An Investigation of Saudi EFL learners‟ Writing Problems: A Case Study along Gender-lines

Javid, C.Z., Farooq, U., & Umer, M. (2013). An Investigation of Saudi EFL learners' Writing Problems: A Case Study along Gender-lines. Kashmir Journal of Language Research, 16(1), 179-203.

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An Investigation of Saudi EFL learners‟ Writing Problems: A Case Study

along Gender-lines

Dr. Choudhary Zahid Javid

Assist. Professor, Department of Foreign Languages,

Taif University, Taif, KSA

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +966-502312949; Fax: +966-7284299

Dr. Muhammad Umar Farooq

Assist. Professor, English Language Centre,

Taif University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

E-mail: [email protected]

Tel: +966582912894

Dr. Muhammad Umer

Lecturer, Department of Foreign Languages,

Taif University, Taif, KSA

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +966-594187312; Fax: +966-7284299

mailto:[email protected]




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Abstract

The study in is a comprehensive investigation to identify the important writing

tasks, major areas of difficulty in academic writing, the factors causing these difficulties

and the corrective measures in the Saudi EFL academic context. It attempted to identify

gender-based differences for the above-mentioned factors and the results of

independent-samples t-test did not show major differences in the perceptions of both the

groups partially accepting the null hypotheses. Several research studies were reviewed

and a 40-item Likert-scale agree-disagree questionnaire was developed by the

researcher. It was translated into Arabic and piloted before it was administered to 194

Saudi EFL learners (108 male & 86 female) studying at Taif University. Descriptive

analyses and Independent-samples t-test were run using SPSS version 17. The findings

reported that these particular Saudi EFL learners have serious problems in their

academic writing due to their weaknesses in using appropriate lexical items,

organisation of ideas and grammar. The other weaker areas include wrong use of

prepositions, spellings, irregular verbs, articles, punctuation, suffixes and prefixes. It is

recommended to implement a stricter admission policy, increase language courses,

develop tailor-made activities, provide increased practice in academic writing, exploit

modern teaching techniques and equip the classrooms with modern teaching aids to

improve Saudi EFL learners‟ academic writing.

Keywords: Academic Writing, Perception, Syntactic Errors; Gender

Introduction

Because of the English language being a storehouse of world knowledge, it has

been chosen as the medium of instruction for higher studies in general in many regions

of the world including the gulf countries and, of course, the English language teaching

in particular (Crystal, 2003).

When it comes to the teaching and learning of language skills, writing comes at

the end according to the natural order hypothesis of language learning, but this does not

make writing skill insignificant. Rather, its significance increases manifolds in the


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academic contexts in which students are required to apply this skill as a main tool to

show what they have learnt. A growing mass of research has offered valuable insights

into the significance of this skill for academic success. Bjork and Raisanen (1997, p. 8)

argue that

We highlight the importance of writing in all university curricula

not only because of its immediate practical application, i.e. as an

isolated skill or ability, but because we believe that, seen from a

broader perspective, writing is a thinking tool. It is a tool for

language development, for critical thinking and, extension, for

learning in all disciplines.

According to Fageeh (2011), “many EFL learners heavily rely on writing as integral

skill to language learning” as supported by much research that EFL learners‟ listening,

speaking and reading skills mainly depend on their writing competence (Hefferman,

2006; Hinkel, 2004; Al-Ghamari, 2004; Cayer & Sacks, 1979).

Though writing skill is considered extremely important, a lot of research studies

conducted in the various EFL contexts strongly suggested that EFL learners, who study

in institutions that use English as a medium of instruction, face severe problems in

writing skills that hinders their academic progress (Tahaineh, 2010; Rababah, 2003;

Bacha, 2002; Kharma & Hajjaj, 1997). Tahaineh (2010, p. 79) reiterated that the writing

skill “……. is needed for taking notes, describing objects or devices and writing essays,

answering written questions, writing their compositions, writing experimental reports,

etc”. Like other EFL contexts, the situation in the Arab world has also been reported

poor and Arab students seriously lack in all English skills in general and writing skills

in particular. Several studies conducted in the Arab world revealed that Arab students

face maximum problems in their writing (Abdul Haq, 1982; Zughoul & Taminian,

1984; Al-Khuweileh, & Al-Shoumali, 2000; Al-Hazmi, 2006; Al-Samdani, 2010;

Grami, 2010; Ezza, 2010).

Writing is defined as "…. the logical organization and arrangement of the

written sentences within a paragraph and paragraphs within the units of discourse

…………and the expression of the ideas" (Abu-Ghararh, 1998, p. 87). Concerning the

problems of ESL learners‟ in writing, Al-samadani (2010, p. 53) stated that it “is a


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complex, challenging, and difficult process” because it includes multiple skills such as

identification of thesis statement, writing supporting details, reviewing and editing. This

complex process makes it rather difficult to teach it. The difficulty of teaching/learning

of this skill is due to the fact that it involves a comprehensive knowledge of grammar,

suitable vocabulary, writing mechanics (e.g., punctuation & capitalization),

organizational skills, style, imagination etc. Another factor that makes teaching of

writing rather difficult is that it has been historically dealt with vis-à-vis the other skills.

Writing skill is formally defined as the “recording of human communication, using

signs or symbols to represent the spoken words” (McMillan Encyclopedia, 1986,

p.1317) whereas functionally speaking it is defined as a “curiously solitary form of

communication, addressed to an absent and often unknown reader” (Peters, 1986,

p.169). The challenge faced by the faculty members in teaching this skill is that it is

either considered a secondary activity in ELT or taken as a desocialised communication

pattern. This problem rather intensifies when it is not the learners‟ first language

because of the additional problems encountered in this regard. Highlighting these

difficulties, Hopkins (1989) stated that writing is the most difficult skill to be learnt for

non-native speakers. Piper (1989 cited in Grami, 2010) reported that instructional

methods are instrumental in shaping the learners‟ behaviour towards writing skills as

well as their writings. It has also been pointed out that the approaches to teach writing

skills vary in the different academic contexts due to the indigenous specific

circumstances.

As for the history of teaching of writing is concerned, it was not given much

attention as evident from scarcity of research studies related to this skill till the

beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century (Krashen, 1984). Long and

Richard (2003) reported that writing skills teaching was given importance during 1990s

when English established its status as a language of international communication and

consequently “English as L2 writing skills do not only ―play an increasingly important

role today in the lives of professionals in almost every field and discipline” (p. XV). A

closer look through the history of teaching of writing skills reveals that among the

different approaches that have been experimented to teach writing effectively, three


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approaches have been the most influential which are product approach, process

approach and genre approach. Much research has strongly suggested that all these

approaches carry their own weaknesses and strengths but they are complementary to

each other as well (e.g., Grami, 2010; Hayland, 2007; Paltridge, 2004; Badger & White,

2000; McDonough & Shaw, 2003).

Research has offered valuable insights into the fact that all the approaches of

teaching writing skills have their own strengths and weaknesses; therefore, it is not

advisable to follow any one of these exclusively; rather, the teachers should have

thorough knowledge of all these approaches so that they should inculcate the

professional ability to exploit all these approaches to pick and choose appropriate

techniques according to the students‟ level/needs, social context and their peculiar

academic echo system (Badger & White, 2000; Asiri, 1997; Raimes, 1991).

Like the rest of the world, English language teaching (ELT) has embedded

firmly in the Arab world during the last few decades and a growing mass of research

produced in this region has been related to English teaching and its sub fields (Al-

Seghayer, 2011). Though tremendous efforts have been made, as reflected by the huge

funding allocated to ELT, the research studies conducted in the Arab world reported

that EFL learners in the Arab world including Saudi Arabia suffer from serious

problems in this regard such as students' poor performance low proficiency level in the

target language (Javid, Farooq, & Gulzar, 2012; Al-Jarf, 2008; Rababah, 2003). Bacha

(2002) suggested that it might be due to the fact that the students are not motivated to

develop their writing and that "L2 writers are known to face problems in developing

their writing skills at the university level. These problems are even more accentuated

with L1 Arabic non-native speakers of English in required English composition

courses" (p. 161). A report published by the Cambridge Examination Center in 2009

about the proficiency level of Saudi students "…ranked them 39th

of the 40 nations

participated in both academic and general training tests" (Cambridge ESOL: Research

Notes, 2010 cited in Al-Seghayer, 2011, p. 45). This poor performance has been more

strongly revealed by the studies which were conducted to evaluate Saudi students'


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writing skills (Bersamina, 2009; Grami, 2010; Al-Eid, 2000). Grami (2010) cited the

results of IELTS test report of Saudi students which revealed that they scored

comparatively low in all English language skills (5.17, 4.97, 5.81 out of 9 in listening,

reading and speaking respectively ) but the average in writing skills was the lowest

(4.83 out of 9).

Numerous studies have been conducted to identify the problems of Saudi EFL

learners in their writing. The findings of these studies reported that despite the fact that

Saudi students study English as a compulsory subjects for six years before joining any

university but actually only a few of them are able to show satisfactory performance in

the university entrance examinations (Grami, 2010). Tahaineh (2010) has stated that

Arab students‟ errors in writing mainly fall in the category of syntax and grammar and

quoted Hashim‟s (1996) findings, who reviewed and analysed a number of studies

conducted on Arab EFL learners‟ syntactic errors and stated that Arab learners‟ errors

can be categorised in seven syntactic subcategories: prepositions, verbs, articles,

conjunctions, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and sentence structure. Kharma and

Hajjaj (1997) is another study that reinforced the previous findings and revealed that

Arab EFL learners‟ errors in writing are syntactical and especially in prepositions. Most

recent studies conducted to investigate Arab EFL learners syntactic errors also found

out that verbs and prepositions are the most problematic areas in this regard (Zahid,

2006, Muhammad, 2005, Muortaga, 2004). Concerning the problems of Saudi

university undergraduates, Khan (2011), who recently conducted a study to investigate

the problems of Saudi university undergraduates, has mentioned that they face several

problems in phoneme clusters, spellings, grammar, mistakes due to L1 interference,

structure, doubling of subjects, doubling of preposition, tenses, articles, appropriate

vocabulary, wrong use of prefixes & suffixes etc.

Much research has offered valuable insights into the reasons of Arab EFL

learners‟ weaknesses in English in general and writing skills in particular. Khan (2011)

reviewed several studies in this regard and concluded that Arab EFL learners‟ problems

are caused by the following reasons:


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a) school graduates have lack of information regarding the university

or college they enrolled in; b) there is deficiency in the English

language curricula offered by some schools and universities; c)

dreadful teaching methodology; d) problems with proper language

environments; and e) lack of personal impetus on the part of the

students. (p. 1250)

According to his findings, the causes of the problems may be dealt with from four

perspectives, i.e., the learners, faculty members, curricula and the environment of

teaching /learning context. It has been reported that Saudi EFL learners are more

interested in getting better scores instead of learning the target language and they are in

the habit of memorising passages without understanding, grammatical rules and lexical

items to achieve high grade point average (Grami, 2010; Zaid, 1993). Another very

strong reason behind this marks-oriented behaviour of Saudi EFL learners is that a vast

majority of them lack intrinsic motivation and bear various extrinsic motivational

factors to learn English language (Javid, Asmari, & Farooq, 2012). Concerning the role

of EFL teachers, a growing mass of research has suggested that a vast majority of EFL

teachers are hired from the Arab countries (such as Egypt, Sudan, Jordan etc.) to serve

in Saudi Arabia. These teachers seem to lack the following: a) a proper and appropriate

training to teach English, b) a proper motivation to indulge in teaching process, and c)

willingness to incorporate innovation and modern techniques in their teaching practices;

thus, causing the continuation of traditional, outdated and teacher-led teaching practices

that is a major impediment in the way of effective and efficient ELT in Saudi Arabia

(Bersamina, 2009; Grami, 2010; Syed, 2003; Zaid, 1993). Another important factor in

this regard is the absence of appropriate and learner-centered curricula to cater for the

specific EFL needs of the learners. It has been frequently reported that the curricula

taught in several Saudi university is outdated, traditional and textbook-based that

encourage the students to merely memorise instead of making them grasp the target

language (Khan, 2011; Bersamina, 2009; Hazmi, 2006; Zughoul, 1987).

The context of the study

This study was conducted in the second semester of academic year 2012 at

foreign languages department, Taif University (TU). It offers 4-year graduate and 2-


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year masters programmes majoring in English language and linguistics. The students

who are enrolled in the graduate programme have to take 59 compulsory courses of 2-

credit hour each in eight semesters. These courses include language, linguistics,

literature and translation courses. During the first three semesters, the undergraduates

are taught various language courses to improve their four English language skills.

Though the undergraduates are given intensive courses in various English language

skills including writing but research, such as a study conducted at TU by Javid, Farooq,

and Gulzar (2012), strongly suggested that Saudi EFL learners suffer from serious

handicap in all language skills including writing.

Research Objectives

This empirical study intended to investigate the following research

objectives:

a. Identifying the kinds of academic writing as perceived by male and

female Saudi EFL learners studying at TU,

b. Identifying the academic writing problems as perceived by male and

female Saudi EFL learners studying at TU,

c. Identifying the causes of academic writing problems as perceived by

male and female Saudi EFL learners studying at TU,

d. Identifying the solutions to overcome academic writing problems as

perceived by male and female Saudi EFL learners studying at TU.

Null Hypotheses

H01: There is not any statistically significant difference in the perception of

male and female Saudi EFL learners regarding the kinds of academic

writing at TU.

H02: There is not any statistically significant difference in the perception

of male and female Saudi EFL learners regarding the academic

writing problems at TU.


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of male and female Saudi EFL learners regarding the causes of

academic writing problems at TU.


of male and female Saudi EFL learners regarding the solutions to

overcome academic writing problems at TU.

Participants

For the purpose of this study all the junior and senior students, who have already

spent two to three years at TU, were taken as the population whereas the freshmen and

sophomores were not investigated. Considering the fact that the study in hand was

perceptive in nature and the researcher considered it important to elicit the responses of

those EFL learners who knew the academic echo system at TU so that authentic and

reliable responses may be ensured. The questionnaire was translated into Arabic to

collect reliable data. The researcher coordinated with the faculty members and visited

the male participants of the study during their lectures to collect the data whereas the

female faculty members were requested to administer the translated questionnaire to

collect the data from the female cohorts. Incomplete questionnaires or the ones with

same values assigned to all the items were rejected by the researcher. One hundred and

eight questionnaires filled in by the male cohort and 86 by the female participants were

selected for the final analyses.

The participants of the study were investigated once when the questionnaire was

administered and they were given the option of free will to respond to the questionnaire.

Furthermore, it was optional to mention their personal information. They were also

informed that their personal information would be de-identified and data would be used

for the purpose of this study only. Their submission of the questionnaires was

considered as their informed consent.


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Instrumentation

The researcher consulted many related research studies including the ones

conducted in the EFL context of Saudi Arabia (such as Al-Seghayer, 2011; Grami,

2010; Al-Khasawneh, 2010; Al-Hazmi, 2006) to collect data to develop a suitable

questionnaire to elicit the responses of male and female English-major undergraduates

of Taif university related to various dynamics of writing skills. A 40-item Likert-scale

agree-disagree questionnaire was developed and translated into Arabic (See

appendix#1). The Arabic translation along with the English version was given to two

senior professors of translation at TU to identify any inconsistencies. Their suggestions

were incorporated in the final Arabic version that was piloted with 20 EFL learners at

TU. A Pearson correlation matrix was run for all the forty items using SPSS 17 that

yielded a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .75 which was a high value for ensuring sound

judgments as George and Mallery (2003) have reported that alpha coefficient of more

than .70 is acceptable for reliable scientific investigation.

Statistical Analysis

The descriptive analyses, namely the means, medians and standard deviations,

were run for all the questionnaire items to identify the most and least preferred

questionnaire items. Furthermore, independent-samples t-test was used to see whether

or not any gender-based statistically significant differences existed. The data analyses

generated the following results.

Results and Discussion

The 40-item questionnaire was divided into four sections to elicit the

participants‟ perceptions towards important writing tasks for their English-major studies

at TU, the areas of difficulties in this regard, the factors that cause these problems and

the probable solutions. The results generated through the descriptive analyses and

independent-samples t-test have been summarised in tables 1, 2, 3 and 4.

The first section of the questionnaire contains ten items that were included to

elicit the participants‟ perception to identify important academic writing tasks for their


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EFL studies at TU. Table 1 details the responses of the male and female Saudi EFL

learners in this regard.

Table (1): Analyses of important academic writing tasks at TU

Academic writing tasks Group N M SD T df p value

1 Topic sentences /

supporting details

Male 108 3.6667 1.0590 -2.747 192 .007 p < 0.05

Female 86 4.0465 .8103 -2.830 191.72

2 Paragraphs Male 108 3.9259 .8395 .658 192 .028 p < 0.05

Female 86 3.8372 1.0388 .642 161.66

3 Summaries Male 108 4.1111 1.1051 -.969 192 .118 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.2558 .9354 -.987 191.25

4 Letters Male 108 3.4444 .9795 1.021 192 .341 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.2907 1.1153 1.006 170.41

5 Critical Appreciation Male 108 3.1296 1.0598 -.210 192 .313 p > 0.05 Female 86 3.1628 1.1361 -.208 176.34

6 Reports Male 108 3.2407 1.0400 1.614 192 .867 p > 0.05 Female 86 2.9884 1.1323 1.599 174.87

7 Narrative Essays Male 108 3.2407 1.1590 1.471 192 .724 p > 0.05

Female 86 2.9884 1.2223 1.462 177.86

8 Descriptive Essays Male 108 3.2593 1.0445 -.767 192 .850 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.3721 .9828 -.773 186.69

9 Argumentative Essays Male 108 3.3704 1.2722 -.642 192 .726 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.4884 1.2718 -.642 182.41

10 Expository Essays Male 108 3.6667 1.1107 1.552 192 .924 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.4186 1.1004 1.424 157.63

Descriptive analysis results reveal that both sample groups saw eye to eye to

each other as far the most important writing task is concerned and writing “summaries”

has been assigned the highest values in favour of the female cohort. The first and

second questionnaire items have been identified as the second and third most important

tasks but in reverse order: the female participants allocated the second highest to writing

topic sentence and supporting details and third highest to paragraph writing whereas the

male cohort did the same but in a reverse order. Furthermore, the male participants also

allotted the third highest value (3.66) to writing “expository essays” as well. Lowest

value of less than 3.0 is not assigned to any item by the female cohort but the males did

it for two items, i.e., to writing reports and narrative essays. The results of this empirical

study contradict with the research conducted by Al-Khasawneh (2010) who investigated


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Arab postgraduate students studying at the College of Business, University Utara

Malaysia and found out that summary writing was among the least important tasks for

their postgraduate studies whereas writing article reviews and reports were the two most

important tasks. One probable justification for these contradicting results is due to the

different levels (i.e., undergraduate v/s postgraduate level). The participants of this

study need to write summaries for different concepts related to their various literature

and linguistics courses; thus, ranked it the most important task for carrying out their

studies effectively. The findings are partially in line with the results of Al-Khasawneh

(2010) towards their perceived responses towards essay writing: postgraduate students

considered it the least important as the participants of this study also reported it among

the less important tasks.

Standard deviation of more than 1 was calculated for nearly all items except the

top three ones showing that the participants carried wide differences in their

perceptions. Independent-samples t-test results indicated that though both groups bear

differences in their perception towards all items but significant difference has been

recorded only for the first and second items; thus, partially accepting the first null

hypothesis because both groups have not shown any significant difference except items

1 and 2.

Table (2): Analyses of problems faced in academic writing tasks

Problematic areas in

Academic writing

Group n M SD T Df p value

11 Vocabulary Male 108 3.8519 1.0836 .172 192 .686 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.8256 1.0197 .173 186.68

12 Spellings Male 108 3.3148 1.2047 .358 192 .144 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.2558 1.0537 .363 190.27

13 Articles Male 108 3.2037 1.1337 -.181 192 .766 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.2326 1.0702 -.182 186.48

14 Punctuation Male 108 3.1111 1.2023 -.376 192 .452 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.1744 1.1187 -.379 187.35

15 Prepositions Male 108 3.2037 1.1978 -.589 192 .782 p > 0.05 Female 86 3.3023 1.1069 -.594 187.74

16 Suffixes/Prefixes Male 108 3.2593 1.1790 -.865 192 .047 p > 0.05 Female 86 3.3953 .9614 -.886 191.88

17 Irregular Verbs Male 108 3.1481 1.1982 -1.724 192 .915 p > 0.05


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Female 86 3.4419 1.1541 -1.731 185.17

18 Question Words Male 108 3.2222 1.1547 .803 192 .271 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.0930 1.0586 .811 188.17

19 Grammar Male 108 3.7407 1.2257 .722 192 .536 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.6163 1.1496 .727 186.88

20 Organisation of

Ideas

Male 108 3.4630 1.1392 -.497 192 .412 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.5465 1.1947 -.494 178.36

The descriptive and comparative analyses of ten items that constitute the second

section of the questionnaire eliciting participants‟ perceived responses regarding the

difficulties they face in their academic writing have been summarised in the above

given table. An interesting finding is that none of the ten items has been allocated high

value of 4.0 or above by either group indicating that the male and female participants of

the study did not perceive any of these areas as a very serious problem. This does not

seem consistent with the previous research that was conducted in the various Arab

countries and strongly reported that Arab EFL learners face serious problems in all

English language skills in general and writing skills in particular (see for example Khan,

2011; Al-Samdani, 2010; Bersamina, 2009; Grami, 2010). Concerning the seriousness

of the problem, Zaid (1993) stated that Arab students tend to cram grammatical rules,

required lexical items and even important passages in English due to their lack of

understanding and inability to write even few correct sentences in the target language.

Item analysis for this section of the questionnaire exhibits strong affinities in the

perceptions of the male and female participants. Use of suitable vocabulary has been

declared the weakest area with the highest mean values that hinder their English-major

studies at TU. This finding is in accord with the previous study conducted by Al-

Khasawneh (2010) who also reported that the postgraduate Arab students studying in

Malaysian university also ranked vocabulary as the most difficult area. Difficulties in

grammar have been unanimously identified as the second most problematic area with

comparatively high mean values. The next item in this regard remains the organisation

of ideas and that also unanimously by both groups. Comparatively lower values (i.e.,

3.15 to 3.30) were assigned by the male and female groups to the use of prepositions,

irregular verbs, articles, suffixes and prefixes. This result is in line with much research


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conducted in the various regions of Arabic peninsula such as the findings of Hashim

(1996) who reviewed many studies related to the syntactic errors of Arab EFL learners

and reported that their problematic areas include use of prepositions, verbs, articles,

conjunctions, sentence structure etc. Many other studies as well revealed that Arab EFL

learners face severe problems in using prepositions and articles correctly (Khan, 2011;

Zahid, 2006; Mourtaga, 2004 etc.) The least mean value was allocated to punctuation

suggesting that the participants of this study do not have serious problems in

punctuation. The participants assigned medium values to the remaining six items but

their responses carried differences for all these items.

The results exhibited some interesting trends. Three items with maximum values

and one with least value bear complete similarity in the perception of both the male and

female participants but SD of more than 1.0 for these item reports high inter rater

differences. The same is true for other items because nearly all the remaining ones also

have high SD of more than 1.0. The results of independent-samples t-test reported

significant difference for only one item that elicited their responses regarding the use of

suffixes and prefixes. The results indicate that the null hypothesis # 2 is also accepted

with a minor difference of only one item out of the total of ten items in this section.

Table (3): Analyses of the reasons of weak academic writing

Reasons of Weak Academic Writing Group n M SD T Df p value

21 Low proficiency in the target

language

Male 108 4.0556 .9154 1.461 192 .013 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.8372 1.1668 1.422 158.49

22 Lack of language courses at Taif

University

Male 108 4.5556 .6604 -1.311 192 .035 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.6744 .5829 -1.330 189.93

23 Teachers' lack of interest in writing tasks

Male 108 3.5185 1.1559 -1.702 192 .201 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.7907 1.0417 -1.722 189.03

24 Limited opportunities to practice English outside the classroom

Male 108 4.4074 1.0325 -1.370 192 .016 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.5930 .8026 -1.409 191.90

25 Interference of your mother

tongue

Male 108 3.4630 1.4688 -3.088 192 .001 p > 0.05 Female 86 4.0581 1.1413 -3.176 191.89

26 Inappropriate teaching methods Male 108 3.8704 .9676 -1.436 192 .055 p > 0.05 Female 86 4.0814 1.0761 -1.418 172.78

27 Lack of writing practice at Taif University

Male 108 3.8333 1.0722 -1.838 192 .933 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.1163 1.0563 -1.841 183.54


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28 Use of Arabic in the classrooms Male 108 3.5926 1.1684 1.321 192 .382 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.3605 1.2734 1.308 174.77

29 Lack of audio visual aids in the

classrooms

Male 108 4.2778 1.0837 .435 192 .999 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.2093 1.0967 .434 181.43

30 Insufficient use of dictionaries Male 108 3.7778 1.0170 .302 192 .402 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.7326 1.0563 .301 179.21

Table 3 details the descriptive and comparative analyses for the ten items

included in the third section of the questionnaire meant to elicit the participants‟

perception towards the causes of weak academic writing. The participants assigned

comparatively much higher values to the various items of this section as compared to

the previous two sections: the female participants allotted high value of more than 4.0 to

six items and the male group did it for four items. „Lack of language courses at TU‟ has

been ranked at the top with extremely high values of 4.67 and 4.55 by the female and

male cohort respectively confirming the findings of Zahid, Farooq and Ajmal (2012)

that insufficient number of languages courses has been a major cause of ineffective ELT

in Saudi Arabian universities. Furthermore, the SD has been calculated as 0.58 and 0.66

for the female and male participants confirming that they bear strong agreement as far

as this item is concerned. The female cohort assigned the second highest value of 4.59

to 24th questionnaire item suggesting that the limited opportunities to practice the target

language outside the classroom is a major reasons for their weak academic writing. The

other group allocated it the third highest value. This finding is in line with the much

research conducted in the Arab world and revealed that lack of support from the society

and family in terms of providing Arab EFL learners with sufficient opportunities to

practice the target language cause a major handicap in effectively learning the target

language including the writing skills (See for example Kahn, 2011; Tahaineh, 2010).

Though there are contradictory voices as well such as Al-Khasawneh (2010) who

reported that the postgraduate Arab students perceived it one of the least important

factors in this regard. Another major reason, the second most favoured item by the male

participants and the third most favoured item by the female participants, held

responsible for weak academic writing remained the „lack of audio visual aids‟ in the

teaching process. Both sample groups saw eye to eye to each other as far the least


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preferred items were concerned. „Use of Arabic in Classrooms‟ has been allocated the

lowest values by both groups followed by „insufficient usage of dictionaries‟. This

finding is not consistent with the study conducted by Javid, Farooq and Ajmal (2012) in

the same context and reported that frequent use of Arabic language in the classrooms by

the faculty as well as the students has been a major cause of ineffective ELT in Saudi

universities.

The results of independent-samples t-test revealed that four items (21, 22, 24 &

25) bear statistically significant gender-based differences partially accepting the third

null hypothesis.

Table (4): Analyses of measures to improve academic writing

Measures to Improve Academic

Writing

Group n M SD T Df p value

31 Using multiple teaching

techniques

Male 108 4.5370 .7416 -.314 192 .631 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.5698 .6952 -.316 186.91

32 Using pair/group work Male 108 4.3333 .7488 1.251 192 .094 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.1744 1.0197 1.209 151.48

33 Using English as a medium Male 108 4.2037 .7582 -2.255 192 .494 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.4535 .7770 -2.248 180.39

34 Diagnosing students'

problems in academic

writing

Male 108 4.3148 .8823 -1.834 192 .007 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.5233 .6458 -1.898 190.73

35 Frequent use of modern

teaching facilities

Male 108 4.2222 1.0170 -1.992 192 .008 p > 0.05 Female 86 4.4884 .7933 -2.048 191.92

36 Additional coaching facilities

for weaker students

Male 108 4.2037 1.1337 -.873 192 .195 p > 0.05 Female 86 4.3372 .9531 -.891 191.41

37 Timely correction of

students' errors

Male 108 4.2778 .9937 -1.766 192 .021 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.5116 .8080 -1.808 191.90

38 Increased language courses Male 108 4.4259 .9192 -.576 192 .634 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.5000 .8506 -.581 187.67

39 Using peer reviews Male 108 4.0556 1.1008 -.896 192 .433 p > 0.05

Female 86 4.1977 1.0935 -.897 182.91

40 Frequent dictionary usage Male 108 3.8333 1.2642 -.622 192 .195 p > 0.05

Female 86 3.9419 1.1309 -.630 189.37

The analyses of the last ten questionnaire items which were included to elicit the

participants‟ suggestions regarding the correctives measures to improve their academic


195

writing demonstrate interesting trends because all the items except the last one has been

assigned extremely high values of more than 4.0. The results of this section are in

contrast to the results of the previous section to a great extent. „Using multiple teaching

techniques‟ has been assigned extremely high values of 4.56 and 4.53 by the female and

male participants respectively clearly indicating that Saudi EFL learners strongly feel

that the teachers follow traditional methods of teaching that are monotonous and

uninteresting. This finding is supported by high mean values allocated to the item that

elicited their perception regarding the frequent use of modern teaching facilities in

English classes to make them lively, interesting and appealing for the learners. The

results of these items strongly support the findings of the growing mass of research

(e.g., Javid, 2011; Khan, 2011; Grami, 2010) conducted in the Arab world. A relatively

contradictory finding is reported by Al-Khasawneh (2010) that ranked the use of

multiple teaching techniques among the least preferred items. The female participants

allotted the second highest mean of more than 4.5 to the need of diagnosing the EFL

learners‟ specific writing problems so that appropriate corrective measures may be

taken by the ELT faculty. This item was ranked as the fourth highest by the male

cohort. The finding is in line with the recommendation of Al-Khasawneh (2010) who

suggested that error analysis of EFL learners‟ writings is quite instrumental for

improving writing skills because “…..it helps to build students‟ awareness of the

different types of grammatical errors they are making and encourage them to check

their errors by using grammar handbooks” (p. 19). The third most important item as

considered by the female group has been the timely correction of EFL learners‟

academic writing errors. Increasing the number of language courses has been ranked the

second highest by the male cohort and 4th highest by the female participants. „Frequent

dictionary usage‟ is the only item that has been allocated low mean value of less than

4.0 by both groups suggesting that frequent use of modern gadgets has weakened their

association with print material including dictionaries.


196

The comparatively analyses generated by independent-samples t-test indicated

that three items (34, 35 & 37) carried statistically significant differences partially

confirming the fourth hypothesis of this study.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This study is a comprehensive investigation to identify the important writing

tasks, major areas of difficulty, the factors causing these difficulties and the corrective

measures in a Saudi EFL academic context. It attempted to identify gender-based

differences for the above-mentioned factors and the results of independent-samples t-

test did not show major differences partially accepting all four hypotheses. It has been

found that the participants of this study need writing skills to paragraph level for

carrying out their undergraduate English-major studies and that they also have serious

problems in their academic writing due to their weaknesses in using appropriate lexical

items, organisation of ideas and grammar. The other weaker areas are prepositions,

spellings, irregular verbs, articles, punctuation, suffixes and prefixes. The findings

strongly support the previous research that Saudi EFL learners who are supposed to

have a reasonable command of English commit serious errors of various syntactic

categories even at sentence level.

The findings also suggested that the number of language courses as well as the

opportunities of writing practice in the classrooms are not sufficient considering the fact

that the participants of this study reported that they do not have appropriate English

language proficiency when they joined Taif university for their English-major studies.

This finding may resonate with the undergraduates who join other Saudi universities for

their higher studies. Therefore, it seems important to implement a stricter admission

policy and only those students are given admission in English departments who have a

reasonable command of the target language so that they may be able to effectively

handle technical courses of English literature, linguistics and translation. It is strongly

recommended that along with other content based courses, English departments need to

provide their undergraduates with sufficient number of language courses to improve


197

their all language skills in general and writing skills in particular. Another important

factor that should be considered for better results is to identify Saudi students‟ specific

errors and to develop tailor-made activities, in the form of on-campus and home

assignments, to address to their common mistakes. This will not only help them with

their problematic areas but also enhance their practice time ensuring better results. In

line with the findings of much research it has been found out that EFL learners do not

get any support in terms of practicing the target language in the real world context

because of limited use of English in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, it also seems imperative

that the English faculty members should provide their students with as many

opportunities to practice the target language as possible. In this regard it is also worth

mentioning that effective use of group/pair work will be extremely instrumental to

materialise it with an additional benefit of making their students learn from each other.

These groups should include learners of different levels so that the students with

comparatively better proficiency help the weaker ones. Use of traditional teaching

methods is reportedly a major cause for their weak writing and it is strongly

recommended that the faculty members should exploit modern teaching techniques and

the classrooms should be provided with the latest teaching aids to ensure enhanced

learning possibilities.

There seems a scarcity of research related to the writing problems of Saudi

undergraduates along gender lines as the researchers could not find any relevant study

in a Saudi context. This study is an effort to fill this gap but the findings of the present

study are limited to the context of the current study and should not be over-generalised

to other academic settings without conducting further investigations. Therefore, it is

suggested that further research is imperative to understand this area in a better and more

comprehensive manner.


198

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Appendix # 1

QUESTIONNAIRE

I- PERSONAL

Name: Email:

Level: GPA:

II- Circle the most appropriate choice.

1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree 3 = neutral

4 = agree 5 = strongly agree

A: Which of the following tasks are significant and relevant for your studies at

Foreign Languages Department, Taif University?

Strongly

disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree Academic writing tasks No

Topic sentences/supporting details 1

Paragraphs 2

Summaries 3

Letters 4

Critical appreciation 5

Reports 6

Narrative essays 7

Descriptive essays 8

Argumentative essays 9

Expository essays 10

B: Which of the following problems do you face in your academic writing tasks?

Strongly

disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly

agree

Items No

Vocabulary 1

Spellings 2

Articles 3

Punctuation 4

Prepositions 5

Suffixes / prefixes 6

Irregular verbs 7

Question words 8

Grammar 9

Organisation of ideas 10


203

C: Which of the following are the reasons for your weak academic writing skills?

Strongly

disagree


agree

Items No

Low proficiency in the target language 1

Lack of language courses at Taif University 2

Teachers' lack of interest in writing tasks 3

Limited opportunities to practice English

outside the classroom 4

Interference of your mother tongue 5

Inappropriate teaching methods 6

Lack of writing practice at Taif University 7

Use of Arabic in the classrooms 8

Lack of audio visual aids in the classrooms 9

Insufficient use of dictionaries 10

D: Which of the following steps are necessary to solve the above-mentioned

problems?

Strongly

disagree


agree

Items No

Using multiple teaching techniques 1

Using pair/group work 2

Using English as a medium 3

Diagnosing students' problems in

academic writing

4

Frequent use of modern teaching facilities 5

Additional coaching facilities for weaker

students

6

Timely correction of students' errors 7

Increased language courses 8

Using peer reviews 9

Frequent dictionary usage 10

Thanks a lot for your cooperation

Documents

An Investigation of Saudi EFL learners‟ Writing Problems: A Case Study along Gender-lines