Difficulties in Academic Writing: From the Perspective of King Saud University Postgraduate Students (original) (raw)
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Arab World English Journal
The English language is the medium of instruction in Omani Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), and mastering writing in English has become a requirement for success. This study aims to investigate the challenges faced by the learners at the tertiary level when writing English from learners’ perspective and to determine what teaching approach students consider the most effective. A survey was conducted for the purpose of focusing on two main domains, the difficulties faced by them from their perspective, and the strategies they deem helpful. The results show that students’ main challenges are the limited vocabulary and range of grammatical structures, inability to comprehend reading texts, and difficulties in summarizing and paraphrasing. Findings also show that the most helpful strategies, from students’ point of view, are feedback from the teacher, both specific and general, extensive reading about the topic, using a dictionary, examining writing models, and writing multiple drafts.
Academic writing skills mostly involve the linguistic competence development of the students which many English Second Language learners may identify it as a challenging task. The main objective of this study is to look into various challenges encountered by English Second language students in academic writing in ordinary graduation project in the context of universities. Specifically, this research focuses on identifying the problems faced by the Arts Colleges within the University of Al Imam Al Mahdi, Sudan. The researcher used the student " s project graduation to investigate the problems encountered by the students when they used their academic writing skills. To state the obstacles recognized by the examined students in academic writing skills, the researcher employed a descriptive method. The findings of this research revealed the most problematic area faced by the students. Finally, the results of this research may help the scholars to reflect on teaching practices and urge the goverment to help teachers " attempts to enhance the academic writing skills of their students at the University of Al Imam Al Mahdi, Sudan.
—This study aimed to investigate the academic writing problems encountered by Arab speaking postgraduate students at Universiti Technologi Malaysia (UTM). There are two research questions of this study. The first question involved the identification of mistakes that Arab speaking postgraduate students commit in academic writing at UTM. The second question dealt with the problems Arab speaking students' perceived in academic writing. The data for the study were collected through distributing a set of questionnaires and writing task. The respondents of this study were 85 Arab speaking postgraduate students who come from different Arabic countries like Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Libya, Palestine, and Syria who enrolled for the academic session of 2011/2012. A snowballing technique was used to determine the samples of this study. A set of the questionnaires were distributed to 80 of the respondents to reveal their opinions towards the causes of academic writing problems. Another 5 students were given a writing task which was to write two short paragraphs regarding their fields of works. The students' writing was sent to an expert of English language to identify the mistakes made by the students. The findings of the study nevertheless could be used to recommend effective teaching approaches to teach academic writing that are currently used by English language teachers and specialists.
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2022
Second language (L2) academic writing is one of the most fundamental, yet sophisticated skills for university students to master. It requires the ability to not only create ideas using sentences, but also construct meaningful, logical and comprehensible texts. Thus, understanding students' attitudes towards L2 writing and exploring the challenges that they experience while composing texts are necessary for L2 teachers and curriculum designers. The overall goal of this study is twofold: (1) to investigate students' perceptions of the difficulty that they experience while writing academic texts in English and (2) to explore learners' attitudes towards writing assignments in English. The goal here is to explore these issues using data obtained from 109 Saudi university students. Data were first collected using a questionnaire and then quantitatively analysed. The results show that students tend to perceive academic writing as challenging and adopt a mildly to moderately positive attitude towards writing in English. These findings offer some implications for teachers and curriculum designers to improve the L2 academic writing skills of students.
Proposed Model to Assist Saudi Postgraduate Students in their English Academic Writing
Arab World English Journal (AWEJ), 2021
This current research forms part of a broader investigation into the problems Saudi postgraduate students face in English academic writing. The study used the interpretive paradigm to investigate and interpret the perceptions of Saudi postgraduate students and their supervisors in relation to the difficulties they encountered regarding academic writing in English. Therefore, the study adopted a sequential mixed-methods design. The quantitative phase of the research employed a questionnaire whereas the qualitative phase employed semi-structured interviews and document analysis. In total, 275 students completed the prepared questionnaire whilst 15 students, both male and female, and 9 supervisors participated in the semi-structured interviews. The research also used ten samples of written feedback students had received from their supervisors. SPSS descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data quantitatively, and MAXQDA software was used to analyse the data qualitatively. The st...
Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020
It has always been a challenging task for the students at undergraduate level to have mastery in English academic writing. The researcher being a teacher, at the locale of the study had particularly observed that at undergraduate level at Shah Abdul Latif university Ghotki campus, the students are not even able to produce a well coherent and cohesive write-up, when it come to their academic writing in English. This observation persuaded the researcher to investigate and to identify the problems that hinder them in English academic writing. Thus, the study was conducted with an aim to identify the problems that students at Shah Abdul University Ghotki campus face in English Academic writing. The population of this study was the undergraduate students of Shah Abdul Latif University Ghotki Campus. In this connection, purposive sampling technique was employed to select a representative sample from the above mentioned population. The sample for the data was twenty enrolled undergraduate students of Shah Abdul Latif University Ghotki Campus. The design of the study was purely quantitative. The students were asked to write/type an essay on a topic of their choice by using a computer. Their write-ups were analyzed with the help of Markin 4.Ink software. Moreover, the analysis was cross-checked by two (03) other experts in order to establish the reliability of the study. The results showed that most of the students were facing the problems like, sentence formation, subject-verb agreement, punctuation, lack of ideas and vocabulary etc. As a future implication the researcher shall try to design a study to study the causes of the academic writing problems that these students face.
An investigation of Arabic speaking learners’ difficulties in the academic writing course
2017
Academic writing skills are of vital importance to the success and complete any academic majoratthe university level, yet the development of such skills is a challenge for many Arabicspeakingstudents, particularly those who graduated from schools where English is not thelanguage ofinstruction. It is essential to develop and evaluate strategies that can supportacademic writing skillsfor Arabic speaking students. This qualitative study evaluated a threecredit hours academic Englishcourse for academic writing intervention strategy designed tosupport Arabic speaking students atAbu Dhabi University. Data from the course showed twomajor areas of difficulty for participantsrelating to academic writing: difficulties constructingdifferent types of correct sentences inEnglish, and problems elaborating and supporting newparagraphs ideas in English. Theparticipants showed an improvement in terms of organizationand lay out of essays. Courses likethis intervention successfully meet the basic acad...
Academic Writing Problems Faced by ESL Learners in Higher Education Institutions
Academic Writing Problems Faced by ESL Learners in Higher Education Institutions, 2023
English is used as a medium of instruction for educational purposes all over the world. All the subjects such as Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Technology are taught in English. However, students face difficulties to communicate effectively in that present study was conducted to find out the writing difficulties and the reasons for those difficulties. The sample consisted of the postgraduate students of University of Education Faisalabad campus. This study used quantitative method. The data were collected via questionnaire and were analysed by calculating frequency, mean, and standard deviation. The data analysis depicted grammar, preposition, vocabulary and sentence structures as main problems. Students felt that insufficient teaching methods are the cause of these problems. The students needed that teachers may deliver lectures in English language to improve their writing skills.
Strategies for Teaching Academic Writing to Saudi L2 Learners
English Language Teaching, 2019
Of all English Language skills, writing poses the greatest challenge for students due to the demands of style, structure and vocabulary. Even if second language learners (L2 learners) can speak the language well enough for everyday activities - shopping, traveling, and so on, producing an academic write-up that is precise, accurate, objective and fully referenced is still quite a task. This study aimed to determine the academic writing strategies used in ESP classrooms. Along with this, the study determined the perceived proficiency of L2 learners in academic writing, based on their ESP test course. The study also reports the needs of L2 learners in academic writing, and how English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instructors can help to improve the writing skills of L2 learners. The study participants consisted of 60 L2 learners from various departments in King Saud University. A questionnaire was used to gather the responses of participants. The data was analyzed using SPSS 20.0 softw...