A study on common lexical errors in writing made by Englis-majored sophomores at IUH

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Title:

A study on common lexical errors in writing made by English-majored sophomores at Industrial university of Ho Chi Minh City Chapter I: Introduction

1.1 Rationale:

Of the four English language skills including listening, speaking, reading, and writing, Writing has been considered as the most problematic language skill for ESL/EFL learners and even for native speakers (Norrish, 1983) Writing is different from speaking In spoken

communication, the most important thing is that the hearer can understand what the speaker means, not necessarily accurate in any respect Writing, on the other hand, is a challenging work In general, it is possible to analyze written language by defining the lexical objects used

in the words This implies that Lexis is one of the core elements that needs to create also understand the text well Poor vocabulary and wrong choice of lexical items are major

obstacles in successful communication Schmitt (2000) stated that “Lexical knowledge is essential for communicative capacity and to the acquisition of the second language” (p 55)

In addition, Folse (2004) also stated that “with poor vocabulary, communication is constraint considerably You can get by without grammar; you cannot get by without vocabulary” (p.2) The inappropriate selection of lexical items in written compositions can provide some

influence on the readers such as the misunderstanding about the content or the problem in interpreting the text Moreover, Ridha & Al – Riyahi (2011) claim that the inappropriate lexical choice might affect the effectiveness of communication between the writer and the reader In the same idea, Naba’h (2011) also stated that lexical errors prevent the foreign language learners from conveying their ideas as clearly as possible through their text On the other hand, lexical errors can be used as the quality predictor of the learners’ writing, and the predictor in determining the learners’ vocabulary improvement, lexical proficiency, and overall academic achievement (Llach, 2007, p.3)

In addition, Lexical choice in second language writing remains an important issue since the learners almost unavoidable produce various types of errors in the written

compositions Among the various types of errors in written compositions, lexical errors occupy the highest number of errors occurring in Students’written compositions (Llach 2005; Shalaby, Yahya & El-Komi 2009; Ander & Yildirim 2014) Besides, native speakers consider lexical errors as the most serious problem compared to the other types of errors (Ridha & Al –Riyahi, 2011)

Despite the importance and the frequency of lexical errors in students’ writing, a largenumber of English major sophomores at IUH do not give significant attention to the lexical aspect, they still often make errors in their sentences and have trouble in producing an

effective essay In addition, lexical error is still an issue that is rarely investigated, in

comparison with studies that examines different problems in writing such as phonological, grammatical, or syntactic errors Many researcher pointed to this fact such as Llach (2005a),Hemchua & Schmitt (2006), Shalaby, Yahya & El-Komi (2009), and

Naba’h(2011) Therefore, this research was conducted to fill the gap in the studies of lexicalerrors.b

1.2 Research Objectives

In this study, it attempts to find out attitudes of IUH’s English-majored

sophomores towards writing and difficulties that they face when learning this skill In addition, the study has a main objective that is to figure out the common types of lexicalerror produced by English-majored sophomores at industrial university of Ho Chi Minh city

1.3 Research questions

The present study attempts to answer three following questions:

1.What are the attitudes of English major sophomores at IUH towards writing skill? 2.What are difficulties that IUH’s English-majored sophomores face when they learnwriting skill?

3 What are common types of lexical errors that English- majored sophomores of IUHhave made in their writing?

1.4 Scope of the study

This study is conducted to find out the attitudes towards writing and difficulties that IUH’s English-majored sophomores face when learning writing skill Especially, analyze common lexical errors in their writing Because of the limited time, the author conducted thestudy with 100 English-majored sophomores at IUH through questionnaire distribution.Besides, the research also borrowed 100 essay writing of English-majored sophomores of thefaculty of foreign language at industrial university of Ho Chi Minh city to make the researchmore reliable and valid

Chapter II: Literature Review

2.1 Definitions of key terms/concepts

2.1.1 Definitions of writing

Previous research show that several attempts have been made at defining 'writing'.Carrol, et.al (2001: 3) defined writing as the powerful communication tool to express or shareideas on thought in the rest of our life These imply that writing as a tool and skill of writers

to communicate information or ideas to readers in written form Even though, writing is extremely important, but it is not easy as people think As Nunan (1999) states that writing is the most difficult skill among the four language skills

Graham (2006) and Sandbank & Harris (2014) stated that writing is a preferred tool for students to express what they know in today’s classrooms On the other hand, according toTroia and Graham (2003), writing is one of the most complicated literacy activities for children and even for adults

In addition, Broadman (2002: 4) stated that writing is a continuous process of

thinking, organizing, rethinking, and reorganizing The mastery of vocabulary, spelling, grammar, punctuation, appropriate content, word selection appropriate to the audience, topic and occasion, are required in writing However, the capacity of thinking and the ability to organize are essential in order to make you express your ideas in well-organized sentences, which have a good coherence and cohesion That is why many people and students find it difficult to write

According to Harmer (2004), Writing encourages students to focus on accurate language use because they think as they write; it may well provoke language development as they resolve problems which the writing puts into their minds When writing, students

frequently have more time to think than they do in oral activities Students can go through what they know in their minds and even consult dictionaries, grammar books, or other

reference material to help them

From the definitions above, it can be concluded that writing is an activity to express ideas, events, feelings or thought on written form, writing can be a tool to communicate with other people, furthermore, writing is a process requires about cognitive and linguistic ability alot and it is very difficult to master

2.1.1.1 The importance of writing

In discussing the significance of writing, Suleiman (2010) stressed that " Writing iscentral clement of language, any reading and language arts program must consider the

multidimensional nature of writing in instructional practices, assessment procedures, andlanguage development.” (p 155).

Writing is both essential part of the learning process and one of the most important ways that historians communicate their ideas and conclusions to one another (Department ofArt and History Art, George Mason University, n.d.)

In addition, according to Walsh (2010) writing is very important because it’s used extensively in higher education and in the workplace If students don’t know how to express themselves in writing, they will not be able to communicate well with professors, employers, peers, or just about anyone else Much of professional communication is done in writing: proposals, memos, reports, applications, preliminary interviews, e-mails, and more are part ofthe daily life of a college student or successful graduate

Writing has a unique position in English language since its acquisition involves practice and knowledge of other three language skills, such as listening, reading, and

speaking Moreover, it requires the mastering of other skills, such as metacognitive skills Learners need to set an objective for their writing, plan it carefully, think over its layout and logical structure, revise it, etc In the process of writing, they have to use cognitive skills; theyhave to analyze their sources and then synthesize them in a compact piece of writing (Walsh, 2010)

2.1.1.2 EFL learners’s attitudes towards writing skill

Most ESL /EFL students have negative attitude to writing They often consider

writing, especially in the form of essay composition, is a difficult task Ismail et al (2010) found out that most ESL students are apprehensive to writing activity and have negative attitude to academic writing The students who consider writing skill as difficult, would dislike the activity Some students refrain from writing, and show their unwillingness towardsthe skill There were some reasons leading to the students have negative attitudes toward writing, namely the lack of time to practice in the class and the ineffective writing course guide and resources to write critically (Ismail et al, 2012)

According to Erkan and Saban (2011) “Most students have a negative attitudes

towards writing Even students who excel at other language skills encounter the same

problems when they are asked to write They fear making writing mistakes and they are notconfident to exhibit their thoughts through writing as it is, in fact, beyond their capacity”.Consequently, Erkan and Saban (2011) maintained that "success with writing in a foreign language may be related to attitudes towards writing, apprehension about writing, and self-efficacy in writing" (p 168).

In addition, Rahmatunisa (2014) pointed out that the reason for EFL students’ dislike

to writing is due to the problems they encounter when they perform writing tasks, namely linguistics problems, cognitive problems in relation to paragraph organization and text structure, and psychological problems, such as moods and difficulty to start writing

2.1.1.3 EFL students’ difficulties in learning writing

Haider (2012) and Hyland (2003) concluded that students face various writing problems at di erent stages of their learning Generally, these problems can be classified ffinto linguistic, cognitive, psychological, and pedagogical categories They struggle with the structural components of English because an inappropriate structure complicates the content and comprehension of the text, which a reader deciphers through involvement of a mental process (Quintero,2008; Nik, Hamzah, & Rafidee, 2010)

Besides, according to Fareed (2016), Jacobs & L (1981) and Hall (1988) “A text of aneffective ESL writer must be cohesive, logical, clearly structured, interesting and properly organized with a wide range of vocabulary and mastery of conventions in mechanics” Thus, learners often encounter many difficulties in developing effective writing skills In terms of grammar, understanding and applying the English grammatical rules is not easy for EFL students because verbs are usually formed differently to have subject-verb agreement

according to the tenses Besides, it is hard for students to learn how to use articles,

prepositions, pronouns, and connecting devices appropriately (Hall, 1988) Syntactically, learners often find writing the correct sentence structure challenging because in English syntax, there are various different types of sentence structures with strict requirements on theuse of conjunctions and dependent/subordinate clauses In terms of vocabulary, Asep (2014) stated that Vocabulary is the central element in constructing sentences and is the core of effective writing skills Lack of vocabulary has caused the EFL students to face challenges inacquiring writing

skills claimed Misbal et al (2017) Learners need to have a large vocabulary range to be able

to use them flexibly for each writing topic in order to perform the task well However, they often have trouble choosing the appropriate vocabulary in context In addition, poor spelling

is another cause of anxiety for students in learning writing skill and this is supported

by Nyang’au Benard (2014) Having good ability in spelling will lead to positive learning ofwriting skill If the students are struggling with spelling, it will hold them back to move forward The students have the habit to spell according to their pronunciation and this will lead to wrong spelling as mentioned by Afrin (2016)

Last but not least, lack of motivation is also a challenge encountered by the EFL students If the students are not motivated, they might not be interested to proceed with theirlearning process Motivation is an important element in improving students’ learning results claimed Gbollie & Keamu (2017)

2.1.2 Definitions of error

Morris (1979: 259) defined that “Errors as an act, assertion, or belief that

unintentionally deviates from what is correct, right or true” Webster (1990: 340) defined that

“Errors as a deviation from a code of behavior, an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy, an act that through ignorance deficiency, or accident fails to achieve what should be done, the quality or state of erring, and the difference between an observed orcalculated value and the true value, especially: variation in measurements, calculations or observations of quantity due to uncontrollable factors”

Linguistically, Corder (1973: 259) defines "errors as branches of the code." A learner makes errors because of lack of knowledge of the formation rules of the language being learned and therefore the meaning of phrase or sentences produced is unacceptable From those definitions by some experts, it can be concluded that error is a deviation from what is correct, true, and it is caused by the lack of knowledge in the target language

According to Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1992), a student makes mistakes and errors when writing Mistakes are due to lack of attention, fatigue

or carelessness They can be self- corrected when attention is called Errors are the use of linguistic items in a way that a learner of the language regards them as showing faulty or incomplete learning They occur because the leaner does not know what is correct, and thus errors cannot be self-corrected From the explanations by some experts above, we can

conclude that error is different with the mistake The mistake can be corrected without thehelp of other people, but error needs other people to correct it.

2.1.3 Definitions of lexis- lexical

According to Richard, Platt (1992, p 40), lexis is "a set of lexemes, including single words, compound words and idioms." Whereas, the Advanced Learners Dictionary 9th offered its own definition Lexis here is " all the words and phrases in a particular language ofsubject; all the word and phrases used and known by a particular person or group of people." lexical is also defined that " it connected with the words of language" Besides, according to Hemchua (2006), phrase verbs, adverbial phrases or idioms are also considered to be words orlexical items lexis is the core element which is significantly important in communicating process, either in spoken and written communication, especially in writing

Napitupulu (2005) states that people can express feelings, give ideas and thoughts ormessages for anyone by lexis Besides, the relationship between knowledge and lexical competence is closely connected The higher lexical ability you have, the wider knowledge you own Moreover, the ability of giving and receiving information is easier than others, Hence, lexical items comprehension is an extremely essential thing which should be learnt and it can be seen as a complex problem

In addition, Mackey (1984) accepts the ideas that every word is the center of a group

of related ideas, thought or people and all parts support together to present the main idea which the writer want to express Therefore, lexical items are a part which writers can not ignore in constructing any sentence

2.1.4 Definitions of lexical error

Llach (2005:16) refers to lexical error as the inappropriate use of lexical items in a certain context as the impact of the confusion between two words, owing formal or semanticsimilarity, which consists of the L1 or L2 influence In fact, lexical errors can be defined as the deviations from the standard rule of a language lexicon Some linguists explain "lexical error" as meaning "all errors that are not grammatically fit" Others view "lexical error" as a superordinate term for classes of errors such as word formation, collocation, form/semantic confusion and wrong word choice (Llach, 2011: 73)

According to Hernandez (2011), lexical errors are caused by choosing the wrong wordfor the meaning the writer wants to express Webber (1993) states that the most common causes of errors in non-native English speakers are lexical in nature, due to mother tongue

interference.Most of researches note to the taxonomy, recognized features, main causes of lexical errors and concern to give a detailed definition of lexical errors Hence there are many lacks of clear definitions of "lexical errors” Nevertheless, it can be seen clearly that lexical errors will affect to lexical words (Celaya & Torras, 20013; Hemchua & Schmitt, 2006).

2.1.5 Types of lexical errors

James (1998) classifies lexical errors into two main categories: formal and semantic features.For the reader’s information, the error categories are described below in some detail

1.3 The vowel-based type (for example, seat /set, manual /menial).

1.4 The consonant-based type (for example, save/safe, three/tree).

2. Formal Misformations

According to James (1998) formal misformations are the errors that can be created by thelearner from the resources of the target language or in the mother tongue James (1998) classifies misformation errors into three types as follows:

2.1 Borrowing L1 words are used in the target language without any change (for

instance, after the Shubuh [dawn], the farmers are usually go to the paddy field ).

2.2 Coinage Inventing a word from L1 (for instance, drugging can be very nocive

[dangerous] to our health).

2.3.Calque Translation of a word or a phrase from L1 words (for instance, I go to [am going to] school by motorcycle).

3 Distortions

The results of distortions generally are nom-existent forms in the target language James(1998) classifies distortions into four types as follows:

3.1 Omission (for example, intresting <interesting>; you have many things to do and to think < think about >.)

3.2 Overinclusion (for example, dinning room <dining room>).

3.3 Misselection (for example, delitouse <delicious>).

3.4 Misordering (for example, littel <little>).

2.1.5.2 Semantic error

James (1998) classifies semantic error into two classes: (1) confusion of sense relations and(2) collocational errors Their sub-types and examples are as follows:

1. Confusion of sense relations

Hemchua & Schmitt (2006) stated that the meaning of vocabulary generally necessitates

concepts and their relations in lexical field (for instance, the words man and boy

belong to the lexical field of ‘gender’) The following four main types of errors are classifiedaccordingly

1.1 Using a superonym for a hyponym (for example, we have modern equipment

<appliances> in our house).

1.2 Using a hyponym for a superonym (for example, The colonels <officers> live in

the castle).

1.3 Using inappropriate co-hyponyms (for example, I think the city has good communication

<transportation/public transport> such as a lot of buses).

1.4 Using a wrong near synonym (for example, a regretful < penitent/contrite > criminal or sinner).

2. Collocation errors

According to James (1998) collocation is a pair of words which is high-frequently used together and it is accepted by the native speakers James specifies the following three degrees

of the misuse of collocation

2.1 Semantically determined word selection (for example, the city is grown <developed>) 2.2 Statistically weighted preferences (for example, An army has suffered big losses

<heavy losses is preferred >).

2.3 Arbitrary combinations and irreversible binomials (for example, hike-hitch

<hitch- hike>).

2.2 Results of previous studies:

Investigations on lexical errors in writing have been conducted on ESL / EFL learnersfrom diverse language backgrounds

2.2.1 An investigated the production of lexical errors in the English argumentative writing of Thai students composition (Hemchua & Schmitt (2006)).

In this study, the author chose quantitative research to carry out the investigation In

particular, to examine the type and extent of lexical errors in students’ written English,

students were asked to write between 300-350 words in an argumentative composition, without consulting their dictionaries, within one and-a-half hour The lexical errors made by participants were classified into 24 sub- categories under two main categories: formal and semantic features Hemchua & Schmitt (2006) found that lexical errors made by the third-year

student group were mostly derived from ‘near synonyms (for instance: I get up<wake up>

in early the morning to workout.) Besides, the study showed that most of the subjects have a

problem in semantics rather than the form of words

2.2.2 A study on female students in a prep-year program at Thabiah University (Shalaby, Yahya & El-Komi,2009).

Shalaby, Yahya & El-Komi (2009) conducted the study through using quantitative research as main research methodology The native language of the subjects is Arabic and data was gathered from 96 essays randomly selected from 563 written papers The research results are consistent with the analysis by Hemchua & Schmitt in which semantic errors werethe most numerous errors contained in the writings of the students In addition, the study results showed that more advanced learners tended to made errors in meaning-based

associations

2.2.3 A study on lexical errors made by 50 fourth-year students from Prince of

Songkla University ( Suetae, 2010).

Suetae (2010) chose a combination of qualitative and quantitative research to conduct the study This study attempted to explain the causes of lexical errors in terms of interlingualand intralingual errors From the analysis of the data, the findings was revealed that the highest percentage of errors was attributed to direct translations, the type of interlingual errors For intralingual errors, the majority of error was attributed to omissions while

confusion of binary terms was the least frequent of lexical errors found The findings of this investigation also showed that students had a great difficulty in producing vocabulary in the written composition

2.2.4 A study on lexical errors of Third Year Undergraduate Students (Wafa Ismail Saud (2018)

Quantitative research was conducted to describe the lexical errors made by EFL students

In this study, quantitative research was chosen to describe the lexical errors made by EFL students 30 Saudi female students were asked to write essays in English that were assessed

by the researcher The students were all majoring in English in the third year at King Khalid University A total of 137 lexical errors were identified and analyzed Formal mis- selection was the most frequent major category of lexical formal errors while mis-formation was the least frequent one Confusion of sense relations was the most frequent among lexical semanticerrors At the individual level of lexical formal errors, the most problematic words for

students were the vowel based types and borrowing and blending were not problematic at all

At the individual level of lexical semantic errors, the most problematic words for students were near synonyms and the least problematic words using a Superonym for a Hyponym, using a syponym for a superonym

The researcher finds that there is a gap in these studies that’s they mainly focused in scrutinizing lexical errors produced by students at university level except student of second year Thus, the present study will utilizes English-majored sophomores of IUH as the main objects to examine common lexical errors that occurred in their writing Further, this researchattempts to gets more insight into the attitude towards writing and difficulties when

learning this skill

Besides, previous studies on lexical errors had used a variety of error classifications, most of which have a relatively limited number of categories For example, Ridha (2012) onlyutilized one of the major types in lexical errors namely semantic errors Similarly, Duskova (1969) used only four categories of lexical errors Similarly, Engber (1995) used a system with nine categories Given the current understanding of the complexity of lexis, the use of compact classification systems to explain learners’ errors can result in unclear boundaries and arbitrary classifications, while the lack of specificity in the definition of error categories may obstruct the analysis from its full potential (Hemchua,2006) Therefore, the present study

adopted lexical errors taxonomy proposed by James (1998) which was compiled from various

sources from previous studies A summary can be found in table 1

Students: Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Diệu ID Number: 17024971

Supervisor: Đinh Tấn Thuỵ Kha, M.A

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Table1: Lexical errors classification proposed by James (1998)

LEXICAL ERRORS CLASSIFICATION

1 Confusion of sense relations

1.1 Using a superonym for a hyponym

1.2 Using a hyponym for a superonym

1.3 Inappropriate co-hyponyms

1.4 Near synonyms

2 Collocation errors

2.1 Semantically determined word selection

2.2 Statistically weighted preferences

2.3 Arbitrary combinations and Irreversible Binomials

Chapter III: Research Design

Students: Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Diệu ID Number: 17024971

Supervisor: Đinh Tấn Thuỵ Kha, M.A

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3.1 Research site/context

The place where the author chooses to conduct an investigate is Industrial University

of Ho Chi Minh City, in particular in the Faculty of Foreign Language (FFL) of IUH It islocated at Building B, no 12 Nguyen Van Bao, Ward 4, Go Vap District, Ho Chi Minh City.The author decides to use IUH as a main place to conduct the thesis since it is one of the long-standing educations and training institutions in Vietnam Currently, IUH becomes more andmore developed and gains the trust of lots of students In addition, the university has themodern facilities and enthusiastic teaching staff which are wonderful for carrying out theresearch The investigation was conducted in three writing classes with wonderful help fromteachers

3.2 Participants/Objects

As mentioned above, the main participants of whole the survey are English major sophomores at IUH, the total number of study participants is 100 students from 3 writing classes There are two main reasons why the researcher chose English-majored sophomores

Firstly, participants are learning writing as a main subject of 4 years at university, therefore, they have enough background knowledge of academic writing, therefore, it can beseen clearly that because they are studying writing, they often have problems in learning writing skill and they will understand more exactly about difficulties when learning writing more than non-English major students

Secondly, the second-year students of FFL of IUH are still make mistakes as well as errors a lot although they have been going through plenty of writing periods in the university.Thus, they are a good choice to find out lexical errors in their writing Besides, they will be ready to take part in the research because of its benefits for them

3.3 Research methodology and research methods

to Ganapathy and Kaur (2013), when the intervention in the classroom context happens,

qualitative research design allows to get an in-depth analysis of that classroom context, and makes easy the development of the intervention’s description In terms of quantitative

research, Mcleod (2017) stated that it is a type of research methodology that gathers data in anumerical form It can be divided into categories Besides, graphs and tables of raw data can

be built by using this methodology owever, the researcher used quantitative research as a main research methodology to conduct the study

3.3.2 Research method

The main research methods are questionnaire and essay analysis According to McLeod,

S A (2018), questionnaires can be an effective means of measuring the behavior, attitudes, preferences, opinions and, intentions of relatively large numbers of subjects more cheaply andquickly than other methods The questionnaires consist of two parts including 12 questions, the first part is to find out the attitudes of IUH’s English-majored sophomores towards writingskill, and the second one is designed to figure out the difficulties in learning writing skill, besides, essay analysis is an indispensable method, it is also an effective way to discover common lexical errors in their essay and classify these errors in an easy way

researcher gave them some little rewards after finishing the survey

In addition, the author also asked to borrow essays of FFL’s sophomores from different writing classes and asked for permission to take pictures of the borrowed essays Before leaving the class, the author expressed sincere thanks to the teacher and students for their cooperation

Finally, after gathering all the necessary information from participants, the researcherused all the information to serve the next stage- Data analysis

Students: Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Diệu ID Number: 17024971

Supervisor: Đinh Tấn Thuỵ Kha, M.A

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3.5 Data analysis

Data analysis is an extremely important stage of the study Because of a great number

of participants, it is necessary to use this software for the analytical process The author foundthat Excel program is a convenient and effective tool for calculating and illustrate data

Therefore, the researcher decided to use Microsoft Office Excel software as main tool for dataentry and processing, especially creating diagrams to describe the data that had been

processed Thanks to it, the author can draw tables and charts in an exactly and easily way.The kind of chart can be bar chart or pie chart, and it depends on the specific purposes of each question

Chapter IV:

Findings and Discussion

This chapter serves an in-depth analysis of data collected from the questionnaire and

100 essays Tables and charts were chosen as the main forms for analyzing data after the researcher collected information The findings and discussion for each question are presentedbelow

4.1 General information

Chart 1: The number years that students have been studying English

The chart below shows the number of years that students have been learning English

up to the time the study is conducted Generally, most students had been studying English atleast 9 years and at most more than 13 years, in which the percentage of students who had been studying English for 9 years was the highest rate with 54% More than half of students shared that they had been studying English as a compulsory subject since they were in secondary school This fact was probably straightforward following the mainstream

educational curriculum in Vietnam for the time being, besides, students who have learned English over 13 years must have followed the pilot educational program or obtained extra education before officially learning English at school

Chart 2: The most difficult English language skill for the sophomores

The pie chart above gives information about the opinion about the most difficult

English language skill of the second-year students It can be clearly seen from the chart thatmore than half of students (44%) thought that writing is the most difficult skill of the four English language skills Followed by listening when it was voted to 42% by participants.There were 8% of students agreed that speaking is the hardest skill, and only 6% of studentschose reading as the most difficult skill

In conclusion, when the participants were asked about the most difficult skill of the fourEnglish skills including listening, speaking , reading, and writing, the majority of students considered that writing as the most difficult skill This result of the study was similar to Norrish (1983)’s view that writing has been considered as the most difficult language skill for English second language/ English foreign language learners and even for native speakers.Therefore, it is necessary for students to make more effort to be proficient in this skill

4.2 The attitudes of IUH’s English-majored sophomores towards writing skill

4.2.1 The feeling of sophomores in learning writing skill

Chart 3: The feeling of sophomores in learning writing skill

As you can see from the chart (chart3), there were up to 63% of the participants expressing they do not like learning writing skill while there was only 4% of them felt that

they really like studying this skill More than one-quarter of students (23%) felt normal when

learning writing skill There was 10% of them showed that they like and enjoy learning writing skill respectively

It can be concluded that most of the students do not like learning writing skill, which means that they learning writing just because it is one of the compulsory subjects in the school curriculum Moreover, one of the reasons leading to students dislike writing was that they consider writing as the most difficult skill to master This finding is consistent with the view of Ismail et al (2010) that “most ESL students are apprehensive to writing activity and have negative attitude to academic writing The students who perceive writing as difficult would dislike the activity Some students refuse to write and express a lack of interest in the skill

4.2.2 Students’ opinion about the importance of writing skill

Chart 4: Students’ opinion about the importance of writing skill

It can be clearly seen from the bar chart above (chart4) that the importance of writing was highly appreciated by the majority of sophomores There were nearly half of participant (49%) considered that writing skill is very important while only 2% of them thought that thisskill is not important at all Followed by 30% of sophomores supposed that writing is

important 12% and 7% of sophomores showed that writing was quite important and normal

in order

It can be concluded that most sophomores appreciated the importance of writing skill even though they do not like learning this skill Only a few students do not realize the importance of this skill It can be said that most students clearly understand that writing skill would be necessary for their future career as writing is used extensively in the workplace students should have a positive attitude towards writing and pay more attention to improve their writing skill