Teaching Writing Skills to EFL Learners: Issues and Concerns

Abstract

The research examines the approaches employed by the L2 instructors at King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia to help undergraduate learners improve their writing skills. The study focuses on why writing tasks are complex for most L2 learners despite providing them with the necessary input and motivation. A survey and focus group interviews were used as the study methodologies, and two campuses were chosen for the data collection. According to the study, many teachers rely on techniques that need to include the steps necessary for helping learners practice writing. It also indicates that learners rarely show creativity in their writing tasks, and their writing proficiency heavily depends on rote memorization from pre-written materials. Viewing writing as solely a product and expecting to see only the finished product, teachers ignore learners’ developmental stages in writing activities, eventually affecting the learners' capacity for creative writing. The study implies that integrating interaction into the product approach is necessary for successful writing classes.