Challenges of Short Sentence Writing Encountered by First-Year Saudi EFL Undergraduate Students

This paper is set up to outline the most common challenges in writing short sentences encountered by the first-year students at the English language departments at Al-Baha University campuses. The study is considered necessary because it raises the awareness of both students and instructors to improve their sentence writing. A mixed approach (quantitative and qualitative) was used to collect the data using questionnaires and interviews. Approximately 122 students who study English as a Foreign Language (EFL), (%50.4 females and %49.6 males), together with 30 EFL instructors (15 males and 15 females) who were randomly selected. The paper addresses three questions. They are: 1) What common challenges do students face when writing short sentences?, 2) What are the most frequent challenging short sentence components among the students?, and 3) What are the differences between male and female students regarding difficulties in writing short sentences?. The study found significant challenges in constructing short sentences, distinguishing between active and passive voice, and using conjunctions, punctuation, quantifiers, and appropriate auxiliary verbs. Additionally, students encountered difficulties in building short sentences. Moreover, the study revealed that a high percentage of students have very low English writing skills practice. To overcome any obstacles and push students forward in their learning later, this study highly recommended that EFL instructors should pay more attention to the development of writing skills. Thus, extra written activities and peer assessment must be granted to students in writing short sentences. Moreover, more research should be done to explore and evaluate the most prevalent problems and barriers that first-year students encounter using written samples and paperwork.