Portrait of EFL Learners' Writings: Errors, Challenges, and Solutions

As one of the most challenging English skill, writing plays important role in supporting students’ academic success. It therefore has become a major concern of researchers around the globe to conduct studies dealing with writing related issues. This descriptive study aimed to analyze EFL learners’ writings. In particular, it focused on portraying the most dominant grammatical and lexical errors in the students’ writings. In line with it, it also explored challenges and solutions of writing on the basis of students’ perspectives. Thirty sophomores were involved as participants of this study. The data were collected through writing test, questionnaire, and interview. Collecting, identifying, classifying, and describing were modified data analysis stages used in this study. The result of data analysis revealed that there were 445 grammatical errors and 111 lexical errors found in students’ writing. In details, the grammatical errors covered fragment omissions (35%), incorrect mechanics (31%), tense misuse (23%), wrong fragments (5%), fragment additions (4%), and inappropriate pair (2%). Meanwhile, the lexical errors comprised inappropriate choices (27%), redundancies (24%), incorrect forms (22%), misspellings (14%), improper uses (8%), and wrong orders (5%). Furthermore, limited knowledge on grammar and vocabulary, lack of practice and motivation, and insufficient writing skills were among the most common challenges faced by the students during writing process. In addition, the students believed that review and feedback, various material, assignment and practice exposure, and the use of supporting techno based tools were among highly recommended alternative solutions to anticipate the errors and challenges