The Choice Made from no Choice: Insight into how Writing Skill is Taught in the Libyan Classrooms

• Main Author: Hameda Hussein Almrabett Suwaed
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Lasting Impressions Press 2015-12-01
• Series: International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies
• Subjects: Writing approaches; Classroom practice; Pre-writing activities; EFL writing; Libyan Classrooms
• Online Access: http://eltsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/10-3-4-15.pdf

In the EFL contexts, while much research is conducted towards investigating the problems that students face in writing and their writing strategies, studies on how EFL writing teacher teach and adopt the writing approaches to their students' needs and levels are few and far between. Such an inbalance needs to be addressed since how teachers teach, and the approaches that they opt to use, might have a direct impact on how students learn to write. In this respect, this research offers an insight into the strategies adopted by the EFL writing skill teachers at the Sabratha College of Arts, Libya. The findings of the study reveal that the Libyan EFL writing skill teachers opten resort to teaching through grammatical structures. Rather than assisting EFL learners to write extended pieces of writing, the teachers are predominantly concerned about the teaching of correct forms and developing writing at the paragraph level. The possible reasons for teachers over reliant on such strategies can be traced to their over workloads, time contraints to finish the course which often results in ignoring individual attention to the EFL learners’ writing. However, signs of recent writing pedagogies, such as pre-writing activities, are identified in classroom practice and textbook selection, which indicate the possibility of successful adaptations of the recent writing pedagogies in the Libyan context.