Difficulties of Writing in English Encountered by Iraqi EFL

This paper aims to investigate the funny stories and jokes coined by people during the spread of the corona virus. Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) first appeared in China as a viral pneumonia in late 2019, and quickly identified as a global pandemic throughout the most countries of the world by March of 2020. The spreading and transmitting the virus was so rapid that surprised the world, and it appeared in a time whenever the world was not ready to stop this virus. The negative impact was astonishing and shocking as the virus caused a huge fatality. Furthermore, the lack of a vaccine to stop the virus, and the imposed situation of the home quarantine psychologically caused great stress, hesitation and fear among the societies. Despite the trauma and fear, which were caused by the virus, some sort of jokes and funny stories were narrated and coined among the different cultures. In this paper, the researchers are going to use the literary device „black humour‟ as a genre of comic irreverence to analyse those jokes, and to show the effects of them in the different cultures. The data, which are going to be analysed depending on the literary device „black humour‟, include some selected jokes that have been coined during the spread of the corona virus by the people of KurdistanIraq and some other countries around the world. The data comprise flippant examples of political and social affairs. Research Question How are the funny speeches represented during the serious and fatal period of COVID19 outbreak? To what extent can the literary device „black humour‟ illustrate the cultural background behind those jokes? Article Info Received: June, 2020


Introduction
Writing is a language skill that is an essential medium people use in expressing their thoughts, ideas, and attitudes. It is a difficult skill for both native and nonnative speakers as they must regard multiple issues in their writing such as purpose, audience, content, organization, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization (Abu Rass 2015). However, Alsamadani (2010) points out that L2 writing is more demanding as it is a complex and challenging process in which writers are required to produce writing form considering the accuracy of syntax, the acceptability of semantics, and the appropriateness of culture. This means that writing, according to Byrne (1993) and Heaton (1990), "is a complex process because it requires the mastery of grammatical devices, conceptual thinking, and judgmental elements". Most importantly, Kereni (2004) states that one of the difficulties of L2 writing is that writers are generally believed to have some mastery in first language writing. There has been a view that once learners have the ability to write in their first language, they will automatically transfer such ability to L2 writing. However, this case may be possible when writers have some degree of proficiency in their first language.
Accordingly, the complexity of writing may increase the level of confusion in L2 students, university students are no exception. Such confusion, as Gere (1987) and Sharples (1993), postulate can often demotivate and hinder the students' writing achievement, and thus students may show negative attitude towards writing. Most students, then, may find writing unattainable and looking at it as an obligatory task.
Therefore, they only think of passing the exam (Yavuz and Genc, 1998). This may results in negative elements such as "student attitudes, writing apprehension and selfefficacy in writing" (Erkan and Saban, 2011: 167

Methodology
To explore difficulties of writing in English encountered by Iraqi EFL learners at university level, the researchers conducted a mixed mood research. Therefore, the researchers administered an open ended questionnaire results in order to reveal students' difficulties of writing in English.
The students' responses were analyzed quantitatively using SPSS software program to discover the type of difficulties most frequently encountered by students. These difficulties were analyzed qualitatively to investigate students' attitude towards their difficulties. Then, this includes two subsections: the description of participants and questionnaire, the tool of the study.

Participants
The participants of the study were 80

Results of the Study
The main objective of the current study was to examine the difficulties facing Iraqi EFL learners in assignments of writing in English. To accomplish the study's aim, a questionnaire was distributed to the participants, containing a variety of writing difficulties. The answers of the students to the questionnaire items were collected, and statistically analyzed using SPSS. Table 1 below indicates the percentage and frequency of responses from the students" answers. The standard deviation and mean for each item is highlighted in Table 2 below. It was used also to indicate the rank and level of each item. The information presented in the tables 1 and 2 above is used to indicate the students" highest and lowest frequencies of attitudes towards the difficulties they face in writing in their responses to the questionnaire. It is observed from the tables that item number 7 which reads "incorrectness in using mechanics of writings" got the highest rank among the other items with 57 students agreeing to that item; this presents 68.5% percent of the total number of the students. The second item in rank was number 10 that asked the students about the "lack of assessment rubrics and marking scheme tools". In EFL writings, the students must know how they are evaluated and scored so that they are able to identify their mistakes, then, subsequently overcome them in their writings.
The third rank of items was number (1) i.e. "lack of ideas". EFL instructors" role in EFL writing skill is very important because they are required to teach techniques and skills related to concepts of "mapping ideas and organization". Any failure or less attention to doing that would certainly lead to difficulties of brainstorming for ideas on topics of writings and consequently difficulties for writing in general. In rank, Item number 1 was followed directly by item number 2. Forty-eight students agreed on item number 1 while 47 students agreed on item number 2 that reads about -"grammar difficulty". In writing, grammar is an essential element of a text because it is related to both coherence and cohesion aspects of that text. As such, a high number of students responded to item 2 of the questionnaire. Items 6, 5, 8, 4, and 9 were almost similar in rankings. Item 6, for instance, had the highest frequency with 46.3% percent while item 4 was the lowest with only 22.6% percent.

Discussion
The results explained above were consistent with some previous studies as in Ibnian (2017) instructors. Yet, these topics are usually taken from the course textbooks and not from materials outside the textbooks. This is why only a few students agreed to this item.

Conclusion
The study aimed to identify difficulties of writing