Investigating Students' Learning Difficulties in English Composition Writing ( A Case Study of First Year Students at University of Nyala, Sudan )

Abstract

The  title  of  this  study  is: Investigating  Students' Learning Difficulties  in  Writing  English  Composition. It  has  been  observed  that  university  of  Nyala  students  confront  a variety  of  problems  in  writing  English  composition. This   study  investigates  the  problems  encountered  by  the  students  when  learning  to  write  English  composition. The  objectives  of  the  current  study  were: ( 1 ) To  find  out  what  problems  University  of  Nyala  students  encounter  when  learning  to  write  English  composition. ( 2 ) To  examine  how  strategy  instruction  affects  University  of  Nyala  students’ performance  in  writing  English  composition. This  case  study  was  conducted  at  University  of  Nyala. ( 40 )  University  of  Nyala  students  participated  in  this  study. The  researcher  used  two pretests  and  two  posttests  with  a teaching  instruction.  The  main  findings  of  the  study  were: ( 1 ) Writing  composition  strategies  improve  students’ performance  in  writing  English  composition. ( 2 )  The  most  problems  that  face  the  students  in  writing  composition  were: spelling , lack  of  vocabulary , punctuation  marks  uses,  poor  handwriting,  paragraph, organization ,

expressing  ideas, sentence  writing, communicative  quality, cohesion  and  coherence

English  tenses, spelling  and  capitalization. The  current  study  recommended  that

 more  emphasis  should  be  given to  composition  writing  for  its  importance  to  the  students. The  most  important  implication  is  that  students  should  be  serious  and  keen  for  composition writing.