Essay Writing Activities in Class: Bangladeshi Undergraduates’ Perspectives

Abstract

Although smart writing skill is equally important in both academic and professional spheres, many Bangladeshi tertiary level learners find writing skills too difficult to be developed. In respect of this, the students are given many writing tasks (such as composing a five-paragraph essay) to improve their competencies in a language classroom. Anyhow, writing a good essay needs several cognitive steps that a student has to go through demanding a high level of motivation and constructive teacher feedback. Considering the fact, this paper has investigated tertiary level Bangladeshi learners’ perspectives about how the essay-writing tasks keep them motivated in class. This pilot project had been conducted using a set of 20 items (quantitative survey questionnaire), which was administered among thirty participants from the Department of English of a reputed Bangladeshi public university. The small-scale research revealed that the majority of the undergraduates stay motivated during the brainstorming part of essay writing tasks. However, many of them find the patterns of essays quite confusing. However, these learners believe more writing assignments, along with effective teacher feedback, can highly encourage them to develop their writing skills.