Abstract:
he main purpose of this study was to investigate EFL students’ common errors while writing
paragraphs and to describe the strategies that are used to minimize the identified errors. The study
was carried out in Enchine Secondary School with special reference to grade11 students. In this
study, descriptive survey design involving both qualitative and quantitative techniques was
employed to address the problem. To conduct the study, four English teachers and 72 grade 11
students were selected through random sampling technique. In order to achieve the objectives, the
study employed three data gathering tools: document analysis, questionnaire and interview.
Quantitative data were collected through questionnaires and qualitative data were collected
through interviews and document analysis. The data that collected through questionnaire were
analyzed quantitatively by using frequency, and percentage. The data that were collected through
interview, document analysis, and open-ended questionnaire were analyzed qualitatively using
narrative form. The study identified the major paragraph writing problems students’ encounter:
These are problem of organization, unity, development, grammar, punctuation and spelling. . It
was also discovered that teachers did not use variety of approaches to motivate their students in
writing activities; the results again indicated that very limited and insufficient writing strategies
were being used both by teacher and students to overcome paragraph writing problems of students.
Thus, as paragraph writing is a skill that could be improved through adequate practicing, Enchine
Secondary School students should have been given chance of learning and practicing features of
good paragraph to effectively use them to write a paragraph. English subject teachers ought to
adapt the writing activities to make interesting, motivating and achievable to the students in time
given for the activity.
