Factors and Ways of Enhancing Efl Students' Writing Skills

The current study addresses to develop EFL students’ writing skills awareness in the field of academic curriculum. It is well known that amongst four aspects, writing is one of the most challenging aspects yet it plays crucial role in acquiring language. Researchers showed that all level of EFL students have lower score of writing than any other aspects. As Shokrpour & Fallahzadeh described that writing was not only about cognitively but also a complex social action. Therefore it becomes a considerable problem for a lot of EFL students to become a proficient writer. According to Nunan, indicated that writing is the most complex and difficult-to-learn process for those who learn English as a target language”.

According to Hedge, a writing activity often requires many factors such as a good ability to develop ideas and information, high level of accuracy to help readers avoid misunderstandings, the use of diversified structures of grammar, syntax with vocabulary”. However, in order to obtain some strategies, there is much work to be done an be aware of using proper methods by overcoming writing challenges. Learning to use writing strategies effectively is essential in this research for constructing meaning of learners' writing and as a trial to shift students' passive posture towards writing into a positive one. Therefore, the research was directed to survey EFL students’ obstacles in the writing side, determine the source of motives and offer solutions to aid them overcome barriers and enhance writing skills.

The L2 writing process is strategically, rhetorically and linguistically different from the L1 writing procedures and novice L2 writers must be taught L2 writing strategies explicitly. Nevertheless, there is rare guidance on the utilizing strategies in the process of writing. The reason is that writing in target language is difficult procedure of creating logically connected ideas, coherently and accurately organized text and brainstorming. It requires using variety of strategies and becoming more skilled in writing. As Zamel set up that the proficient ESL writers in the study practiced more and spent more time on essays than the unskilled ESL writers. For instance, planning before writing, brainstorming, revising, editing, drafting, developing ideas and connect them logically in target language.

According to Siti Hamin and Abdul Hameed’s survey on Malaysian Malay ESL students discovered that generating ideas utilizing native language among learners with low L2 proficiency assisted them to produce higher quantity of ideas and better quality essays in terms of total score, subject, language, organization, vocabulary and mechanics.

Therefore the function of strategy writing has become considerable vital between more and less skilled learners in the range of strategy use and how it is applied during the task. One of the important writing skill is planning. As Hu and Chen found that better L2 writers think deeply on decisions on what to write and on how to proceed; identifying the necessity of quality of planning over time spent planning. So it increases effectiveness of writing and facilitates the process.

Another strategy was given by Ridhuan & Abdullah reported that the between strong and weak learners in writing are basically cognitive techniques and gathering ideas for the essays. More specifically, it includes rewriting, rehearsing opinions and construction, rereading, translation and revision. On the other hand, Chien demands on his study that learners who focused on generating text have higher results whereas those who focused on generating ideas get lower incomes. Promoting such techniques assist to enhance writing performance among EFL students effectively.

Writing is one of the essential skills during the process of acquiring second language which is regarded the most challenging and tedious process, however it is crucial skill learners should grasp. Because being completely proficient in writing skills will aid learners enhance their ability to utilize vocabulary and grammar, thereby evolving their own language skills. Majority of EFL learners have no conscious of self-awareness and connection with the content. During the writing process they may have challenges in some areas and applying ineffective writing strategies. Such obstacles appear from the subjective side of learners and objectivity of some factors such as content, teaching approaches, instructors’ demands and the impact of L1.

Factors Influencing EFL Student’s Writing Dkills

Being able to write does not come naturally yet it demands much practice together with regular exercise. More specifically in order to develop writing skills, students have to perform writing regularly and to read plenty of documents. As Nunan argues that as the writing is considered highly complex cognitive procedure in which demands the learner to take control over various factors’. It means that a number of factors are affected on improvement of writing skills such as unmotivated learners, deficiency of literacy tasks and the impact of L1.

One of the crucial key elements in enhancing writing skills is motivation. Harmer stated that a number of elements are caused to bring down learners’ motivation. For instance, the state of being rejected or fear of failure, lack of confidence and being afraid of making mistakes. Lo and Hyland emphasized that the condition of being motivated is impacted by learners’ consciousness and emotional of mastery and under control of the learning procedure and their curiosity about it. Furthermore learners who are with high levels of motivation participate in a more active role in their learning, whereas those who are less motivated may have difficulty performing to expectation in the classroom.

Another element of developing writing skill in EFL students is literacy which helps to obtain subject matter written by others. According to Harmer when applying reading focus class with writing showed quicker progression through written tests. Similarly, Eisterhold stated ‘better writers tend to be better readers, better writers read more than poorer writers, and finally better readers tend to produce more syntactically nature writing than poorer reader’.

So it was confirmed that lack of reading practice or do not engage on the habit of extensive reading lead to have difficulty writing process in L2. Importantly, a number of obstacles in writing process has been affected by native language in which students tend to think in L1 and translate word by word in English in result it makes the article long and unclear. Friedlander pointed that writers frequent utilize both good and bad writing skills from their mother tongue to the foreign languages.