Exploring EFL Teachers’ Perspectives on Sources of Challenges in Writing Classroom

This mixed-method study explores Saudi EFL teachers’ perspectives on students’ writing competencies and their concerns regarding the writing challenges, particularly in relation to EFL teachers, learners, and textbooks. The study sample consisted of 139 female EFL teachers working in Saudi Arabia. Data was gathered using a questionnaire composed of three sections: demographic information, 15 close-ended items, and three open-ended questions. The findings revealed that Saudi students’ writing skills are poor and fall below expectations. The results mainly showed their lack of vocabulary, grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, transition words, legible handwriting, logical paragraph arrangement, concept flow, and genuine and supportive examples. The first open-ended question results revealed that these EFL teachers highlighted ten issues as negatively impacting the quality of students’ writing. The second open-ended question results showed eleven potential sources of these challenges related to learners. Finally, the results of the third open-ended question revealed six factors focusing on problems associated with textbooks potentially exerting a negative influence on the quality of students’ writing. The study concludes with some practical recommendations and suggestions for further research.

communicative competence in writing as an essential aspect of language development as well as academic achievement.
In addition, Cox (2005, p. 161) divided the writing process into several stages (i.e., drafting, conferencing, revising, editing and publishing), considering that teachers play a critical role in each stage while simultaneously emphasizing that it is learners who choose the writing topic and retain ownership of the writing.

Challenges in Teaching Writing Skills Worldwide
Several studies have pointed out issues associated with the teaching of writing. For example, Nasser (2016) stated that teachers face numerous challenges in relation to their students' writing skills and variations between the cultural and linguistic features of L1 and L2. Furthermore, despite extensive efforts to improve the skills of EFL students, their written proficiency remains below expectation.
Moreover, Nasser (2016) indicated that such issues vary between contexts due to learners' skills and factors associated with teachers and textbooks.
Several global research studies have reported the issues of teaching writing skills to EFL students. The critical role of writing skills has resulted in researchers investigating the challenges of acquiring a foreign language, including students' academic backgrounds and personal interests, along with pedagogic, linguistic, cognitive, and psychological aspects. For example, Fareed et al. (2016) employed interviews, alongside an examination of essays, to investigate the factors negatively impacting the writing skills of 30 Pakistani undergraduate students. The analysis revealed the main problems as: (a) insufficient language ability (i.e., vocabulary, grammar, and syntax); (b) a lack of ideas; (c) writing anxiety; (d) reliance on L1; and (e) deficient structural organization. These were attributed to factors including: (1) large classrooms; (2) untrained teachers; (3) inappropriate teaching methods and www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/selt Studies in English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 5, 2021 75 Published by SCHOLINK INC. examination systems; (4) low motivation; (5) limited ideas; and (6) a lack of practice in reading and writing skills. The study also suggested various solutions, such as increasing reading skills, improving writing and vocabulary teaching techniques, reforming the examination system, and reforming the teachers' training.
In Indonesia, Hidayati (2018) considered several internal and external challenges faced by teachers of English writing. The internal factors were identified as L1 interference, linguistic competence, motivation, and reading habits, with external factors deemed availability of time and resources and class conditions.
Likewise, Dhanya and Alamelu (2019) investigated the impact of positive interaction between Indian students and teachers, along with factors including a positive atmosphere in the classroom, intrinsic learner motivation, and positive feedback systems. The findings reported that students and teachers felt that these significantly improved students' written work, identifying the teacher as the common connection due to being responsible for maintaining a positive classroom environment and giving consistent encouragement to students Kenta and Bosha (2019) explored the difficulties experienced by Ethiopian EFL secondary school students, concluding that the classroom activities of practicing writing skills failed to conform to the principles of effective teaching strategies. This led to inadequate levels of competence, attributed to (a) a lack of teacher preparation; (b) inappropriate teaching materials; (c) insufficient classroom facilities; (d) lack of motivation to acquire writing skills; and (e) shortage of time given to practice. Jashari and Fojkar (2019) examined the views of Kosovar teachers on encouraging EFL elementary and secondary school students. The results revealed that, despite considering writing a vital skill, the teachers failed to match the attention given to developing other language skills, resulting in students experiencing: (1) writing anxiety; (2) a lack of vocabulary; (3) interference from the mother tongue; (4) a lack of ideas; (5) poor spelling; (6) grammatical flaws; and a (7) weak organization. The teachers considered these shortcomings to be caused by a lack of reading and practice in writing, alongside a lack of interest in writing and inefficient instructional techniques. The researchers suggested increasing writing practice in the classroom by developing remedial courses and implementing various learning strategies.
In the Malaysian context, Moses and Mohamad (2019)  1950s. This led to the conclusion that Arab EFL learners would continue to experience issues without developing and updating content. Rass (2015) explored the difficulties faced by Palestinian EFL students in composing well-written paragraphs, including using compelling themes and effective concluding sentences, as well as supporting information with instances and reasoning and correctly using discourse markers. The researcher employed contrastive analysis, error analysis, and process approaches, concluding that the majority could successfully write essays and concluding sentences but failed to grasp the following skills: (1) providing supporting facts and further instances; (2) employing appropriate written English; and (3) developing a cohesive paragraph, utilizing transition words and coordinators.
Likewise, Ibnian (2017) used a questionnaire to explore difficulties experienced by EFL Jordanian university students when writing in English. The results revealed the primary influence consists of a lack of ideas and incorrect writing mechanics, rather than inadequate assessment instruments, marking schemes, and time restrictions. The study also identified the issues arising from: (1) ineffective teaching strategies; (2) vocabulary restriction; (3) topic inappropriateness; (4) a lack of consultation materials; (5) grammatical difficulties; and (6) a lack of help from teachers.

Challenges in Teaching Writing Skills Related to the Saudi Context
In Saudi Arabia, EFL teachers face some challenges when it comes to the teaching of writing skills, including: (1) inappropriate teaching methods; (2) students' lack of proficiency and interest; (3) inefficient materials; (4) issues concerning educational policies.
Several Saudi studies have examined these challenges in writing and their origins. For instance, Javid and Umer (2014) addressed issues experienced in Saudi Arabia, concluding that EFL students display weaknesses in organizing their ideas, utilizing lexical items, and demonstrating incorrect use of prepositions, punctuation, spelling, articles, irregular verbs, and suffix, and prefixes.
To explore the linguistic issues in writing, Mohammad and Hazarika (2016)  punctuation and capitalization, while lexical errors were mainly associated with prepositions and articles. In addition, they identified inter-lingual errors due to L1 interference within some written paragraphs.
Ahmed (2019) identified several factors contributing to Saudi EFL university students' errors of unity and coherence in writing paragraphs, including a lack of appropriate techniques and motivation, along with interference from L1 and teachers' inappropriate implementation of teaching strategies concerning composing paragraphs.
Hussain (2019) argued that writing skills tend to pose challenges for Saudi EFL university students due to the demands of style, structure, and vocabulary, identifying a need to improve their punctuation, vocabulary, grammar, and academic writing strategies.
Furthermore, Alshammari (2020) argued that Saudi learners' proficiency in writing tends to be unsatisfactory, identifying the issues experienced by Saudi EFL teachers and learners. The review concluded that the prevalent instructional practices tend to be less productive, requiring an urgent transference from learning to write to writing to learn. In addition, the study identified a need to employ the process rather than the current product approach. This indicates that EFL learners' participatory roles should be encouraged by reducing the teachers' role as facilitators. The researcher also identified major issues needing addressing by writing courses, including: firstly, limited writing practice; secondly, a lack of constructive feedback; thirdly, inadequate instruction in writing methods; and finally, learners' lack of intrinsic motivation.
Moreover, Alzamil (2020) reported that Saudi EFL university students experience difficulties due to errors in punctuation, spelling, grammatical, and lexical items. Additionally, the results revealed such mistakes as due to: firstly, L1 interference; secondly, lack of teachers' follow-up of students' writing performance; thirdly, inappropriate activities; and finally, the insufficient practice of techniques.
In summary: the studies discussed above have identified four significant challenges facing EFL students in writing classes: firstly, linguistic (i.e., issues concerning grammar, vocabulary, spelling, style, and syntax); secondly, pedagogical (i.e., inappropriate teaching methods, materials, activities, assessment techniques, feedback, classroom facilities and allocated time); thirdly, sociolinguistic (i.e., L1 interference and attitudes); and fourthly, psychological challenges (i.e., lack of motivation and self-confidence).

Statement of the Problem
A considerable amount of literature (Ezza, 2010;Fareed et al., 2016   identifying issues regarding the quality of their writing performance, including those related to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The current researchers conducted a preliminary study on September 1, 2020, to explore the views of twelve EFL teachers concerning the writing quality of their school students. The researchers posed the following question: "On the scale below, how do you rate the quality of your Saudi students' writing?" using a 5-point Likert scale ranked (Poor=1, Fair=2, Good= 3, Very good=4, and excellent=5). The results showed that 50% (6) of the participants selected poor to describe students' writing quality, while 25% (3) chose fair to rate their competencies. Two teachers (16.7%) rated their students' performance as good, with only one teacher (8.3%) rating students' writing quality as very good.
A recent literature search (Ahmed, 2019;Alshammari, 2020;Alzamil, 2020;Hussain, 2019) revealed an absence of material exploring the difficulties faced by students in writing classes. This led to the current mixed-method study exploring the perspectives of Saudi EFL teachers on students' writing competencies and their concerns regarding the writing challenges, particularly in relation to EFL teachers, learners, and textbooks.

1.
What are the Saudi EFL teachers' perspectives on students' writing competencies?

2.
What are the Saudi EFL teachers' perspectives on students' writing challenges related to the teachers?

3.
What are the Saudi EFL teachers' perspectives on students' writing challenges related to the learners?

4.
What are the Saudi EFL teachers' perspectives on students' writing challenges related to the textbooks?

Methodology
The current study data was gathered using quantitative and qualitative data. As indicated by Dörnyei and Taguchi (2010), mixed-method research "involves the collection, analysis, and mixing of both quantitative and qualitative data" (p. 109).

Population and Research Sample
The population for this study included all Saudi EFL female teachers (n=589)

Instrumentation
The researchers employed a mixed-method research methodology to gain insights and intricate details relating to the challenges facing the development of Saudi EFL students' writing skills. They, therefore,

Validity
The researcher sent the questionnaire to three EFL experts to reach its validity. According to their recommendation, the primary level was deleted from the demographic section as the students in this level are introduced only to simple writing techniques. Hence, the first section of the demographic non-significant result (-.237). Hence, it was deleted. The final version of the questionnaire consisted of (15) items. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was employed to measure all items' internal consistency in the questionnaire. The results indicated a high level of internal consistency and reliability between the 15 items (0.870). The estimated reliability of the analyzed items was above the accepted value of 0.7.

Data Collection
On September 8, 2020, the researchers officially distributed the questionnaire to Saudi EFL female intermediate and secondary school teachers in Medina, Saudi Arabia. It then took six weeks to collect the responses.

Data Analysis
The data collected from the 15-item questionnaire data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for  . The researchers classified the raw data into these conceptual categories to represent the challenges related to teachers, learners, and textbooks.
Subsequently, the second researcher undertook the second pass, relating the preliminary analytic categories to form primary analytic categories. Finally, both researchers intensively revised and examined the assigned codes to identify and select the data to illustrate the selected categories.
Following this, the researchers deleted any unrelated responses to the open-ended questions.

Results
Frequencies, percentages, means, and standards deviations were computed to answer the first research questions. The mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) for each item of the questionnaire responses were used to rank the high to the low frequency of use. The qualitative data obtained through the three open-ended questions were categorized and summarized based on the frequencies and percentages of teachers' responses regarding their perspectives on Saudi students' text writing challenges related to the teachers, students, and textbooks.

Results of EFL Teachers' Perspectives on Saudi Students' Writing Competencies
To answer the first research question, ("What are the Saudi EFL teachers' perspectives on students' writing competencies?), the participants were asked to rate their responses to their views about anxiety attributed to structuring paragraphs on a 1-5 scale (see Table 2). The results were ranked in descending order of mean reading scores.  The results in Table 2 show the participants demonstrated "Agreement" for 3 items as follows: plagiarize in the questionnaire were categorized as shown in Figure 1. The teachers' responses were categorized into ten concepts representing how they considered they might provide challenges for the writing proficiency of Saudi EFL students, as follows: (1)  Teachers' high expectations on students' performance.
Lack of teachers' interests in teaching writing.
Teachers lack English vocabulary.
Teachers do not cause any challenge to students.
Teachers cannot locate or deal with writing difficulties.
Lack of teachers' constructive feedback.
Lack of adequate writing teaching strategies.
Insufficient time devoted to teach writing skills.
Teachers' lack of proficiency in writing. (28.78%) believed they lacked proficiency in writing.

Number of Responses Percentages
(2) 25,18% cited the shortage of time given to instruction in writing skills.
(3) 19.42% indicated that they felt they possessed inadequate teaching strategies to assist students in becoming good writers. (4) 12.95% cited their failure to provide constructive feedback. (5) 9.35% highlighted their inability to locate or deal with writing difficulties. (6) 8.63% considered their approach was insufficiently challenging for students. (7)

Figure 2. The Results of EFL Teachers' Perspectives on Writing Challenges Related to the Learners
The second open-ended question considered the perspective of EFL teachers concerning the challenges facing Saudi students related to the learners themselves. The results showed that 20.86% of the respondents cited students' weaknesses in writing mechanics, while 19.42% cited negative attitudes towards writing skills and 19.42% an inability to anticipate their issues. Moreover, 18.71% of the teachers believed that Saudi students lacked the motivation to learn writing skills, while 17.27% assumed this was due to a lack of practice. Furthermore, 8.63% considered their students suffered from a lack of self-confidence, while approximately 7.19% thought they tended to depend on copying writing materials from external resources.
By contrast, 5.04% of the teachers stated that they were unaware of other reasons for students' low writing proficiency, although 2.88% indicated they considered such difficulties due to a general focus on grades and 2.16% to a rapid move to translating from L1 to L2.
Furthermore, the comments below reflect EFL teachers' perspectives on writing challenges related to the learners, based on a thorough qualitative data analysis. Students focus only on grades.

"They don't have good backgrounds to write topics also they don't have a large number
Reasons for students' low writing proficiency are… Students' dependance on copying from external … Students' low self-confidence.
Students' lack of vocabulary and grammar.
Students' less practicing of writing.
Students are unmotivated to learn how to write.

Students cannot anticipate their problematic issues in…
Students' negative attitudes towards writing skills.
Students' weaknesses in writing mechanics. writing challenges related to the textbooks?"), the responses to the third open-ended question in the research instrument were categorized as shown in Figure 3.

Textbooks
The responses of the Saudi EFL teachers were categorized into six concepts, representing the difficulties for students presented by the existing language textbooks, as follows. (1)  Teachers found the textbooks are satisfactory.
Topics included in the textbooks are either repeated or outdated.
Topics included in the textbooks are not interesting for students.
The textbooks are unsuitable to Saudi EFL students' low proficiency levels.
Textbooks lack providing scaffolding activities in language skills and aspects.
Textbooks focus on grammar, vocabulary, and reading more than productive skills such as speaking and… "Very difficult."

Discussion
The current mixed-method research results explore the perspectives of Saudi EFL teachers on students' writing competencies and their concerns regarding the writing challenges, particularly in relation to EFL teachers, learners, and textbooks. Regarding the first research question results, EFL teachers reveal that Saudi students lack writing competencies that sometimes lead to writing deficiency. EFL teachers viewed issues like plagiarizing others' work and committing grammatical mistakes. Moreover, they emphasize that their students are unable to expand the focal idea in paragraphs, use (a) correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, (b) diverse vocabulary, or (c) citation to support the arguments.

These findings could be explained by what Saudi EFL teachers stated in the open-ended question
regarding students' lack of the necessary background to compose topics or select appropriate vocabulary, forcing them to copy from the Internet or memorize the model topics for the tests. Furthermore, they described their EFL students' writing skills as poor, and they admitted that they struggle with the fundamentals of the English language. They are also hesitant to write without extensively relying on Google translation due to their lack of syntax, vocabulary, and other writing mechanics. Generally, these results have been supported by Alshammari (2020) and Nasser (2016), who argued that Saudi learners' proficiency in writing tends to be insufficient. Similar results were reported by several studies (Alzamil, 2020;Fareed et al., 2016;Hussain, 2019;Ibnian, 2017;Jashari & Fojkar, 2019;Javid & Umer, 2014;Mohammad & Hazarika, 2016;Moses & Mohamad, 2019;Nuruzzaman, Shafiqul Islam, et al., 2018;Rass, 2015) who found that despite substantial attempts to improve EFL students' writing skills, it remains below expectation. EFL learners face challenges due to linguistic deficiencies, specifically, lack of ideas and incorrect writing mechanics such as vocabulary diversity, grammatical difficulties and flaws, and poor spelling.
One unanticipated finding was that EFL teachers were unsure about some Saudi students' abilities, such as writing legibly and utilizing acceptable language, transition words, logical paragraph organization, concept flow, and authentic examples. These findings contrast with the open-ended data analysis in which Saudi EFL teachers stated that students have substantial deficits in writing mechanics due to a lack of practice, motivation, and attitudes to learn how to write. Similarly, these findings contrast with   (2019) and Rass (2015), who found that EFL students have insufficient levels of competence due to a lack of language ability, which they cited as a barrier to improving their written work.
The open-ended data analysis resulted in several themes representing the writing skills challenges faced by Saudi EFL students related to firstly, their teachers, secondly, the students themselves, and thirdly, language textbooks. The first open-ended question identified several issues. The data revealed that, like their counterparts in some other countries, Saudi EFL teachers tend to face situations that can cause their students to experience issues when learning writing skills. The findings reveal that one problem relates to the limited time given to teaching writing skills, as teachers generally require more time to create new instructional materials, activities they consider relevant for their pupils, and provide adequate feedback or reflections. This accords with the conclusions of Hidayati (2018), Ibnian (2017), and Kenta and Bosha (2019), who highlighted the inadequate time allocated to written work as forming an obstacle to developing proficiency.
The EFL teachers also cited the lack of adequate writing teaching strategies and teaching methods, preventing them from providing appropriate and interactive teaching methods for each topic. This indicates that using a variety of teaching strategies can assist students in developing their English writing skills, with their progress improved by being motivated and thus active participants. Furthermore, employing various writing methods can help encourage students to think creatively. This interpretation is consistent with the studies of Ezza (2010), Fareed et al. (2016), Ibnian (2017), Kenta and Bosha (2019), Alshammari (2020), and Alzamil (2020), who found students' writing proficiency impacted by the ineffective and inappropriate implementation of teaching strategies.
Moreover, the EFL teachers' responses indicated that students' writing ability could be compromised by a lack of constructive and immediate feedback, including: (1) understanding the assignment given; (2) organizing the content and the flow of sentences; (3) issues with writing style; (4) difficulties with grammar and spelling; and (5) the possession of appropriate vocabulary. This highlights the need for teachers to devote more time to selecting effective feedback methods, particularly as offering frequent and constructive feedback supports students in developing as writers. Therefore, this current study suggests that EFL teachers should vary the sources they use for delivering feedback, including peer feedback and self-assessment. This finding corresponds with those of Dhanya and Alamelu (2019) and Alshammari (2020), whose research concluded that a lack of feedback tends to prove detrimental to improvement, whereas constructive feedback demonstrates significant benefits when it comes to improving students' written work.
A further significant challenge indicated by the EFL teachers concerned the issue of focusing too much attention on other language skills, particularly as there is additional complexity to teaching speaking and writing as productive skills compared to teaching them as receptive skills. According to Hossain (2015), writing differs from speaking in that writers are required to express and communicate their ideas using and vocabulary, as well as motivation, a positive attitude, and willingness to practice their writing skills intensively. Additionally, the teachers reported the negative impact of the interference of L1 and L2, with one participant commenting that "many students don't like writing because they feel uncomfortable with the writing process due to a lack of preparatory work. Students have weak grammar and spelling skills.
No one wants to look stupid, but many students turn away from writing because they are afraid that their lack of grammar and spelling skills will make them look bad. Students don't feel that they need to write." The majority of published studies support the presence of these challenges (Alzamil, 2020;Fareed et al., 2016;Hidayati, 2018;Hussain, 2019;Ibnian, 2017;Jashari & Fojkar, 2019;Javid & Umer, 2014;Mohammad & Hazarika, 2016;Moses & Mohamad, 2019;. This indicates that EFL teachers recognize the importance of vocabulary for building sentences and that students with limited grammatical understanding may experience fear and lack confidence. In addition, the sources of such challenges (i.e., lack of motivation and the impact of L1 on L2) result in some students experiencing difficulties in writing legibly. Figure 2 demonstrates that the Saudi EFL teachers reported that students' writing skills were also impacted by their habit of copying from external resources and being focused on grades. One participant commented: "they depend on texts from the Internet and rarely read to write in the English language," while another stated: "they always Google the assigned topics." Previous studies have not highlighted these two challenges, and it is significant that they have been identified in Saudi writing classrooms.
However, one of the limitations of this current perspective is that it does not explain the challenges presented by this aspect, particularly as students tend to check their work with online resources, and part of the teachers' role is to detect plagiarism. provide students with scaffolding activities, proving unsuitable for low proficiency levels for Saudi EFL students. The topics included in the textbooks are generally unattractive, repeated, or outdated, with one respondent noting: "some of the topics need to be modified to suit students' age," and another commented, "it would be more beneficial if the textbooks provide optional topics to enable students to select based on their interests," while another noted: "textbooks involve unnecessary topics." However, this result needs to be interpreted with caution, as only a small number of the EFL teachers stated finding the textbooks satisfactory, with one commenting: "EFL books are good, but Saudi students have insufficient academic proficiency in understanding the writing materials by the time they reach high school." At the same time, the second respondent said: "the textbooks are excellent -but not for Saudi students." Furthermore, Ezza (2010) assumed that Arab EFL learners face significant difficulties due to outdated resources. Moreover, Ibnian (2017) stated the need to design a language curriculum matching EFL learners' needs and interests to address any challenges potentially hindering students' improvement.
This study found little discussion in the literature regarding language textbooks impacting students' writing proficiency. However, Alzamil (2020), Kenta and Bosha (2019), and Ezza (2010) stated that EFL textbooks could cause issues for students if the focus was placed primarily on grammatical accuracy as opposed to written performance or included inappropriate teaching materials and non-attractive activities.

Conclusion and Recommendations
This mixed-method study explored the views of Saudi EFL teachers concerning the challenges facing students of writing in relation to EFL teachers, learners, and textbooks. The research found that both Saudi intermediate and secondary school EFL teachers understand the challenges confronting their students and the participants provided information on the unique circumstances that have shaped their own experiences of issues concerning writing skills, as well as expressing detailed views in their own words, and undertaking complex assessments of numerous perspectives.
As discussed above, the analysis of the first open-ended question revealed that EFL teachers identified ten issues potentially impacting negatively on the quality of students' writing: (1) their own lack of writing proficiency; (2) insufficient in-class time; (3) inappropriate teaching strategies; (4) lack of constructive feedback; (5) inability to deal with writing difficulties; (6) insufficient challenges for students; (7) too much attention focused on other skills (8) insufficient vocabulary; (9) a lack of interest in teaching writing; and (10) high expectations of students.
In addition, the results of the second open-ended question revealed eleven possible sources of challenges as identified by EFL teachers. The majority considered that Saudi students demonstrate weaknesses in mechanics, vocabulary, and grammar, along with unsatisfactory motivation levels, negative attitudes, and weak self-confidence, while some were found to copy from external resources or do a quick translation from L1 to L2. Besides, they revealed their inability to anticipate their problematic issues or reasons for low writing proficiency in writing, the less practicing, and the focal point for learning writing is to get high grades.
Finally, when it came to EFL teachers' perspectives of the challenges related to textbooks, the results of the third open-ended question revealed six sources of challenges with a potentially negative influence on students' quality of written work. This study found that Saudi EFL teachers believe that language textbooks focus on grammar, vocabulary, and reading rather than productive skills such as speaking and writing. In addition, they lack scaffolding writing activities, engaging and up-to-date and uninteresting topics, and an ability to address Saudi EFL students' low proficiency levels. Only a few Saudi EFL teachers were found to be satisfied with the language textbooks.
These findings extend the current understanding of the challenges facing intermediate and secondary school students in Saudi Arabia, strengthening the view that English teachers face challenges in improving writing skills. Therefore, this study presents some recommendations to assist writing teachers in successfully understanding and addressing these issues.
Firstly, EFL teachers should enroll in professional development training courses to create a supportive learning environment, help them plan practical and interactive lessons, develop a comprehensive teaching experience, and enhance their teaching skills.
Secondly, EFL teachers need to inform EFL students of the various stages of the writing process, i.e., planning, drafting, sharing, evaluating, revising, and editing. Additionally, they should teach students to devote considerable attention to improving mechanics, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling skills.
Furthermore, they should design creative lesson plans, with sufficient in-class time dedicated to teaching and practicing written work.
Thirdly, EFL teachers should provide frequent constructive feedback to students while also encouraging peer feedback.
Fourthly, EFL teachers need to motivate students, including encouraging them to acquire writing skills by integrating technology into scaffolding instruction. This can be enhanced through e-journals, e-dictionaries, language applications, and language games.
Finally, this study recognizes the benefits of creating a community of writers to engage students in multiple teaching methods, activities, and practices. It also recommends that EFL teachers use new supporting teaching materials alongside textbooks.
These findings offer the following insights for future research. Firstly, this study recommends investigating the writing challenges faced by EFL teachers and students. Secondly, it suggests a similar analysis to explore writing challenges arising from certain psychological factors, i.e., satisfaction, metacognitive awareness, and self-esteem. Finally, it highly recommends further investigation and experimentation into the impact of teaching strategies and assessment techniques on students' writing proficiency.

Limitations of the Study
This study has resulted in several significant findings. However, due to the participants consisting exclusively of Saudi EFL female teachers, the potential impact of gender is beyond its scope and could limit the generalizability of the results. Furthermore, the study focused exclusively on Saudi EFL female teachers in Madinah, highlighting the need to undertake further studies on a broader scale in Saudi Arabia to ensure the generalizability of the results.