Investigating English Students’ Needs and Deficiencies in Essay Writing:

Abstract

Writing is a crucial skill to master in learning a foreign language. It is a difficult skill to learn for it requires a lot of effort and constant practice. EFL learners often attempt to enhance their writing skills in general and writing essays in particular for better academic achievements. However, they always face some obstacles which make the writing process challenging. These difficulties affect their motivation and interest to be good writers. Therefore, the current research aims at uncovering EFL learners‘ major needs and deficiencies in essay writing. For this purpose, a case study was conducted with first year master degree‘s students and teachers at the English department (Medea University). The data was gathered from a sample of thirty-eight EFL students and eight teachers by means of two questionnaires. The findings revealed that EFL learners are motivated to learn to write and they are fully aware of the importance of this basic skill as a key to academic success. Yet, they face some difficulties when writing, such as getting started, time management, and organizing thoughts. Moreover, the results on the part of the teachers showed that most of the students are not motivated to learning to write due to some factors such as mother tongue interference, insufficient time, punctuation problems, and ineffective teaching approaches adopted by academic writing teachers at the tertiary level. The research concluded that EFL students at the Department of English of the University of Medea need explicit instruction and more practice opportunities to help them acquire the necessary writing skills. The results also demonstrated that students should be motivated to write through selecting interesting and motivating topics. Besides, the findings showed that EFL students should improve their grammar and vocabulary skills and practice incorporating them into their writing. Above all, the time allocated for writing should be extended for more effective learning results