Classroom Observation And Error Analysis

Data Analysis

This section presents and analyzed the data derived from classroom observation and error analysis of the participant's written tasks. The data are classified and then organized into various categories. The findings drawn from the date will be discussed as they are presented. Nature of reading difficulties

The following are the main challenges met by FND students in reading class:

Lack of decoding skills

The first challenge that FND students meet in reading is decoding words. It was noticed that some of them were incapable of decoding words written in English rapidly and accurately. For instance, words contain (gh) letters like although , straight, thoughtful are of the main source of difficulty. Although, they know the

Illustrating the role and importance of ‏ punctuation marks in reading comprehension through different examples.

Giving them reading tasks with limited time to accelerate their reading speed such as showing a sentence on the board very fast and ask them to catch the meaning.

Dividing the text into paragraphs and ask each group to read one paragraph looking for specific or general information within a limited time. Evaluation of remedial actions

Ongoing evaluation of the students' reading comprehension skills took place throughout the semester, the findings show that the students' reading comprehension skills have noticeably developed after introducing the remedial activities. For instance, some students became aware of the importance of using different reading strategies like skimming & scanning. It was also noticed that the students became aware of the role of punctuation marks. BUT some of them still have decoding difficulties, their reading rate still slow and still looking for the meaning of every word and rely on literary

As in, "this is book" instead of "this is a book" or using the definite article ‘the' where it is not applicable, as in " the food is necessary" instead of "food is necessary".

Repetition of the subject appears often as indicated in the following example, " this is the book which I bought it yesterday" instead of " this is the book which I bought yesterday".

Mechanics of writing

Punctuation marks, capitalization, and spelling are the next challenges faced by a vast number of students. The findings of the study indicated that majority of students either they don't use punctuation marks at all or they use them when are not necessary. In addition, they rarely start a new sentence with a capital letter and write many words as they pronounce them regardless the spelling rules of the English language.

Possible reasons

Although the reasons behind the above-mentioned challenges were not deeply investigated, some possible reasons can be identified.

L1 interference (different writing direction, no capitalization, different sentence structure, different adjective order, different spelling system and different use of articles) appeared to be of a great impact on the students' writing skills in