Exploring the Nigerian undergraduate situational needs in ESL writing skills

Abstract

This is a qualitative study built within the maximum variation criterion of purposive sampling. It uses representatives of Nigerian undergraduates for a sequence of three focus-group interview sessions. Eventually, content analysis was utilised in identifying the emerging themes from the transcribed data. Content coding schema and narrative discourse analysis were applied to categorise and interpret the identified themes. The research findings revealed three (03) core-themes, including sociolinguistic concepts, psychological values and administrative factors challenging Nigerian undergraduate students’ ESL writing skills. Similarly, nine (09)
sub-themes, including academic background, mother tongue interference (MT), first language (L1) transfer, social media slangs, material designers, feedback, language policies, reading culture and plagiarism were also found to posit challenges on them. The situational needs identified to enhance their ESL writing skills consist of teacher cognition, cognitive constructivism and writing pedagogy. The theoretical implications support process-based, genre-based and discourse-based oriented approaches that would guide in strengthening their ESL writing skills. The pedagogical implications provided insights to the creation of writing curriculum centres, collaborative learning, self-activity-learning, and ESL writing clubs are some possibilities for sustaining their ESL writing skills.