Identifying EFL Students’ Difficulties in Writing Cause and Effect Essays

Abstract

The current study is a descriptive research which attempts to identify the difficulties that third year students at the department of English at Jijel University encounter when writing cause and effect essays. When the difficulties faced by third year students in writing cause and effect essays are identified, it would be easier to anticipate solutions to overcome them. In order to answer the research questions, three data collection tools were employed, namely a questionnaire, a document analysis, and an interview. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of (80) out of (262) third year students. It aimed at getting a general idea about students‘ attitudes towards writing, as well as the difficulties they face when writing cause and effect essays. These difficulties were further examined through the analysis of students‘ essays submitted by twenty (20) of these students, their essays were evaluated based on a checklist. The third tool was an interview that was conducted with six (6) written expression teachers at the same department. It served to complete the data obtained from the previous tools, in addition to obtaining more reliable information about the issue.