Employing the Writer's Voice for Improving the Writing Abilities of the Saudi EFL Learners

Abstract. This qualitative study aims at highlighting the possible underlying reasons of the Saudi EFL learners’ poor writing abilities. It also attempted to conceptualize the perceptions of university professors and Saudi EFL learners toward their current writing challenges. To achieve this purpose, three instruments namely, a) an in-depth interview, b) survey, and c) a discourse analysis of an EFL learners’ writing sample were conducted. The sample of this study consisted mainly of (5) university professors and (50) EFL learners selected conveniently from one of the Saudi northern universities. The qualitative analysis of the collected data revealed that the low writing performance of the EFL learners was attributed to their low motivation, poorly constructed self-confidence, the focus on testing and frequent focus on correctness. It was also indicated that “unrelated” or “uninterested” writing topics for learners contributed to their poor writing proficiency levels. This study hypothesizes that exposing EFL learners to more free writing tasks that help them express their own voice, thoughts, ideas, persona, identity, etc would help them improve their writing abilities considerably. It also found that limited vocabulary, testing anxiety, poor instructional practices, and inter alia were the primary themes that led to poor writing skills of learners. This study recommends language instructors to focus more on fluency without fully discarding correctness as well as including humor, identity and ‘self’ concepts in teaching writing.