Implemmenting strategies to develop grade 12 students’ writing skills at Liceu nº 69M-10 de Dezembro-Moçâmedes

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to investigate the implementation of strategies to develop grade 12 students’ writing skills at Liceu nº 69M-10 de Dezembro-Moçâmedes. As a teacher of English for almost ten years I have noticed that teachers of English at Liceu Nº 69M-10 de Dezembro tend not to implement strategies to develop students writing skills in the classroom. As a consequence students cannot construct a single sentence without making errors which leads to negative marks in their tests. Moreover, many students reveal themselves being unable to produce written work just to avoid written errors. For this reason, a number of 6 teachers of English (all men) and 30 students participated in the study. We used a descriptive study and quantitative method of data collection coupled with questionnaires (teacher questionnaire and a student questionnaire). The findings indicate that (1) knowing the importance of writing, elements of writing, its aspects and characteristics are pivotal for writing a good piece of paragraph; however, knowing them is not sufficient, pupils have to put them into practice too so as it becomes automatic for them. (2) Teachers and students state that the main students’ competence in the development of writing skill is by using lexical variety. (3) Students always follow reading stage in the writing process in the EFL classroom. (4) Teachers and students agree that adopting good editing strategies is always used in the EFL classroom to develop students writing performance.