Factors contributing to learners' inability to use a variety of sentence structures in English essay writing

Abstract

It is common in the language classroom that the ability to produce written productions is among most valuable requirements that learners aim to accomplish from language study. This is because the mode of examination is through written tasks. However, learners are not able to achieve this aim because one of their problems in writing is lack of variety in sentence structures. They seem to use mostly simple structure. Whenever they try to vary, they are limited to compound with the overuse of and. Therefore, the present study aims at investigating the factors contributing to learners’ inability to use a variety of sentence structures in their essay writing. The study adopted an interpretive paradigm that used a mixed methods approach – qualitative and quantitative approaches. Data was generated through marking thirty learners’ essays and conducting one on one open-ended in-depth interviews with three teachers from the three selected schools. Analysis of findings revealed that learners’ failure to vary sentence structures in essay writing because of these factors: lack of extensive reading, poor educational background, lack of practice and feedback, confusion of non-sentence sentences with complete sentences, teachers’ content incompetency, lack of application of grammatical concepts in essay writing, teacher-centered teaching strategies as well as lack of exposure to English language.