Typical essay writing problems facing upper - Secondary students and possible solutions

“Typical Essay Writing Problems Facing Upper-secondary Students 
and Possible Solutions”
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PART I: INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale for selecting the topic of the study:
In the recent years, English teaching and learning practice has shifted its focus to listening and speaking skills, due to the increased demand of using communicative skills on the global scale. Additionally, most English tests are in the form of multiple-choice questions, including the English test that upper-secondary students nationwide have to take at the National Examination of Secondary Education. Thus, the majority of high school students almost pay every attention to listening and speaking lessons, and then to techniques to do multiple-choice tests effectively, instead of putting enough emphasis on mastering their writing skills, especially essay writing skills. 
Writing belongs to the process of language reproduction in which writing an essay is, perhaps, the most challenging part to a large number of students. It would not be an overstatement that essay writing has been a terrible nightmare for so many students, even talented ones. The nightmare is so haunted that my students usually get too nervous to accomplish their writing entirely. Some time, they even skip the writing tasks they have been assigned, as a message that they surrender to this obstacle. Meanwhile, no one can deny the importance of such a high-level reproductive skill of language in written communications. 
As a teacher of English, I always harbor a desire to help my students develop their language skills in a comprehensive way, also to prepare them better for higher stages of education and their future jobs. It is the desire that has constantly urged me to do something practical to improve the situation. Hence, the topic “Typical Essay Writing Problems Facing Upper-secondary Students and Possible Solutions” has been chosen and studied in the hope of addressing difficulties in essay writing student are having to confront as well as suggesting answers to these problems.
II. Purposes of the study:
 	This study aims to raise students’ awareness of the importance of English essay writing in written communications. On that basis, they can have more motivations and interests in studying how to write essays and doing practice more regularly. As a result, they will gradually be able to master their performance in essay writing. Furthermore, with this experience initiative, I hope to contribute some of my personal ideas on essay writing to teaching experience sources for my teacher colleagues to use as a reference in the English teaching process in general.
III. Objects of the study:
	This teaching experience initiative specially focus on researching and analyzing problems or difficulties that students encounter in English essay writing, and finding out possible solutions to these problematic issues to help improve their skill in producing essays.
IV. Scope of the study:
	The study process was mainly based on the English programme for the upper-secondary students at Mai Anh Tuan High School in the school year 2018-2019, and through English tests and examinations for high school students in the recent years. 
V. Bases and of the study:
	The experience initiative has been studied based on my own practical teaching experiences, referring to documents related to the researched topic, including database from the internet, observing other teachers’ lessons, and consulting my colleagues, who are experienced in teaching English at high school.
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
I. Problems facing students in English Essay writing:
 	As learners of English as a foreign language, students have to face to a wide range of difficulties in writing English essays, an academically challenging task. The problems may be caused by the outer or intra-lingual factors of English. These factors, whether internal or external, can make the task of mastery difficult for learners of English to achieve, and can have a negative effect on their proficiency. Following are the common challenges that may face students in writing and restrict their achievement.
1. Over-obsession named essay writing:
	 Nowadays, most students are too obsessive with writing essays whether in their mother tongue or in a second language such as English. They tend to think that this task is beyond their ability, and that it is only a waste of time because they can never write a good essay; hence, they choose to quit the task right from the beginning despite its importance. 
2. Effects of modern lifestyle: 
Schoolchildren are living a fast-paced life in which everything seems to run at the speed of light. With the support of modern devices, spoken communications become easier and more convenient than ever before. Rather, the tendency of teaching and learning English at present is to focus more on spoken communication skills than on written ones. In consequence, writing skills, including essay writing, attract little attention from high school students.
3. Lack of motivation:
	At upper-secondary level of education, one of the primary motivations to master writing skills seems to be examinations. However, apart from the gifted student examinations, there are hardly other ones to motivate students. Also, a flash of anxiety about future careers appears not to be great inspiration to urge students to pay much attention to essay writing.
4. Lack of ideas:
A number of students read their essay writing questions and find no ideas to develop in their writings. They also get stuck right from the opening part of their essays. 
5. Lack of vocabulary:
	Students hardly enjoy essay writing when they have an insufficient stock of vocabulary. The outcome of their vocabulary insufficiency is nothing but poor quality essays. 
6. Thinking in the mother tongue:
	Students are greatly influenced by their first language. They tend to do their thinking in the mother tongue, and then try to translate what they have thought into English. Their habit usually makes their writing products become a mess!
7. Poor Grammar and Syntax Skills:
	Even the most talented students need to learn how to understand complex sentences, differentiate different parts of speech, use proper punctuation and proofread their writing for errors.
8. Lack of evidence and relevance:
	Students sometimes provide evidence that is not relevant to the main topic. This is a consequence of not spending enough time for planning the essay or trying to reach the word limit. It may also be the case that even relevant facts can appear irrelevant because students sometimes do not use appropriate wording and fail to link different paragraphs and ideas with each other. As a result, even relevant facts and arguments sound irrelevant.
9. Essay question misunderstanding and wrong identification of essay types: 
	Students sometimes fail to understand the questions, and get difficulty in identifying the right essay type to write. Thus, their writing may easily digress in an inappropriate format.
10. Weak or no thesis statements: 
	Students’ creative ability seems to be infinite, so that sometimes they keenly pursuit and try to express their creative thoughts without realizing that they have written a long paragraph or essay with a weak or no thesis statement. 
11. Lack of cohesion and coherence:
	Sometimes students write such rambling essays that can be difficult for their 
readers to understand. The information may be presented without being clearly related to the given assignment question, and/or without conforming to the genre pattern expected in the context. An incoherent essay, of course, can never get great appreciation. 
12. Failing to structure ideas effectively in a proper format:
	Students may have numerous interesting and creative ideas; however, their time for essay writing is limited, so they occasionally fail to find the best way to structure their ideas in content effectively. 
	Sometimes, students’ essays does not follow any standard format. They write down anything they can think out without considering whether it appears in the right place or not. The sources used for their essay are not well organized and cited in a way suitable for its type.
13. Poor time management:
	Many students are not very good at time management, which leads to inappropriate time division for different tasks and task incompletion. Undoubtedly, when the task is not completed, their essay cannot be highly valued. 
14. Plagiarism:
	It can be seen as stealing someone else’s intellectual property when students use their work without crediting. Gifted students have a good ability to remember what they have read about a certain topic and then try to use as much as they can when meeting the same topic. Once, one student remembered almost all the whole essay of the same topic and wrote it down on her paper without forgetting a word from the original. 
15. Lack of writing practice:
Students, with their talent and intellectual ability, can deal with tasks, even the most challenging ones, rapidly and effectively. Therefore, sometimes they seem to be a little bit impatient with essay writing practice, a task that needs doing regularly and seriously. 
16. Getting little feedback on written essays:
Many teachers assign essay-writing tasks to students, but fail to provide them with comprehensive feedback. Giving a student a grade for her/ his writing is simply not enough if one wants to teach her/him how to write better.
II. Suggested problem solutions:
 	Generally, high school students today face numerous challenges in terms of essay writing. In order to help them overcome these obstacles, there are possible solutions as follows.
1. Over-obsession named essay writing:
	 To help students steadily overcome their over-obsession named essay writing,
it is better to find out their strengths, even the smallest ones, to give them positive comments and timely praise them. For example, “Your word choice is really creative/impressive!” “This is the best-organized essay you have!” “Your essay captures my interest with some really great ideas!” “Your writing is beyond my expectation!” or “Your handwriting looks so nice!”  To the best of my knowledge, it is these fair comments and well-timed praise that can help the students have more confidence in themselves as well as motivate them to bravely face such difficult tasks as essay writing. Further, it is advisable to give the students a very clear explanation of English essay writing importance, not only in their exams but also in their future career and life, to them so that they can realize how vital it is. Besides, they should be provided with essay writing tasks with the level of difficulty gradually increasing in order to avoid their obsession with the tasks.
2. Effects of modern lifestyle: 
To limit the effects of modern lifestyle on students’ essay writing, common topics are often selected and the students are encouraged to share their ideas on these topics by writing them down sometimes, choosing formal language to express their opinions or outlooks. Each time students use spoken English or teenage slang to convey something, I often ask them to think out some other ways to express their points more formally. If they failed to do that, I would suggest some possible solutions. Moreover, they are shown that it would be better when they could make improvements in both spoken communication skills and written ones, especially, to the ones who want to get a scholarship for studying abroad.
3. Lack of motivation:
	Writing examinations are great motivations to students, so that essay-writing contests have been suggested being organized to stimulate the spirit of studying writing essays among my students. This kind of task has also been proposed being included in the English exams at Mai Anh Tuan high school to create more chances for our students to train themselves and improve essential skills for their future career. Moreover, monthly competitions of essay writing organized for students in the same class with interesting small prizes for the winners have motivated them much in improving their writing skills.
4. Lack of ideas:
To have various creative ideas for essay writing, students should properly develop their background knowledge as well as their analytical and cognitive skills. There are some simple ways for them to do this as follow. The first would be active reading, involving questioning what they are reading when they read. By asking questions as they read, they are engaging their brain in higher thinking. Another useful technique is to question and compare the writers’ perspectives on a subject to their own. They also should take note of new ideas and thoughts that are a result of their reading. Active reading stimulates and expands their brains and allows it to think in new ways.
Students are advised to join discussions or conversations, ask everyone they meet questions, and try to learn something from them. Whether it is life lessons such as how to manage stress or how they developed successful careers or what their parenting philosophy is, questions are essential to keeping the brain engaged. They can improve their interpersonal communication skills at the same time and maybe even make a friend or two. By improving their analytical skills, they can be able to comprehend and appreciate debates and concepts, break down complex information and streamline solution-finding processes.
When students have ideas for their essay, they are advised to make an outline for it. With an appropriate brief outline, it will not be too difficult to start writing.
5. Lack of vocabulary:
	Students can enrich their vocabulary stock themselves by reading and learning new words or phrases in contexts. They can also study more words from their dictionaries. When they meet a new word, they should learn all other words in its family and patterns as well as idioms related to it. Another better way to help them build up their vocabulary is to try to have conversations or discussions about topics where new words or phrases are inserted. They are also encouraged to follow English programs or watch films in English on TV or the internet to widen their vocabulary. 
Besides, I have suggested my students form chatting groups using such modern applications on their smartphones or computers as Zalo or Messenger to chat and share new words or phrases they know about a certain topic after each of their lessons in class. 
6. Thinking in the mother tongue:
	Thinking in the native language is a normal tendency to foreign language learners. However, it is too difficult for students to get a great success when they wish to express their ideas in English while doing their thinking in their own language! Therefore, it is important that they stop thinking in their mother tongue and trying to translate in their heads. 
One good way to do it is to use monolingual dictionaries where the entries and their definitions are written in the language they are learning. By using this kind of dictionary, students can train their brain to focus on the meaning, or the concept that a word represents, rather than its literal translation into their native language. By that way, they are less likely to translate it themselves when they use it. 
Another useful method is to use images instead of translations when learning new vocabulary. Using images or symbols while writing new words down again and again can help train their brain to stop translating words when communicating in English. That is because they can learn to associate words with images or symbols rather than their exact translations. 
Besides, students should read a lot and memorize phrases and structures. When reading, they have to confront idiomatic expressions and phrases. This time, they should try to memorize those phrases and structures that they come across – this will help them when constructing their own sentences. Instead of having to make them start from scratch when they need, students will be able to recall some of the phrases and structures that they learned when reading. Also, because they have the ready-made phrases and structures in their heads, they won’t have to look for translations of individual words and their brains will be less likely to be preoccupied with that.
One more way that is a bit funny to help students prevent themselves from thinking in their native language and trying to translate into English is that they tell themselves off! Whenever they catch themselves translating words in their heads, they must say “translation, translation, translation.” By doing that, they can draw their own attention to the frequency with which they translate in their heads. Consequently, they begin to do it less frequently.
7. Poor grammar and syntax skills:
	To notice the progress that my students makes in terms of grammar and syntax, I always try to listen to them and point out to the mistakes they make. I also ask them what they have learned every day and have conversations with them often. While speaking to them, I carefully pay attention to the sentences they form. Moreover, I often spend some certain time reading and marking their essays, then taking notes of their errors of grammar and syntax and suggesting possible ways to correct these errors. Additionally, I have established peer groups and encouraged students to peer-review, which helps them make much progress in writing compositions. 
8. Lack of evidence and relevance:
	With irrelevant evidence, students cannot support and prove their argument effectively. Therefore, students should have relevant evidence in their essay in order to persuade the readers and increase the validity of the argument. The best solution is to study well and get acquainted with the topic. While reading about their topic, they need to take notes on the most relevant issues and store them for later use (for references and citations).
	Additionally, to limit irrelevant evidence in their essay, before students start writing an essay, they had better make an outline and plan their essay carefully. They also try to connect each part of their essay, arguments and facts to the main idea and the topic. At each stage of the essay, they need to keep asking themselves “Is this relevant?”, “Am I answering the question?”, and “Does this relate directly to the subject I have been asked to discuss?” If they begin to introduce a new and separate problem or topic to discuss and prove a part of their argument, they have to make sure that they return to the main subject and explain how these secondary facts are relevant to the main argument.
9. Essay question misunderstanding and wrong identification of essay types: 
	One of the reasons why students sometimes misunderstand the essay questions and fail to identify the right type of essay is because they get too nervous when reading these questions. Therefore, students should study the questions carefully to know what to do. At the same time, they need to try their best to keep calm and enhance their confidence while confronting with difficult questions in important exams. And, the best way to be free from fear in this situation is to study well and make good preparations for it. 
	Moreover, right identification of essay types is much dependent on the nature of each type of essay. Hence, I discuss with the students the significant features of different essay types, focusing on prominent signals right from the essay questions. There are four main genres of essay writing, including Expository essays, Descriptive essays, Narrative essays, and Argumentative (Persuasive) essays. 
a. Expository Essay Definition: 
An expository essay explains something or answers questions like: What is it?/
 How should we define it?/ How do you do it?/ How does it work?/ What is the history of it?/ What caused it? What are the effects?/ What i