Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges the teachers and learners
of English encountered in using integrated writing skills approach in teaching and
learning of writing in Bungoma North District. The objectives of the study were to
establish: how teachers of English use the integrated writing skills approach to teach
writing, the factors that hinder the teaching and learning of integrated writing, the
challenges teachers of English face in utilizing the integrated writing skills approach
in teaching writing and the challenges learners of English face in utilizing the
integrated writing skills approach in learning writing. Swain's (1980) Output
Hypothesis of second language learning and the process theory of language learning
guided this study. The study used descriptive survey design, which is suitable for the
study of behaviour, attitudes, values and characteristics. The study was carried out in
Bungoma North District, which has 50 secondary schools. Out of these, 5 are boys'
schools, 8 are girls' schools and 37 are mixed secondary schools. Therefore stratified
random sampling was used to select only 20 secondary schools, which formed 40% of
the population of the schools. Simple random sampling was used to select 200 form
three students and then purposive sampling was used to select 20 teachers of English
from the selected schools. Questionnaires, interviews and observation schedules were
used to collect data. Data collected was analyzed descriptively using measures of
central tendencies; mean, mode and median and then data was presented in tables,
graphs and pie charts. The study established that teachers and learners were aware of
integrated writing skills approach but they have not embraced it fully. It was also
found that the main challenges in using this approach by both teachers and the
learners were: the learners' language level was very low, the approach called for more
time than the time allocated for teaching and learning writing and that some schools
did not have enough texts to be used by both teachers and students. It is therefore
recommended that teachers should see the relationship between summary writing,
outlining, editing, reviewing and expressing opinion and the whole process of
integrated writing. Teachers should carefully plan to teach writing. There is need for
the government to help in equipping schools with a variety of textbooks and other
reading material.
