Investigating the Problems Faced by Sudanese University Students in Paragraph Writing (A case Study of Third year Students of English - College of Arts - Al Neelain University-)

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the problems faced by University students in paragraph writing. The researcher has adopted descriptive analytical method. Two instruments have been used for collecting data relevant to the study, namely questionnaire to teachers of English at some Sudanese Universities and diagnostic test to third year students of English at Al-Neelain University – College of Arts. The study sample of questionnaire comprises (30) teachers whereas the sample of diagnostic test consists of (30) students. The researcher applied SPSS program to analyze and verify the hypotheses. The results have shown that a major challenges faced by EFL students is to produce good- quality paragraph writing. Moreover, students are not able to write well -connected paragraph due to lack of grammatical construction. The pedagogic value of paragraph writing has been neglected. The study has recommended that teachers should help students communicate their thoughts and ideas to others while writing paragraph. Furthermore, the use of reading- into writing method should be particularly beneficial to students' paragraphwriting abilities. Some suggestions are also proposed for further studies.