International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 4 No. 2 [Special Issue – January 2014] 105 Helping EFL Students Improve their Writing Iman Muwafaq Muslim English Department College of Education for Women Baghdad University It is nice to say: “Let them write about what they like,” But how if writing they do not like? Abstract The present research has been carried out in the English Department at the College of Education for Women, Baghdad University to diagnose 2nd year EFL students’ deficiencies in writing so as to improve their performance via a range of repeated writing activities. The researcher applied a one-group design of pre- and post-tests in order to statistically measure the difference of the means of students’ scores. The results show that the difference is significant. Keywords: Writing Improvement. EFL College students 1. Introduction Writing well is really a big challenge for both native and non-native students. In general, it is much bigger with the students of English as a foreign language. Students nowadays have very little interest in writing which is so important to fulfil the education requirements. This may be due to technology progress which has its negative effect on students’ skills of writing because of the availability of ready-made assignments. Moreover, teachers have adopted the belief that writing is a kind of communication; this has led them to focus on the subject itself and overlook the incorrect style of writing. Feeling that students have no inclination to writing due to their weakness in it has been the impetus for the researcher to do the current study. 2. Problem of the study The continual disappointment of students due to their failure to express themselves well in writing may lead to loss of creativity. This may concern not only the subject of composition writing but also all the other academic subjects which definitely require students to achieve good academic writing in order to succeed. Regarding Iraqi students, the problem of their poor writing is multiplied due to the years of blockade, chronicle instability, lack of writing assignments and practice from the early years of their learning. The study is a trial to recover this lack. Since the prime duty of the English Department, College of Education for Women, is to supply schools with qualified teachers of English language, the researcher - as a composition instructor - considers that improving the students’ writing is badly needed; graduates should be skilled and qualified enough to be able to teach the basics of writing. The researcher has diagnosed several shortcomings which have covered most of the basics of good writing among which are paragraphing, ideas, grammar, spelling, punctuation and handwriting. Students should have mastered these basics before joining the college where they could direct their attention and efforts to learn how to analyze, synthesize assignments and critically respond to new information (Irvin, L.Lennie,2010: 7).The study describes the experiment that the researcher has followed in order to help the students improve their writing.3. Importance of the study Academic writing assignments require students to master the knowledge of good writing. Evaluation judgments of the different fields of learning are mainly based upon writing. Students who are skilled in writing can get better grades than those who are unskilled. Thus, the basics of good writing should be taught and practiced from the early years of learning. 4. Aims of the study The study aims at helping 2 nd year university EFL students improve their writing and avoid the common shortcomings of basics of composition writing. The main focuses are on