Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Linguistics)
This study focuses on the pedagogy of essay-writing in five randomly chosen rural Northern Province senior secondary schools. The aim of the research was to investigate the low standard of essay-writing of ten English Second Language Standard 10 students from the five schools. The case study design which included
mostly qualitative methods was used for data collection. The qualitative research methodology was applied by the researcher in order to look closely at the research sample through interviews and the 'raw' data of the essays. The rationale for the study was that students in rural Northern Province schools produce a low standard of essays, and that this presupposes that these students lack the knowledge about and
language skills. The theoretical background was derived from literature on second
language learning, with special emphasis on writing. It was concluded from the theory framework constructed that both the students and the teachers in rural areas probably lack the skills needed to improve both the learning and teaching of essay writing.
The research sample consisted of ten students who were interviewed and whose essays were collected for later analysis. In addition, five teachers were also interviewed and one was observed teaching essay-writing. The essays indicated that the students' grammar and other writing skills were limited, that the type of topics given to them were mainly too abstract and removed from their life experience, and that the teachers concentrated mostly on error-correction, and not on the content, when marking
the students' essays. In the final analysis, a model on 'teaching expository writing' is presented as a guideline for teachers in one area of essay-writing.