The Impact of English Learning Large Class Sizes on Writing Instruction at the Faculty of Education in University of Zawia: Challenges and Implications

This research qualitative method investigation examines how elevated student-teacher ratios (45–60 learners) reconfigure writing pedagogy within resource-constrained EFL contexts at University of Zawia Faculty of Education, employing sequential explanatory design with 380 participants across quantitative surveys, classroom observations, and document analysis. Results reveal that class size operates not as a uniform constraint but as a differential stressor, systematically degrading classroom management (r = –.487, p < .001) and feedback quality (r = –.432, p < .001) while leaving pedagogical adaptation resilient (r = –.087, ns) a novel finding demonstrating instructors' strategic capacity despite structural limitations. Critically, 68.4% of instructors report being forced to prioritize surface errors over higher-order concerns due to temporal scarcity, with classroom management consuming 38% of instructional time rather than pedagogical interaction. The study's primary contribution lies in reconceptualizing large-class challenges through a domain-specific vulnerability framework, empirically identifying classroom management not pedagogical knowledge as the critical bottleneck requiring intervention. This shifts discourse from deficit narratives blaming instructors toward structural solutions, yielding three context-sensitive advantages: (1) a tiered intervention framework (micro-writing sequences, feedback prioritization protocols, technology-mediated scaffolding) feasible without class-size reduction; (2) the first large-scale empirical evidence from Libyan EFL contexts addressing a significant regional research gap; and (3) theoretical extension of sociocultural theory by demonstrating that scaffolding requires not only expert knowledge but temporal infrastructure a conceptual advance with implications for writing instruction across resource-limited global contexts.