Investigating The Difficulties Encountered Sudanese University Students in Writing an English Paragraph

Abstract

The study aims to describe and analyze the errors of the students in English paragraphs writing. The participants of study are English university students, first year at Sudan University of Science and Technology, College of Education. The instrument used in the study is the written work of the students in the final exam by the end of the term 2014 -2015 . Thirty students have been randomly chosen from the whole number of the students. The methodology of the study is the descriptive analytical method . The questions of the study are: What kinds of errors the students commit in writing English paragraphs? How frequent do writing errors occur in the students’ written paragraphs? and finally to what degree are students aware of paragraph writing techniques ?. All the errors committed by students have been checked and categorized into different categories. The findings of the study reveal that the students at Sudan University of Science and Technology ,College of Education have committed several errors such as :spelling errors ,grammatical errors ,mechanical errors and structural errors . SPSS was used to analyzed the data .The results also showed that the most frequent error committed by the students are spelling error (27 out of thirty ) and the least frequent error was topic sentence ( 10 out of thirty ) . The results also showed that the students have not understood the techniques of writing English paragraphs yet. NP In the light of the obtained results several recommendations have been suggested so as to help EFL teachers to reduce the difficulties in writing English paragraphs among students .