Problems Encountered by Sudanese Students in Paragraph Development at Tertiary Level

الملخص

This study aims to investigate the difficulties encountered by Sudanese  students in paragraph development at the tertiary level. Paragraph development is a fundamental aspect of academic writing, yet many university students struggle to produce coherent and well-structured paragraphs in English.  The researcher follows a descriptive analytical method to analyze the data collected. The students of Bakht-er-Ruda university, faculty of Education represents the population of the study.  A questionnaire was designed and administered to the sample of the study.  The sample of the study consisted of 40 students drawn from the second year, college of Education. The data were analyzed using the statistical package of social studies program (SPSS) and excel which provided percentage results for the questionnaire. The study comes out with the following important results: the major difficulties include lack of clear sentences, poor organization of supporting ideas, limited vocabulary, grammatical inaccuracies and inadequate use of cohesive devices. Moreover, many students struggled to arrange their thoughts in a logical and coherent manner that leading to disorganized paragraphs. The researcher recommends that teachers should emphasize paragraph structure, topic sentences, and supporting details through explicit instruction and guided practice. In addition to that universities should organize writing workshops or tutorials to strengthen students’ paragraph writing skills. Moreover, instructors should offer detailed, constructive feedback to help students recognize and correct their weaknesses. Thus, the study is of great use for EFL teachers especially for those who are novice.