. First one is Data which is the

theme or material of the essay; second one is Organization which is organizing the essay material

in a structured way and the last one is Interpretation the connotation or sense which is given to

the material by the students (as cited in Light, 2002, p. 258). . In most of the scripts there was not

any specific thesis statement and if there was thesis statement in some of the scripts then there

were not any supporting details. Students wrote some random information about the topic and

constructed their paragraph. Irrelevant information and repetition of information was very

common in every script. As the teacher gave less importance on those issues therefore the

students were also less concerned.

In the scripts spelling mistakes, wrong use of word and imitated writings were found.

Some of the students had bad hand writing, some of the students gave irrelevant information and

incomplete sentences that could not make any sense in paragraph writing. In this point

O’Donnell (1980) said it is very common to almost every class that students’ have different
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 43

spelling style; handwriting is not clear and sometimes their writings do not make any sense. The

reason can be, some of the students are just not concerned and show less care towards their

writings and some of the students might have any kind of learning disabilities (O’Donnell, 1980,

p. 802). Possibly there will be two reasons behind students’ writing problems. One reason is they

do not give their concentration on what they are writing and another reason is they are disabled

or incapable of producing a good piece of writing.

Completing story writing is considered as a creative writing task. However, the

researcher saw completely different scenario in the completing story writing class; the students

did not use their own ideas or creativity. Rather they wrote the same story using the same

language that they read in their text book. A previous study of LaBrant (1967) also shows that

imitating someone’s work will not be considered as a creative work. LaBrant (1967) claimed that

until a child does not copy someone else’s work whatever he writes is creative writing (as cited

in Pikulsk, 1975, p, 183). The teacher provided samples to the students for imitating the writing

style. Through this task the teacher will found a habit of writing completing story but these kinds

of practices never give chance to learn anything.

The researcher asked the teachers of each class to check two scripts to observe their way

of giving feedback. Teachers were focusing more on grammatical rules rather than the content.

They were finding grammatical mistakes, without giving the concern to the fact that students

wrote irrelevant information and there was not any synchronization of information in the scripts.

However, with the disagreement Holley and King (1974-81) stated that even though grammatical

correctness is not always compulsory of an ESL student to achieve communication, the teachers

of ESL persisted for many years on grammatical correctness in student performance. Foreign

language teachers have been trained to correct students’ inappropriate response instantly when it
EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 44

is about grammatical and pronunciation errors, because it is being assumed that correcting errors

instantly will help to learn. Teachers who emphasis more on grammatical accuracy they might

not encourage students when they are communicating in foreign language (as cited in Tomiyana,

1980, p. 71). Giving feedback only on the use of grammatical rules is not enough to improve

students’ writing performance. Teachers should provide the feedback on the content as well. If

the teachers can provide feedback on these two features then the students will be able to find

their writing problems by themselves.

One of the reasons behind students’ persistent writing problems is the feedback. The

feedback strategies employed by the teachers are not precise and motivational. They only deduct

marks and point out the reason of deducting marks. They do not comment on the quality of the

writing and moreover do not correct the answer with the solution. Therefore, students become

unaware of their problem. In this point Brown (1932); Symonds and Chase(1929) said that some

feedback can be motivational like praising can work like a motivator in terms of writing and

revision activities and this kind of feedback is called motivational meaning (as cited in Nelson

and Schunn, 2009, p. 376). Feedback on writing task should be specific and motivational. The

teachers should provide the feedback such way that helps students to identify their problems and

encourages them to solve it by themselves.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 45

Chapter Six

Conclusion

After analyzing all the findings the study can be concluded by stating that the secondary

level students of Bengali medium school prefer writing task more than speaking task, since they

feel more comfortable to express their thoughts and ideas through writing tasks. Moreover,

memorizing grammatical rules is a challenge for them because there are differences between

English grammar and Bengali grammar. As their writing performance is valued based on the

correct use of grammatical rules, they focus more on this aspect. They believe that if they can

produce a writing piece without any grammatical error then they are good in writing. On the

other hand, some of the students thought that they are bad in terms of organizing the information;

some students thought they are not good in creative writing because they are much used to in

controlled writing and some of the students thought they face problems while doing translation

due to the differences in sentence structures between the two languages.

The research would have had more impact if the researcher could get the opportunity to

visit more Bengali medium schools. There was limitation of time to visit more than one school;

therefore the researcher had to choose one school and observed three different classes. If the

researcher could get the opportunity to observe different schools then the finding would have

been more authentic and there would have more variation of data.

For future investigations, the researcher suggests to conduct a more detailed analysis of

the topic, as it is an important area of second language learning. Interviews of both teachers and

students can be added to make the research more authentic.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 46

To conclude the paper, it can be stated that students of Bengali medium schools have

different writing problems such as grammatical errors, unorganized and irrelevant information,

spelling mistakes, inappropriate use of vocabularies and etc. Their problems can be solved if they

get the proper guideline and feedback from the teachers.

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 47

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EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 50

Appendix

Part- 1

Open-ended questions:

1. Through which productive skill do you feel most comfortable to express your thoughts?

2. Which one you face more- writing something in English, grammatical problems or

problems regarding information organization?

3. Which is the biggest problem for you while writing something in English?

4. When do you face more problems- while writing by your own idea or writing something

you memorized?

5. While translating a piece of writing from your first language to second language- do you

face any problem?

EXPLORATION OF STUDENTS’ WRITING PROBLEMS 51

Part-2

Multiple-choice questions:

1. Do you think writing is the best way of expressing thoughts?

a. Yes

b. No

2. Do you feel blank/clueless while writing something in English?

a. Yes

b. No

3. Do you think target language (English) is the major issue for creating problems while

writing?

a. Yes

b. No

4. Do you consider problems regarding spelling and punctuation as a major problem?

a. Yes

b. No

5. Do your teachers help you to find out your writing problems?

a. Yes

b. No