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The document discusses the challenges faced by undergraduate students learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in developing their writing skills. It identifies issues such as lack of interest, inadequate practice time, and difficulties with grammar and structure that hinder their writing performance. The study suggests that teachers should implement effective teaching methods and provide more opportunities for reading and writing practice to enhance students' writing abilities.

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9 views

pcadmin,+14

The document discusses the challenges faced by undergraduate students learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in developing their writing skills. It identifies issues such as lack of interest, inadequate practice time, and difficulties with grammar and structure that hinder their writing performance. The study suggests that teachers should implement effective teaching methods and provide more opportunities for reading and writing practice to enhance students' writing abilities.

Uploaded by

nodira161194
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ISSN: 2776-0995 Volume 3, Issue 4, April, 2022

THE PROBLEMS OF TEACHING WRITING SKILLS IN ESP CLASS


Azizova Maqsuda Axmadalievna
Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers,
National Research University, English department, senior teacher

Annotatsion
Writing is an important skill for language production. However, it is considered as one
of the most significant problems that affect not only native English speakers, but also
hundreds of students that are learning English as a second or foreign language around
the world. Thus, students face many challenges in writing. The fact that students do not
have interest in the Composition writing leads them to be poor writers, increase the
errors in their homework, write run-on sentences and incoherent paragraphs.
Therefore, the present study aims to investigate problems in undergraduate ESP
learners' writing and factors that hinder their writing skills. It also aimed at obtaining
suggestions on how to improve learners' writing skills. For this purpose, teachers must
improve their students writing skills by using effective teaching methods and more
reading and writing practice.

Keywords: Writing, problems, challenges, suggestions, improve

Introduction
Most of our students who are learning English as a second or a foreign language
consider writing as not only the most difficult skill to master, but also a stringent
activity. To help them cope these problems, the application of planning in the writing
process seems to be a solution. This study attempts to find out how different planning
formats can boost ESP students’ writing performance in argumentative essays. The
result of the study shows that the provision of planning is effective to improve the
students’ performance in writing argumentative essay. The effectiveness of different
types planning depends on the students’ preference of which to use. In fact, people are
gradually aware of the importance of the writing skill which must be mastered by those
who want to be recognized in the global world. It plays a major role in expressing one’s
ideas, thoughts, opinions, and attitudes. Writing is used in diaries for expressing
personal enjoyment or for some other purposes. More than that, taking notes for
students is another example of writing for one's self. It makes their thoughts visible and
transferable to other people. Hedge (1988:5) postulates that a good deal of writing in
the English language classroom is undertaken as an aid to learning; for example, to
consolidate the learning of new structures or vocabulary or to help students remember
new items of language. It assists them to have a chance to adventure with the language,
to go beyond what they have learned (Raimes,1983). It allows teachers to behold
students and identify problems encountered. This shows that writing plays a

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ISSN: 2776-0995 Volume 3, Issue 4, April, 2022

predominant role in language learning .Since English is a more widespread


international language for business and higher education.Ismail (2011) pointed out that
English writing bears chances for students to think critically and gives the inspiration
to learn certain parts of academic writing like utilizing powerful word expressions and
a great vocabulary.Writing in the mother tongue is painful for many students, but when
it comes to writing in the second language the students’ hardship and pain are worsen
(Gilmore, 2009).The primary intention of this study was to investigate the challenges
of scholastic writing which students of English as ESP undergraduate learners had to
encounter. This finding matched with Hutchinson & Waters (1987) who also strongly
suggested that it is important to acquaint the learners with the use of punctuation for
smooth progression in scholarly writing. The ‟use of irregular verbs‟ is another
difficulty for the learners who confused between the use of the past and the past
participle forms of irregular verbs.Similarly “As verbs take different forms depending
on tense and subjects they are used with, they create problems for second language
writing students” (Tyner, 1987).The findings also, revealed the problems of
inappropriate use of prepositions which is a major kind of error found in the academic
writings students (Al-Khairy, 2013). Kharma (1987) states that students have problems
with subject verb agreements, pronoun references, and connectors. Writing is an
extremely complex activity for the students who used general English (in the secondary
school) in a simple way rather than complex economical words (management
school).They must be vigilant with the format, sentence structure, vocabulary and
punctuation.Grabe and Kalan (1996:6) think that since writing does not come naturally
but rather gained through continuous effort and much practice, it becomes a complex
skill. Norish (1993) states the following about the complexity of writing. In written
medium, information has to be transmitted without any aid from sources other thanthe
language itself. It seems to follow from this that more attention is needed to be paid to
the language as a code in short to the grammatical and lexical system than is the case
with speech.(p.65)Furthermore, in spite of the fact that English is a foreign language in
Algeria only one session during the week is devoted to English for all the grades. On the
other hand, it is also noteworthy that in most universities, teaching English involves
large classes (Rashidi, 1995)and limited school facilities and learning materials
Sa‟adat‟s (1998).Lack of Intrinsic Motivation among learners: It is noteworthy that the
lessons presented by teachers focus on the grammars, English passages and the
textbooks are too long That is why nearly 50 % of the participants mentioned that
English was the FL that they preferred the most, even though French is of major
importance in the majority of job sectors in Algeria. This clarifies that the students were
aware of the importance of FLs just like what was discovered in Chambers’ (1993) study,
who reported that most of pupils claimed that learning an FL was important or quite
important.According to Zamel (1997) the writing class should take into account the
learners’ purposes for writing. Writing tasks can be developed rapidly when students’

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ISSN: 2776-0995 Volume 3, Issue 4, April, 2022

concerns and interests are acknowledged, when they are given numerous opportunities
to write and when they are encouraged to become participants .Silva (1990) believes
that it is both ‘reasonable and motivating’ to allow students to choose their own topics
and that when students are allowed this freedom, their work is more
successful.Inadequate Time :Students perceived that the time spent to practice writing
in class was insufficient for them to improve on their writing. They claim that the time
spent in learning to write in which was around one hour and half a week was insufficient
for them to be a good writer. Therefore, they insisted that they needed more practice
time outside of class time in order to improve.Hedge (1988: 11) states that the idea of
time needs to be given attention because writing activities by nature have different
stages which need ample time. In line with this, White and Arndt (1991) in Italo (1999:
47) state that “time is needed to incubate, sift and shape ideas. Time may also be an
important factor in producing a text with full of control over organization and
coherence. In addition, many students and teachers feel that writing under time
pressure is a very unnatural situation and perhaps cannot lead them to produce
compositions that are truly representative of their capabilities (Kroll, 1990: 140).
Conclusion:
It can be concluded that ESP students need more improvement on English language
proficiency and language use. Teachers must provide them with more exercises to
develop their writing skill. Additionally, they should train ESP students seriously in
order to improve and develop either their language proficiency or their writing skill. So
that they complete writing assignments successfully in a more sophisticated planning
strategy.

References
1. 1.Al-Khairy, M. H. (2013). English as a foreign language learning demotivational
factors as perceived by Saudi undergraduates. European Scientific Journal, 9(32).
2. 2.Chambers, G. (1993). Taking the ‘de’ out of demotivation. Language Learning
Journal, 7, 13-16.
3. 3.Gilmore, A. (2009). Using online corpora to develop students’ writing skills. ELT
Journal, 63(4), 363-372.
4. 4 Grab, W. and Kalan, R.(1996).Theory and Practice of Writing. London: Addison
Wesley Longman.
5. 5 Hedge, T. (1988). Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6. 6 Hutchinson, T., & Waters, A. (1987). English for specific purposes. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
7. 7.Kharma. N. 1987. ‘Arab Students’ Problems with the English Relative Clause’.
IRAL 25/3: 257–266.
8. 8.Norrish, J. (1983). Language Learners and their Errors. London. Mac Millan
Publishers.

67

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