Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate Grade 8 EFL students’ perception and practices of
paragraph writing and the challenges they face during their practical activities of paragraph
writing. In order to guide overall process, descriptive survey research design and mixed method
of data analysis procedures were employed. A total of 45 grade 8 EFL students of BeroMuri
higher primary school using comprehensive sampling and two purposively selected EFL
teachers of the school were participants of the study respectively. In order to achieve the
objectives, the study employed three data gathering tools namely questionnaires, interview and
observation. Both open-ended and close-ended questionnaires were used to find out data about
students’ perception, practices and challenges of paragraph writing. Furthermore, English
language teachers were interviewed to substantiate the data collected via questionnaire about
the three main study variables such as students’ perception, practices and challenges in writing
paragraphs. The major findings of the research were: EFL teachers were rarely gave practical
tasks on paragraph writing, and that was insufficient as much as required, students perceive
that practical paragraph writing tasks were difficult and unachievable, some paragraph writing
contents in textbook were beyond the students’ maturity level, the contents of student textbooks
were too vast and teachers were hurry to cover them, total absence of paragraph writing
activities in book 2 of grade 8 students’ textbook were identified. Therefore, forwarded
recommendations based on findings of study were: the students should actively participate and
practice paragraph writing tasks both in classroom and out of the classroom, EFL teachers
should pay more attention for paragraph writing lessons and give more practical paragraph
writing tasks and provide corrective feedback appropriately. They should alsofacilitate students’
learning with more practical supplementary materials. Lastly, Curriculum developers and
syllabus designers should come up with revised contents and better strategies to address the
difficulties students were being faced in grade 8 paragraph writing lessons.
