Haramaya University

College Social Sciences and Humanities

School of Foreign Language and Journalism
Department of English Language and Literature
Name of the applicant: Bayissa Bekele
Request for Concept Note for Ph D Application
Title: Assessing Students’ Paragraph Writing Skills of the Course Basic
Writing Skills: The Case of First Year Undergraduate English Major Students
in 2024 G.C. at Ambo University
Area of the Study: Ambo University

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 INTRODUCTION

1.0 Background of the Study

Writing is a complex process that includes various sub-skills from the basics of handwriting and
spelling to the subtle nuances of tone and organization; it is also a difficult skill to master in both
L1 and L2 domains.
Even the most admired and proficient writers of both domains continue to learn from experience
and refine their craft (Hedges, 1988; Viet&Gould, 2007: Also it demands the art of manipulating
one’s creative faculty and critical thinking (Zemach&Rumisek, 2005). Scholars on the area of
composition (Hillocks, 1986; Hedges, 1988; Langan, 2010) firmly argue that writing by its very
nature is the activity that undergoes a number of several processes, techniques and strategies. Be
it a novice, a guru or a well experienced writer may not be able to produce a complete sound
material as nobody can instantly compose a set of ideas for the selected topic .So they need to
modify, review, and revise their piece of writing throughout.
The essence of writing is embedded in almost all fields of study and all environments of
profession, business and occupation. It is one of the most important vehicles of communication
in a day-to -day life mainly for literate society. As far as the focus of this study is concerned,
paragraph writing as a sub- skill of academic writing is the fundamental skill that provides high
school and university students with ample opportunity to become better writers in the journey of
their academic pursuit by allowing them to involve in discourse community as well as academic
society. It is also believed that grasping and developing paragraph writing skills help
intermediate learners and university beginners become more successful in tests and
exams(Zemach & Rumisek,2006 ).Accordingly, academic writers such as Lagan,(2010 ); (Feng-
Checkett and Checkett,2010 ); (Hedge,2007) suggest that it is so essential for instructors to be
aware of their students’ paragraph writing performances. Therefore, the present study
considerably assesses first year applied English students’ paragraph writing practices.

1.1. Statement of the Problem

Though the process versus product dichotomy has characterized debate in the literature of
writing, ESL researchers have generally agreed that the goal of higher level writing is to prepare
students to become better academic writers (Spack, 1988; Swales 1996; Horowitz, 1986; Johns
1986). Attaining this goal, however, may be challenging because most often a gap exists between

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what students practice in writing paragraphs and what writing theories inform about it as well as
what writing instructors attempt in inculcating the skill into their students’ minds.
Scholars in the area also argue that failure of ESL /EFL students to become better academic
writers may lie in such factors as lack of pervious training in writing and L2 difficulty (Bizzell,
1982); constraints imposed by writing tasks (Zamel, 1983); lack of writing tasks (Flower et al,
1990); and cultural barriers in writing (1996, 1996).In Ethiopian context, Basic Writing Skills, a
course offered in universities is meant to solve problems students have in writing sentences,
paragraphs, and technical reports. The course is delivered to English major and non- English
major beginner students in Ambo University. Apart from this course paragraph writing takes the
most important focus. Although the aim of the course (Basic writing skills) offered at Ambo
University is to develop students’ basic writing skills from sentence to paragraph level and to
avoid their poor writing habits, there is no concrete evidence supported by research that if they
have achieved this goal or not. Furthermore, the potential contributions of instructors who teach
writing skills in helping their students need to be assessed.
The researcher is interested to conduct this study for a couple of reasons. First, he has ample
information about students’ paragraph writing performances since he teaches in secondary and
preparatory classes and these students seem to portray low achievement in paragraph writing and
they are those students who join universities with poor performances. Second, he read some
students’ undergraduate papers and he realized that the papers seem to reveal poor unity, poor
coherence, poor organization, poor grammar (sentence structure, word choice, and mechanics),
and poor content in terms of their assumed topics, and poor clarity and format. So all this issues
seem to be research problem need to be studied.
In line with conducting such current research, to date, several of the local studies, as reviewed by
the researcher, conducted in relation to writing at Addis Ababa University have mainly focused
on problems related to teaching writing in ELT classes. These research topics include: Exploring
Common Language Errors in Writing (Mamo, 1981). A Study of Students ’Academic Writing in
Response to Instructors’ Expectation at Addis Ababa University(Kefelegn,2003 );Evaluating the
Effectiveness of Writing Teaching Materials (Kiflemariam, 1988; Yonas, 1996), and Provisions
of Feedback in Writing (Getnet, 1994; Italo, 1999).Another study undertaken by Geremew
(1999) for his PH.D dissertation has investigated the Nature of the Requirements in Writing for
Academic Purposes. Only an inquiry carried out by Bekele(2005) for his MA Thesis, Ambo
University was EFL teachers’ Feedback Practices on Students’ Errors in Writing Classes at

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Ginchi Secondary School. This study will focus on Assessing Students’ Paragraph Writing Skills
for the course Basic Writing Skills EnLa(1012) the case of Second Year Undergraduate English
Major Students at Ambo University in the Year 2014 G.C.

1.2. Objective of the Study

1.2.1. General objective

The main purpose of this study will be to assess students’ practices of paragraph writing in an
EFL Classroom: the case of first year Applied English students at Ambo University

1.2.2. Specific objectives

Specifically, the study will seek to address the following specific objectives:
a) To investigate whether students write suitable topic sentences those include adequate
information, and produce a unified, coherent, grammatical and well organized
paragraphs.
b) To find out what kinds of feedbacks teachers give to correct students’ errors in writing
paragraphs.
c) To identify whether instructors and students follow the product, the process or
both/integrated models of writing in paragraph writing classes.
d) To describe factors that affect students’ paragraph writing performances.

1.3 Research Questions

In order to meet the above objectives, the study attempted to seek answers the following research
questions.
1. Do students write suitable topics sentences; produce grammatical, coherent, and well
organized paragraphs?
2. What kinds of feedback do instructors provide to students’ errors in evaluating students’
Paragraphs?
3. What approach to writing do teachers and students follow as paragraph writing strategy?
What factors affect student’ paragraph writing performances

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1.5 Research Design
In order to assess students’ paragraph writing skills in an EFL classroom, this the researcher
will employ Mixed research approach to data to triangulate nature of the existing situation and
descriptive research design will be used to describe the phenomena in its practical and natural
setting. In other words, this study will seek to describe the skill inadequacies and deficits
students portray in paragraph writing, situations of classroom activities and practices in writing
classes, so as assess and to narrate facts, typically of individual differences Qualitative approach
will be employed to assess individual performances, i.e results of students’ assignments ,tests,
exams and subjective attitudes and motivations of students towards writing in English and
teachers commitments in assessing paragraph writing skills-continuous assessment
administrations by requesting them which is document analysis to come up the consequences
while quantitative approach was used to collect quantitative data that are to be put to rigorous
quantitative analysis by designing questionnaires, administered to the participants, collected back
from them and then translated into statistical data such as frequencies, and percentiles. Methods
of data collection will be document analysis, interview, questionnaires and observations.

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 References

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