ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 101, Issue 1, 1993

There is a general consensus among researchers that most students of English as a foreign language (EFL) are weak in writing composition. One of the main reasons for their weakness is due to the fact that there is no general agreement among teachers on how to teach and/ or evaluate compositions.

Secondary school teachers in Jordan often complain that most students face problems and make errors when they write English compositions. These errors are usually reflected in school exams as well as in the General Secondary School Examination (Tawjihi), held annually by the Ministry of Education.

The main concern of this research is to study students' problems in writing English compositions in Jordanian Secondary Schools. A questionnaire has been set for this purpose. The research is expected to identify the most serious problems that secondary students face and recommend certain procedures to avoid these problems and improve students' writing ability in English compo-sitions.

"Quel pied!", s’enthousiasmait Fabien Gruher après avoir testé le Robert électronique, "cet extraordinaire bijou de 15 grammes"(1)) II est vrai que, lorsqu’on a goûté à la version informatisée du célèbre Grand Robert en 9 volumes, il est bien difficile de s’en séparer. Un groupe d’étudiants australiens vient d’en faire l’expérience, et a perdu ses complexes devant un dictionnaire "tout en français", qu’il soit électronique ou en version papier.

Most technical and academic writing manuals attempt to instruct students on how to achieve a clear and readable discourse style. Very often, the instructions they provide are based on intuition rather than empirical research into authentic technical and experimental reports. This study presents an account of an investigation into the develop-ment of information in paragraphs in all section of an experimental research paper based on Danes (1970, 1974) functional theory of Thematic Progression (TP). The results show that TP correlates with the structure of text in the research paper and that different sections of the research paper tend to employ different TP patterns to develop the information they contain. This result is shown to have great im-plications for technical and academic writing.