Investigation into Teaching-learning Strategies of Paragraph Writing in English as Foreign Language Classrooms: The case of Selected Preparatory Schools in West Guji Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Writing is a process of communicating with others in which a writer sends his/her ideas and thoughts in written forms to readers. Paragraph writing is made of a few sentences that talk about one single topic under each body paragraph. Paragraph Writing teaching Strategy includes different teaching techniques like outlining, brainstorming, planning, drafting, organizing, sequencing etc. to enhance Writing Skill for Students. Therefore, having the knowledge of academic writing is very important in the academic world. However, it is the skills which usually get little attention. As a result, the study aimed to investigate teaching strategies of paragraph writing being used with reference to the selected preparatory schools in west Guji zone. To attain the objectives of the study, descriptive research design and mixed research approaches were used to analyze the data taken from participants and documents.  Besides, primary data were collected using questionnaire, classroom observation and focus group discussion. Furthermore, document analysis and literature review were used as secondary sources. In addition, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage. The results of this study revealed that teachers gave less emphasis to paragraph writing lesson specifically. Also, the teachers didn’t present paragraph writing lessons in line with the procedures prescribed in the students’ English text book and Teacher’s Guide manual. Similarly, the finding confirmed that the teachers hardly encourage students to use different paragraph writing strategies such as brainstorming, planning, developing supporting sentences, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing the paragraph. As a result, students showed less performance in paragraph writing skills.