The Academic Writing Challenges Faced by Indonesian Undergraduate EFL learners at University of Islam Malang

Abstract

Academic writing is one of the most difficult types of formal writing for EFL learners because they must adhere the guidelines of writing correctly. The importance of academic writing at university level is to exhibit students' ability to express their ideas to others and to prove whether the student is someone who is able to think critically or not, but in fact EFL learners have difficulties in this regard. Factors that influence difficulties in academic writing are experience or practice in academic writing, knowledge of particular discipline, and English language competence so that EFL learners need a lot of time, patience, and preparation in improving skills in academic writing, so this is a challenging process for them. This study aimed to describe the academic writing challenges faced by students and how students can overcome their challenges. This study used a descriptive qualitative research design. This research was conducted on 55 English Education students in the 6th semester at University of Islam Malang. There were 5 out of 55 students who were interviewed. The purposive sampling was used in this study. In collecting data, the instrument used was the questionnaire and interview. The results showed that the students agreed that they had challenges in all the items of the questionnaire except for the part of writing conclusion which stated that it was neutral. Based on the results of interview, the students’ strategies to overcome their challenges using seven strategies such as brainstorming, reading many articles, using online applications, receiving feedback, writing practice, using the dictionary, editing their work by themselves. In conclusion, they faced challenges in terms of structure, developing ideas, vocabulary, and grammar. Based on the finding of this study, the researcher provided some suggestions. For EFL students, they should have a lot of practice in academic writing by paying attention to four aspects of writing such as structure, developing ideas, vocabulary, and grammar to improve their writing skills. For English academic writing lecturers, they can create new strategies to overcome the challenges that students faced in academic writing to support teaching and learning effectively in the classroom. For future researcher, they can use different types of academic writing such as essays to investigate students’ challenges and strategies with sample of one or several universities in Indonesia. In addition, they can investigate the factors contributing to students’ challenges and steps in writing academic writing, especially in writing research article or essay. Keywords: Academic Writing, Challenges, EFL Learners