An Analysis of the Writing Problems of Ghanaian ESL Students: A Focus on Textual Dimension

Abstract

Reading becomes interesting and enjoyable when texts are organized or structured in relation to progression in the ordering of utterance themes and their rhemes. It appears, therefore, that ESL students have problems with this aspect of writing as the intricacies and complexities of writing have been noted (Adas & Bakir, 2013), but previous studies seem to focus largely on the problems below the clause level. Therefore, focusing on 15 compositions written by form three students in the Sunyani Senior High School, the study examines ESL students’ problems in the organization of lexico-grammatical resources in text creation. Results show that ESL students face problem of proper thematic progression, which results in disunity in the development of a paragraph and incoherent sentences within paragraphs. This comes as a result of the introduction of a brand new theme and a misplaced theme. The study also shows, in terms of proper structuring of sentences that ESL students’ sentences are rather in fragment, run-on and phrases. It is suggested that teachers of English language should sensitize students to read extensively and engage students in a lot of practical exercises in writing in order to help students to improve upon their writing skills.

Keywords: Essay, Writing Problems, Thematic Progression, Rheme

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-20-02

Publication date:October 31^st 2019