Teachers’ Perceptions of Implementation of Process-Oriented Methods of Writing in Selected Schools in Nyanza Rural, Rwanda

Abstract

English writing is the most valuable skill that students must acquire all over the world where English is L2, especially in Rwanda since it is the sole medium of instruction in all schools. However, poor writing skills were noticed in Nyanza District secondary schools in Rwanda based on the results of the English exam, second term 2022/2023 prepared at the district level. Given an essay writing question, it was found that a big number of learners lacked paragraph cohesion and coherence and showed careless writing mechanics and poor language use especially words choice. This issue is not a problem in Nyanza District only but also in most African countries and all over the world where English is L2. Process oriented methods of writing were claimed in literature to be one of the solution to poor writing in L2 context. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to investigate the teachers’ role in successful implementation of process-oriented methods of writing in Nyanza District located in the Southern Province of Rwanda. Communicative language teaching theory by Richard (2006) anchored this study in a qualitative research design. The target population were seven English teachers from three different schools. The researcher also used total population sampling to involve all 7 English teachers in the study. A narrative data analysis was used to make sense of group interview. The findings suggest that owing to the short periods of English as subject, teachers neither applied process writing nor worked hand in hand with students for better learning environment and students received no help to develop process writing through pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing. From the findings of the study, it was concluded that teachers lack training in use of process writing yet there are resources in which English teacher can get the content of process writing such as online resources and Literature in English book senor five. The paper recommends teachers to adopt process writing and curriculum designers should plan for process writing in the English subject and make follow-up.