Challenges of English writing after reopening of schools: a study of Bangladeshi higher secondary students

Abstract

The main focus of this study is to explore the challenges of English writing of higher secondary level students after reopening the institutions in Bangladesh. It displayed both the teachers' and the students' perceptions of the difficulties that students now encounter when it comes to English writing after the reopening of the schools. A qualitative multiple case study methodology was used in the study, and the researcher used purposeful sampling to assist in selecting eight students from the higher secondary level and five teachers for data collection. Besides, as this is qualitative research, data were collected form the interviews and students’ writing. The students were asked to write an essay on a topic which was given by the researcher. Moreover, the researcher has created a conceptual framework by combining the elements sentence structure, word choice, spelling, grammatical error, coherence and cohesion, generating ideas, translate L1 to L2 (Lin & Morrison, 2021), writing anxiety (Aloairdhi, 2019) and lack of English reading and handwriting speed (Skar, Graham & Huebner, 2021). The findings showed that students faced difficulties in terms of English writing after reopening since they did not practice English writing during the pandemic. Additionally, they have trouble writing in English due to grammar and spelling errors, lack of coherence and cohesiveness, vocabulary problems, lack of concentration, and sentence structure. From the teacher participants, it was found that the students face difficulties with writing anxiety, lack of concentration during online classes. Moreover, the findings of this research will be beneficial for both students and teachers, it will help the teacher to take necessary steps to prevent the challenges that the students are facing after reopening the institutions. The conceptual framework may also be utilized to address global issues related to English writing.