Investigating the Factors Affecting on Writing Skills of Students from the Teachers' Perspective

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors affecting students' writing skills from the perspective of teachers of Second Grade Primary schools. Writing is an activity that, despite its communicative nature, it is done privately.
Method: The research method was descriptive-survey. The statistical population of this study included 850 teachers in districts 1 and 2 of Arak city. The sampling system was based on Available Sampling method and the sample size was 265 based on Morgan method. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire including 67 items. Validity was assessed by face validity and the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha for psychological factors (0.87); for linguistic factors (0.91), for environmental factors (0.88) and for personal factors (0.91). One-sample t-test was used for data analysis.
Results: The results showed that from the teachers' point of view, the mean of psychological factors (t = 25.34, p <0.01), linguistic factors (t = 32.92, p <0.01), environmental factors (t = 21.94 , p
Conclusion: According to the findings of this research, the factors mentioned in the study can be used to improve students' writing skills in the elementary educational system.
Extended Abstract:
Writing is regarded as one of the most complicated cognitive activities whose way of teaching needs loads of attention. Soو the improper teaching of writing skills and procedures can create writing errors. Several social, cultural and psychological issues can affect on learning a language in general and writing skill in specific.
Learning writing skills is a very complicated process in which many personal, environmental and psychological aspects are involved.  Considering these factors, the present research is intended to analyze and measure the psychological, environmental, personal and linguistic factors affecting writing.
Vasilyva  et al. ( 2018) proved that family atmosphere and parental approach towards literacy and knowledge directly affect on written and spoken skills of children. Hemmerecht  et  al. ( 2017) in their study found out that there is a significant relation between parents’ level of education and their economic status in one side and the children’s language skills in another side. In another study Inomata ( 2017) found that there is a positive correspondence between children’s cognitive skills and their writing skills. Teng( 2016) stated that the teachers’ believes and ideas on teaching language skills have direct impact on children’s writing skills and activities. Vanessa ( 2013) showed that the students with high level of communicative skills, positive approach and, regarding school assignments as significant, have less writing errors or mistakes compared with other students.  
Considering the above-mentioned studies on writing skills, we can claim that less research has been done on the effective factors in improvement of written discourse and creative writing in Iran. So, we believe that regarding the important role of writing skills in learning and learners’ improvement and the role of various factors in learning the writing skills and also very few research  done in this field in Iran, doing this research seems to be essential. We are of the opinion that the present research adds to the value of the previous studies in analyzing the psychological, linguistic, environmental and personal factors affecting the students’ writing skills, based on primary school teachers’ view points.
In this study, the research method was descriptive-survey. The statistical population of this study included 850 teachers in districts 1 and 2 of Arak city. The sampling system was based on Available Sampling method and the sample size was 265 based on Morgan method. The research instrument was a researcher-made questionnaire including 67 items. Validity was assessed by face validity and the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha for psychological factors (0.87); for linguistic factors (0.91), for environmental factors (0.88) and for personal factors (0.91). One-sample t-test was used for data analysis.
To test the hypothesis if the psychological factors affect the improvement of students’ writing skills, we checked the results of the first part of the study which showed that the mean score of behavior parameters was 3.79 and psychological factors 3.86 and the expected mean( theoretical) was equal to 3. Regarding the fact  that for psychological and behavior factors the T value less than 0.01 is significant, it can be concluded that the experimental mean and theoretical one are significantly different. Also, as the mean scores are different, we can conclude that psychological factors affect the improvement of students’ writing skills.
The results shown in various parts of  the study show that the mean of oral factors was 3.73, writing factors 3.78 and the experimental ( theoretical) mean was equal to 3. Regarding the fact that the T value less than 0.01 for oral factors is statistically significant, it can be concluded that the experimental mean is quite different from theoretical one which is significant and meaningful. Based on this fact it can be stated  that linguistic factors play a major role and are effective on students’ writing development. 
The results also showed that from the teachers' point of view, the mean of psychological factors (t = 25.34, p <0.01), linguistic factors (t = 32.92, p <0.01), environmental factors (t = 21.94 , p  According to the findings of this research, the factors mentioned in the study can be used to improve students' writing skills in the elementary educational system. The results of this study will be very practical and applicable for teachers and all those who are involved in teaching languages in general and Persian writing in specific.