شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

Writing is an important skill for language production. However, it is considered a difficult skill, particularly in English as a Foreign Language Learner context where students face many difficulties in writing. Therefore, this study focuses on the difficulties of the students in writing related to structure of the essay that the English Language students of the Faculty of Education at Sana'a University encounter. The aims of this study to investigate problems in Yemeni undergraduate English learners' writing and factors that hinder their writing skills. For this purpose, a descriptive analytic study was conducted. The questionnaire for lecturers and test for the students were used as instruments to collect data. The sample size was one hundred students and 16 lecturers. SPSS was used for analyzing. Results of the study found that more than half of the students (60%) agreed that they faced difficulties and challenges in writing skills regarding to the structure of the essay which include (Organization, Content, Unified, Introduction, Body, and Conclusion) that lead to their inability to write the essay correctly. These challenges were due to untrained lecturers, ineffective writing skills strategies, insufficient activities to the students, lack of writing practice, as well as not enough references of writing skills at library, crowded classrooms and low motivation. To overcome these difficulties and challenges this study suggested many remedial measures such as provide enough writing practice and activities in the class, training of lecturers regularly to improve their teaching, updating the curriculum to include sufficient writing skills syllabus, using modern educational technology of teaching writing in order to improve students writing. In addition, increase the number of sections in order to decrease the number of students in each class to strengthen the abilities of the students in writing. (Author's abstract)