Arab Educational Information Network

This study aims to shed light on the difficulties of writing faced by students at the English department at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. To achieve this, the entire class of the writing skill of 28 students was given an assignment of writing in certain topics. Data were collected, corrected, and analyzed according to the common problems in writing such as syntax, mechanics, and vocabulary. The most common problems of the writing skill for students were choice of words, omission of vocabulary, incorrect verb usage, and spelling errors. Some writing strategies and activities were suggested for improvement. The study also suggests that collaboration of students can be beneficial as they encourage comments and feedback for each other’s writing. Also, the study recommends that the curriculum designers, teacher educators and material designers may focus on providing strategies based on using the process writing approach in EFL domain. (Published abstract)