ASSESSING STUDENTS' PRACTICE OF PARAGRAPH WRITING: THE CASE OF WAKO GUTU SECONDARY SCHOOL GRADE 9 ENGLISH CLASS IN FOCUS, ADDIS ABABA

ABSTRACT This study’s major goal was to learn more about how students construct paragraphs. The study was conducted at General Wako Gutu Secondary school with a particular emphasis on students in grade 9.Six English teachers were selected, and 116 students were picked at random to participate in the study. The study used four data collection methods to meet its goal: document analysis, questionnaires, classroom observations, and interviews. Three factors were addressed by the questions: planning, practice, and responding to feedback. The study employed a descriptive design with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The researcher employed a questionnaire with questions on planning, practicing, and dealing with feedback and variables to gather data from both students and teachers. Through closed-and open-ended questionnaires, the relevant information from 6 teachers was gathered. On the same topics, information from 116 students was also gathered. To gathered data, interviews with six teachers and focus groups with 20 students were also held. Eight different lessons on descriptive paragraphs were observed in the classroom. According to the research findings, students didn’t employ planning, practice, or giving or receiving criticism, as evidenced by teachers’ comments. The use of grammar can be problematic in terms of tense, conditional sentences, passive and active voice, direct and indirect speech , vocabulary ,topic ,context, suitability, eclecticism, and spelling, among other areas. Students associated writing apprehension, and a lack of regular practice, and teachers’ related factors, that were affecting students’ paragraph writing. Results from informants and discussants also showed that learning grammar, having a large vocabulary, capitalization, punctuation, and orientation to /listening about writing rules improve students’ writing performance, whereas lack of interest, motivation, reluctance to take initiative, failing to listen to teachers and failing to complete writing assignments, mother tongue influence, pragmatic competence of learner’s use of materials and strategies, cohesions and coherence. All of the information gathered with various tools was qualitatively examined. Since paragraph writing is a talent that can be developed with enough practice, General Wako Gutu secondary school students should have had the opportunity to learn about, practice, and employ the qualities of an effective paragraph.