Khóa luận tốt nghiệp: Investigating English-majored students’ difficulties and strategies for writing english essays at An Giang University

1 The description of the questionnaire participants 2 The description of the interview participants 3 Structure of the questionnaire 4 Guiding questions used in the interview of the rese

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH CITY

AN GIANG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

INVESTIGATING ENGLISH-MAJORED

STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES FOR WRITING ENGLISH

ESSAYS AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY

TRAN THI QUYEN NHI

AN GIANG, 6-2023

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH CITY

AN GIANG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

INVESTIGATING ENGLISH-MAJORED

STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES FOR WRITING ENGLISH

ESSAYS AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY

TRAN THI QUYEN NHI

STUDENT ID.: DTA197270

ADVISOR: NGUYEN THI THUY DAO, PhD

AN GIANG, 6-2023

Thesis Title: INVESTIGATING ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS’

DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES FOR WRITING ENGLISH ESSAYS AT AN

GIANG UNIVERSITY

By: TRAN THI QUYEN NHI

Field of Study: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

Advisor: NGUYEN THI THUY DAO, PhD

Accepted by the Faculty of Foreign Languages, An Giang University on

15 June, 2023

Examiner 1 Examiner 2

LY THI MINH TRANG, MA NGUYEN THI XUAN BINH, MA

Advisor

NGUYEN THI THUY DAO, PhD

Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages

PHAN THI THANH HUYEN, PhD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish my undergraduate thesis, which is my most major academic work

in the fourth year at An Giang University, can be a useful support to the contexts

of learning writing in Vietnam as well as different academic contexts around

the world The motivation, encouragement, and assistance from my family, my

advisor, my lecturers and my friends make an impetus to carry out and completethis research

Firstly, I would like to show my sincerest gratitude to my advisor, PhD.Nguyen Thi Thuy Dao, who provided me with an opportunity to obtain herfrequent support, detailed and helpful advice, and precious feedback with hervaluable knowledge to conduct this study It is my great honor to work with herand complete this research It would have been difficult if I had not received herconscientious and enthusiastic guidance

Secondly, I would like to thank Ms Lu Thi Thu Nguyen, Ms Tran Thi

Bich Dung, and Ms Nguyen Thi Xuan Binh, who supported me with beneficial

recommendations and constructive evaluation in checking the content validity

of my research instruments

Besides, I would like to thank all teachers who permitted me to collectthe data and participants from the classes of DH21TA1, DH21TA2, DH22TA1,DH22TA2, DH22TA3, who provided me with valuable information during myprocess of data collection

Lastly, I would love to thank all of my friends at An Giang University,who have been there and helped me with their encouragement from the first day

of my research Moreover, I sincerely thank my family members, who alwaysbelieve in me during my journey at university

June 2023

Tran Thi Quyen Nhi

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the thesis entitled INVESTIGATING MAJORED STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES AND STRATEGIES FOR WRITINGENGLISH ESSAYS AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY represents my own work and

ENGLISH-that has not been previously submitted to any other university or institute

in application for admission to degrees or other qualifications.

June 2023

Tran Thi Quyen Nhi

ABSTRACT

This research aims to learn more about the difficulties faced by and third-year EFL students when learning English essays at An GiangUniversity and the strategies they employ to overcome these difficulties The

second-researcher used a mixed-methods design for this study, distributing a five-point

Likert scale questionnaire to 258 English Linguistics majors and conductingsemi-structured interviews with 13 students According to the findings, studentsencountered many writing problems, the most of which were related tovocabulary, grammar, lack of ideas, and motivation When writing essays, moststudents lacked vocabulary and made errors in word choice In addition, theystruggled with complex grammatical structures or sentences Some students

were unmotivated to produce essays, while others were at a loss for ideas and stuck on a strange topic It was also revealed that the participants employed

communicative, social/affective, meta-cognitive, cognitive, and rhetoricalstrategies on a regular basis, particularly while obtaining feedback and

resourcing They tended to seek assistance from learning materials and other

people or to avoid problems as quickly as feasible Students were also able torecognize their weaknesses when learning English essay writing and choose themost appropriate learning methods The study is significant for teachers since

it allows them to readily identify their students’ difficulties and come up with

to alternative ways for improving writing skills The study also suggests somerecommendations for future research on EFL students' challenges with learning

English essay writing

Key Words: EFL students, essay writing, writing difficulties, writing strategies

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES vill LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1X

CHAPTERI INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study 1 1.2 Statement of the Problem 2 1.3 Research Objectives 3 1.4 Research Questions 3 1.5 Scope ofthe Study 4 1.6 Significance of the Study 4 1.7 Structure of the Thesis 4

CHAPTER IT LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Overview of writing 6 2.2 The difficulties of writing 10 2.3 Writing strategies 15 2.4 Essay writing 19 2.5 Previous studies 20

CHAPTER IIT RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research Design 26 3.2 Study Context and Population 27 3.3 Sample 28 3.4 Research Instruments 29 3.5 Data Collection 32

3.6 Data Analysis 33

3.7 Validity and Reliability of the research 34 3.8 Ethical considerations 35 3.9 Summary of the Research Process 36

CHAPTERIV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

REFERENCES 80

APPENDICES 89 Appendix A: Questionnaire 90

Appendix B: Interview questions 95 Appendix C: Results of the evaluation from the experts (Questionnaire) 96

Appendix D: Results of the evaluation from the experts (Interview) 97

Appendix E: A sample of one interview audio transcript 98 Appendix F: Results of the interviews 102

1 The description of the questionnaire participants

2 The description of the interview participants

3 Structure of the questionnaire

4 Guiding questions used in the interview of the research

5 The description of the administration of the interviews

6 Cronbach’s Alpha of the questionnaire in the pilot study

7 Cronbach’s Alpha of the questionnaire in the main study

8 EFL second- and third-year students’ difficulties in organization

9 EFL second- and third-year students’ difficulties in vocabulary

10 EFL second- and third-year students’ difficulties in grammar

11 EFL second- and third-year students’ difficulties in time

12 EFL second- and third-year students’ difficulties in motivation

13 Students’ difficulties in English essay writing

14 EFL second- and third-year students’ rhetorical strategies

15 EFL second- and third-year students’ meta-cognitive strategies

16 Descriptive statistics of planning, monitoring and evaluating writing

strategies

17 EFL second- and third-year students’ cognitive strategies

18 EFL second- and third-year students’ communicative strategies

19 EFL second- and third-year students’ social/affective strategies

20 Descriptive statistics of resourcing, getting feedback and rest/deferral

40 41 42

43

44 45

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURES Page

1 Summary of the research process 36

2 Types of EFL students' English essay writing difficulties 39 3A comparison of writing difficulties between EFL second- and third-year

students 40

4 EFL students’ strategies for coping with writing problems 52

5 A comparison in using essay writing strategies between second- and

third-year students 53

1X

INTRODUCTION

There are seven sections in this chapter expressing the general

information of the study, which consists of the background of the study, the

statement of the problem, the research questions, the research objectives, thescope of the study, the significance of the research as well as the structure ofthe thesis

1.1 Background of the Study

Nowadays, English is regarded as a major subject among others beingtaught in universities It is widely acknowledged that writing is an activity that

helps people transfer their words into written form, and it is also the most

important and difficult skill for all students learning foreign languages as far asEnglish skills are concerned (Rahmatunisa, 2014) While reading and listening

are considered receptive skills, speaking and writing are productive ones, which

deal with producing rather than obtaining language (Ariyanti, 2016; Megawati,2016) A student has to produce language in terms of spoken and written forms

to communicate with others (Ariyanti, 2016) when they learn productive skills.One of the productive ones is writing, where people compose texts to explain toothers what they want to convey It is a big help in developing students’creativity and enhancing their thinking ability through the requirement ofproducing as many words as possible to send messages According to Silvia

(2018), writing is a complex and creative set of behaviors that are similar in

their extensive outlines for first- and second-language writers It is not just theability to write or make a sentence or a paragraph with available ideas; it alsorequires writers to propose new points with definite and convincing argumentsthat contribute to a complete essay Writing is a communicative skill withdifferent sides, and teaching it is a dynamic and necessary process that helpsstudents gain fluency in the use of spelling, punctuation, grammar, composition,vocabulary use, and style intentionally (Terenin, 2015)

Writing has been argued to be the most difficult skill in both the mother

tongue and the second language Regarding EFL learning contexts, improving

writing skills is crucial when there is no practical use of them and English is a

foreign language, so the writing process becomes the most challenging task for

learners (Kahveci & Senturk, 2021) In fact, many students did not get enoughinstruction and particular instructional strategies and modifications for writing

in elementary school, which contributes to their writing problems now (Wen &

Walters, 2022) A lot of researchers (Ariyanti & Fitriana, 2017; Astrini et al.,2020; Emilia et al., 2018; Tambunan et al., 2022) conducted studies to explore

students’ major problems in writing, such as grammar, vocabulary (Astrini et

al., 2020; Elfa, 2020; Mahmudah et al., 2017); and motivation that made itchallenging to express their ideas in English (Astrini et al., 2020), and gotinteresting results It is also concluded that such important features ofundergraduates’ L2 writing, including language use, mechanical skills,

treatment of content, stylistic skills, and judgement skills, should be analyzed

in depth and provide valuable information on writing difficulties that will assistlearners dealing with various issues in creating a clear, effective academic text

in written form Therefore, EFL’s writing problems can easily be understood,and teachers will also have a general view of how their students need to beengaged in English writing activities Teachers can propose and adjustappropriate teaching methods to encourage students’ writing as well As a result,this study is supposed to acknowledge students’ L2 writing difficulties andmake them better L2 writers

1.2 Statement of the Problem

As writing is regarded as the most challenging skill for EFL studentsaround the world, EFL Vietnamese students are supposed to have muchdifficulty turning their thoughts into words and have no interest in writing,

especially writing in a second language (L2) Vietnamese teachers often find

that writing is an intricate skill to teach and gain fluency in, which, more or less,

has an impact on students’ learning outcomes in a study period Although much

more studies on writing skills have been conducted in Vietnam, they haverecently focused on teachers’ views on writing problems, practices, or

expectations of their learners (Nguyen, 2021) or used some applications and

teaching methods like electronic peer feedback that they believe will developEFL learners’ academic writing and reflective thinking (Pham, Lin, and Bui,

2020) Consequently, it leads to a situation of lack of acknowledgement of the

main reasons for writing problems, which assists teachers in improvingstudents’ writing ability as given methods are inadequate and effective So,students’ interest in writing materials is decreasing year after year That is apretty big problem

In the Faculty of Foreign Languages at An Giang University (AGU),

where EFL learners are studying, it has been found that writing in L2 (English)

is not a favorite activity of all students, while most of them like to join in leisureactivities, and English clubs often appear with many speaking or listening

activities but not writing Since AGU concentrates much on developingstudents’ listening and speaking skills and other aspects of the English language,their students’ results after a semester are pretty low in general For that reason,

it is believed that understanding writing problems and their effects on learningEnglish is extremely important for future improvement

As a result, this study is conducted with a full desire to figure out the

difficulties of second- and third-year English-majored students in learning

English writing and their improvement methods from the students’ perspectives.Students among second-year and third-year students are believed to be the best

choice when students still acknowledge the high school writing style (writing

by translating word by word from the first year) and have changes in each year,

so it will not be so difficult to investigate them and come to a great comparison

of differences

The study’s findings are believed to provide EFL learners with a clear

grasp of their writing issues and self-improvement methods that can assist themrealize what they need to accomplish Furthermore, lecturers and administratorscan adapt better teaching strategies and methods to enhance learners’ learningoutcomes by identifying and successfully resolving major issues Lastly,students will gain more interest in writing materials and writing activities

1.3 Research Objectives

The objectives of the research are:

1 Investigating the principal difficulties that second- and third-year EFL

students face when learning English essay writing at An Giang University

2 Finding out the writing strategies that second- and third-year EFLstudents employ to cope with their difficulties

1.4 Research Questions

The writing abilities of EFL students at An Giang University did notappear to have improved much over the years, as they experienced numerousfrequent challenges when studying English essay writing and could notrecognize well what they might do to remedy that This research was conducted

to answer the following questions about L2 (English) writing issues:

1 What are the principal difficulties that second- and third-year EFL

students face when learning English essay writing at An Giang University?

2 What writing strategies do they employ to cope with their difficulties?

1.5 Scope of the Study

The study was conducted in the second semester in the academic year

2022-2023 with English-majored sophomores and juniors who are majoring inEnglish Linguistics in the Faculty of Foreign Languages

The study aimed to investigate the two aspects in writing essays:students’ writing problems and their strategies to cope with those issues

The study employed the mixed-methods design with 258 students from

the above-mentioned population recruited for the questionnaire and 13 students

for the interviews

1.6 Significance of the Study

The findings of the study would be of great importance in the field of

English language teaching of writing skills The findings can help EFL students

develop their writing skills by recognizing and avoiding their writing problems

in writing essays, thereby employing their suitable strategies to get expectedlearning outcomes By revealing some aspects in relation to students’ writing

problems, the study is also beneficial in getting English instructors informed of

their students and related writing issues as well as their preferred strategies As

a result, possible solutions or teaching strategies can be applied for the sake of

enhancing their teaching quality Furthermore, this study can be seen as areference for other researchers who are interested in studying English writing

skills and other related areas; thus, it can be a source for any comparative studies

in the future

1.7 Structure of the Thesis

There are five chapters in the study, as below:

1 Chapter 1 presents the background information of the research,

including the background of this research, the research questions, the researchobjectives, the significance of the research, the structure of the thesis, and the

scope of the study.

2 Chapter 2 contains a review of the literature relating to the researchsubject and the findings of previous studies that were conducted to investigatethe same problems

3 Chapter 3 describes the methodology of the research, including the

research design, the description of participants, the research instrument, the

procedures for data collection, and data analysis

4 Chapter 4 is the analysis of the research results and discussions relating

to the topic of the study

5 Chapter 5 reflects on the summary of results, the implications, thelimitations of the research, and recommendations for further studies

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter contains five sections covering the review of related

literature on the overview of writing, the difficulties of writing, writing

strategies, the overview of essay writing, and previous studies relating to L2writing difficulties

2.1 Overview of writing

2.1.1 The definition of writing

There are always many points of view and definitions of writing

However, there are two remarkable meanings to it, namely: a process of

composing writers’ thoughts in a language (López-Serrano, de Larios &Manchón, 2019) and a cognitive and complex process (Silvia, 2018) These twowill be examined using the knowledge, findings, and studies of previousresearchers in the following paragraphs

First, writing is defined as a learning method (Hesse, 2010) When people

desire to gain knowledge of some new thing, they cannot naturally know it.

They have to go through a long-term process to get all the ideas for a topic, andthat process is divided into four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.Therefore, writing is just understood as one of the primary ways of learning newthings, and similar to what people can get from listening, reading, or speaking.According to Lépez-Serrano et al (2019), writing is the process of composing

writers’ thoughts, experiences, and feelings in a language It means that people

will demonstrate what they are thinking or what they want to say in the writtenform of a language instead of saying it in spoken form Moreover, students

should be encouraged to express their ideas, attitudes, experiences, thoughts,

and feelings, as said by Allagui (2021), and teachers and friends will be great

motivation for them to do that As a result, thanks to the development of advanced technology, there are now two types of writing: handwriting and

computer writing, which make life more convenient

Second, Silvia (2018) stated that writing is a cognitively complex

process When it comes to writing, it is a cognitively demanding activity that is

rarely conducted without cognitive effort Searching for ideas, organizing thestructure of writing, checking grammar and word use, revising, and so on are allprocesses involved in writing and appear to be the processes through which

thinking takes place to create a complete writing text (Silalahi, Sihombing,Herman & Purba, 2021) Besides, when writing allows learners to discover whattheir thoughts are and show them visibly and concretely, writing is not simple(Rahmatunisa, 2014) Because learners are required to motivate themselves tocommunicate and create ideas that are available for reflection on a specifictopic, it encourages their thinking and learning As soon as ideas are writtendown, learners can reconsider, rearrange, add, or even omit some unnecessary

points However, it becomes much more difficult for new learners as they need

to spend more time than others practicing reproducing learned material to getbetter at spelling, punctuation, and grammatical rules

In general, writing is a long-term activity The more people write anddevelop their thinking, the more they can be experts Russell (2020) alsosupported the idea that writing is a progressive activity; hence, learners have

already thought of what they are going to say or how they are going to say it

when they write something down at the beginning In addition, writing is acomplex skill that requires attention to what the message of the writing is, what

the words mean, and how grammar, punctuation, and spelling are used to

convey their true intentions

2.1.2 The importance of writing

As has been mentioned in the previous section of this chapter, writing is

one of the most important but difficult skills to acquire and also a

communication skill that is necessary in today's society, according to Mohamed

and Zouaoui (2014) Besides, writing is gradually becoming an important issuetoday, according to Lépez-Serrano et al (2019) Writing not only helps learnersdevelop their writing skills and knowledge but also assists other skills likelistening, speaking, and reading Students tend to focus on the meaning of words

when they listen to a conversation, read an essay, or speak with others instead

of noticing how sentences and meanings of words are set with the following

grammatical rules Then, it becomes a habit that helps them improve their skills

Lee, Mak & Yuan (2019) said that writing can make students stronger as they

have to add more important things to learn a language, like grammaticalstructures, vocabulary, and idioms Therefore, if they do well in writing, they

will be better at making sentences with appropriate words and grammatical

rules Of course, a person with those things is appreciated compared to others

because he is good at writing, which makes him better at working with the other

skills Furthermore, it is completely up to the writers to elaborate their ideas in

a systematic arrangement as they master writing by Niickles, Roelle,

Glogger-Frey, Waldeyer & Renkl (2020) When they care about how the readersunderstand their messages, it is mandatory to use written language correctly.

Because of that, the ideas of the writer can be understood easily and clearly.

In addition, Walsh (2010) said that writing is increasingly used in higher education settings and the workplace If students do not know how to express

their thoughts and ideas and send them in writing, they will not be able tocommunicate with highly qualified people such as professors, doctors,employers, colleagues, or even anyone else Most forms of professionalcommunication are done through documents such as memos, reports,

applications, resumes, e-mails, etc., and this has become an integral part of the

process that is essential in the daily lives of both undergraduate and graduate

students, successful students, and professionals Apart from its popularity in

daily life, Walsh (2010) claimed that writing plays a unique role in language

teaching and studying as it requires learners to master metacognitive skills Whenever starting to write, learners need to determine what the goal of the

writing is, plan it carefully, think of its structure, logical layout, etc., and revise

its structure and grammar as soon as it is completed Besides, learners have to

analyze where the information comes from, synthesize it into a compact piece

of writing, and complete all requirements in the process of writing To do that,

they need to learn to write about free subjects, thereby stimulating creativity

because creativity is always the priority in writing development (Tusting,McCulloch, Bhatt, Hamilton, & Barton, 2019)

In short, writing can cultivate learners' knowledge of themselves and

others They can learn many new things they had never known from researchingand analyzing different sources of information involving an issue They can also

become adept at expressing their thoughts and sharing ideas and experiences

with others with more coherence and logic Moreover, mastering writing is one

of the most important factors for each individual in today's professionalcommunication era A person can enhance his status and achieve success insociety by having good writing abilities Besides, writing is closely related toacademic writing, and as a result, mastering writing will enable learners to get

further in academic writing.

2.1.3 Writing in a second language (L2 writing)

2 1.3.1 The importance of L2 writing

While writing plays an important role in students’ skills, as in their first

language writing (L1 writing), EFL or L2 writing is assessed as a multifaceted

skill that benefits EFL students a lot (Iravani, 2023) EFL writing is similar tonormal writing in that it also clarifies one’s thinking and helps to explore one’s

ideas According to Rao (2007), EFL writing is useful in two ways Firstly, L2

writing makes students think, organize ideas, and develop their abilities tosummarize, analyze, and criticize by motivating them Secondly, students’abilities in learning, thinking, and reflecting on L2 writing, particularly theEnglish language, are strengthened Moreover, mastering essay writing skills in

both L1 and L2 writing will be a big help to students in gaining the basic study

skills that are necessary for understanding what they study and expressing it intheir own words and from their own points of view Besides, they are able toavoid memorization, rote learning, and plagiarism from an available source Ofcourse, they will successfully pass all academic courses that require answersrepresented in written form, especially if they are fluent in English In short,EFL or L2 writing cannot be lacking for each EFL student, as they want to gofurther and further in the highest level of learning writing—essay writing

2 1.3.2 Differences of LI and L2 writing

In general, the apprehension or fear of writing is always a commonproblem for all learners, especially for those who write in a second language.Writing is seen as a major obstacle and difficult task in generating ideas (Stapa,2012) When wanting to write about a random topic, students will have to usetheir long-term memory to get information on the given topic before deciding

on what they want to write and how the content will appear In L1 writing, thecontent that is evoked from long-term memory may be related to the topic Inother words, the ideas and stored knowledge directly related to the topic that areremembered in many forms, such as concepts or images Moreover, the morefamiliar the topic is to the writer, the more ideas and content with concreteevidence will be given to reinforce the main idea of the writing However, theprocess of forming and evoking ideas and knowledge becomes much morecomplicated when entering L2 writing The main reason is that students cannotdistinguish information in long-term memory of the subject and informationabout language expression It also shows that writers often place moreimportance on linguistic information than on topic ideas, and conflicts betweentopic content and grammatical information can potentially hinder the process offorming ideas, thinking, and finding information from long-term memory Inaddition, if the topic is unfamiliar to the writer, students will have a hard timeforming ideas and finding relevant information stored in long-term memory(Ugur, 2019)

In conclusion, writing in L2 can be a different and beneficial experience,especially for those who have always written in L1 L2 writing will help writerscreate a large, diverse, and memorable vocabulary source because they need tofocus on the source of information, the content to be written, and, of course,they have more exposure to vocabulary Besides, the writer can easily and

quickly understand the sources of information in L2 if the information cannot

be transferred to L1 Lastly, writing in L2 will also help writers gain more

experience in writing a glossary once they can master both L1 and L2.

2.1.3.3 Relationship of LI and L2 writing

Writing is a challenging activity because it requires the writer's skills andknowledge in a variety of areas According to Leijten, Van Waes., Schrijver,Bernolet, & Vangehuchten (2019), L2 writers often convert ideas to L1 duringtheir writing process Lim & Polio (2020) also agreed that poor learners of L2writing, coupled with the increasing demands of tasks in L2 papers, motivatedstudents to use more L1 writing in L2 It has been found that people who areless proficient at L2 writing rely more heavily on L1 writing for the formation,management, and organization of ideas According to Winsler (2022), L1supported the development and acquisition of the following skills in L2 bymaking good use of the former In another discussion, it was suggested thatwriting in the native language is the fastest and most effective means of

accessing content areas (Lee, 2020) when students are few or not even fluent in

a second language Other research has also shown that, in the process of writing,

students are better able to create content texts when they write them in a

language with which they have the deepest connection (Us Saqlain, Shafqat, &Hassan, 2020)

In summary, from what has been said about the relationship between L1

and L2 writing, some aspects of L1 writing will have implications for L2 However, it also makes a positive impact, helping students develop L2 writing.

Therefore, do not hesitate to use LI in writing whenever it is necessary; it is a

necessary step for every student to help raise L2 writing levels in the long run.

2.2 The difficulties of writing

2.2.1 Overview of writing difficulties

Writing is not simply putting words together to form grammatically

correct sentences or linking sentences together to form written texts, as many

students think, but they have to pay attention to the meaning of the sentencesthey create Therefore, students face many difficulties when learning to write

According to Wen (2018), writing difficulties are problems that learners faceduring the writing process Writing difficulties are often identified as

weaknesses for learners when they begin to learn to write, especially when

learning to write in a second language Writing difficulties can be divided intomany different forms and appear at different stages of the learning process(Mohammed et al., 2016) Consequently, writers cannot avoid confronting thesedifficulties and problems when learning to write

2.2.2 The difficulties that affect writing

In order to develop one's skills and ability to write, it is really necessary

to perceive the problems encountered in the writing process Alfaki (2015)claimed that students often encounter language-related problems such asgrammar, sentence structure, dictionary problems, and mechanical problems

Meanwhile, Al Fadda (2012) supported the view that converting words into

sentences in a written text is a common difficulty faced by learners Theybelieve that they can convert a written sentence into the target language easily

as long as they can produce a complete sentence in their mother tongue (L1) It

also explained why it is difficult for learners to become proficient in writingwhen the recognition and understanding of academic factors vary from country

to country (Klimova, 2015, pp 433-434)

According to Sa’adah (2020), students are often confused when they

think writing is not different from the process of putting words down as an

outline prepared with the same structure and appropriate style and vocabulary

without grammatical errors Rahmat (2020) also divided the difficulties intothree categories: linguistic difficulty, which is known as grammar, vocabulary,language use, and choice of the sentence; physiology difficulty, which paysmore attention to the writer’s difficulty, is the difficulty in developing thecontent of a composition or written material; and cognitive difficulty, which

relates to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphing.

Besides, social reasons also affect writing more or less, such as a lack of

a positive attitude towards the target language or too large a psychosocial

distance between people, leading to a lack of motivation for learning to write

(Klimova, 2015, pp 433-434) In addition, Kellog and Raulerson (2007) alsoconfirmed that students will have problems with language, psychology, and

especially self-perception in writing Students are advised to practice writing

and practice for themselves instead of waiting for guidance from others to

four causes of vocabulary errors Firstly, the differences between spoken and

written language made students mistake words Secondly, it relates to writing

the words or sound-spelling mismatches Thirdly, the students found difficulties

in choosing the appropriate meaning of the words Lastly, the differentgrammatical forms of a word were also one of the causes of writing difficulties

Hence, they seem to meet vocabulary errors easily.

2.2.2.2 Grammar

According to Hajana (2006), the most effective way to improve students’

grammar is to use their writing for discussing corrections and pointing outcommon problems The starting point for that improvement would come fromgiving simple writing tasks that required completing a text that was easy to readand understand Abdulmajeed & Hameed (2017) also commented that grammar

is not a difficult and complex problem, so it cannot be easily solved in one or two days but is a long process Grammar is divided into tenses, subject-verb

agreement, word order, articles, types of sentences, and pattern sentences

2.2.2.3 Spelling

Spelling errors often appear when students are not focused on the writingprocess or skip the proofreading phase The presentation of content neatly

depends on how the ideas are arranged in the correct written form in each

language and country As Alenazi (2018) said, the orthography of Arabic is

particularly complex The English spelling will start from left to right, but the rewrite sequence changes from right to left when writing Arabic Spelling

problems can be divided into wrong spelling and confusing sounds and letters

2.2.2.4 Punctuation

According to Betham (2011, p 37), punctuation is even more importantthan grammar because the place where the punctuation is put will determine theposition of the end of a sentence or the message that needs to be conveyed tothe recipient Moreover, if punctuation is used in the wrong place, at the wrong

time, the content can be misunderstood In addition, language also contains

important factors such as punctuation and capitalization (Harmer, 2007), and

2.2.2.6 Motivation

Motivation is always an essential thing that people need to study well.

According to Abramovich, Grinshpan& Milligan (2019), both cognitive skillsand motivation are necessary to help students do well in school If students getmotivation from teachers or others, they will be more interested in doingsomething that they have never been successful at Furthermore, Wilson &

Roscoe (2020) emphasized the significance of motivation in writing by saying

that a key to success in writing assignments is to establish motivation in theprocess of writing In general, motivation plays a crucial role in developing

students’ writing abilities.

2.2.2.7 Time

Time is a great factor in education because both teachers and learnersneed to have their work done The time spent on academic learning is defined

as a portion of time that students spend studying with instruction, which then

leads to practice Graham, Kiuhara, & MacKay (2020) However, the limit of time becomes a stressful factor when they are in an examination If the leftover

time is short, they will be unable to think of what needs to be done next As aresult, they finish their exam in confusion Therefore, students are advised topractice more, which can help them control their time properly Applebee andLanger (2006, p.5) said it is important to devote more time to writing instruction,and the amount of time spent on writing should be doubled at least

2.2.2.8 Paragraph organization

When it comes to paragraphs, they cannot be just understood as a random

combination of sentences; sentences will be bound together logically and

coherently A typical paragraph consists of a topic sentence, pieces of evidenceand supporting details, an analysis, and a conclusion However, many studentsstill have problems with writing when they do not know how to arrange theparagraph to make the presented contents clear and convincing According toRahman et al (2022), a paragraph with good organization will help readers

better understand the presented ideas However, most students do not know

which sentence should come first, which should be written next, or which

sentence should conclude last This affects the structure of not only a paragraph

but the whole essay when the readers are unable to acknowledge which messagethe writers want to send

2.2.2.9 Coherence and Cohesion

Coherence is extremely essential in a paragraph since it helps readers

understand the structure and meanings of the whole paragraph, said RahmtAllah

(2020) A paragraph with coherence does not depend on the length of thecontent Writing will be more attractive if the ideas are organized Besides

coherence, writing needs cohesion as well It is widely realized that many

students still do not know how to make what they write easier to understandbecause they often forget to link words between sentences or betweenparagraphs Consequently, the readers tend to be vague about what is mentioned

next.

To sum up, every student has to cope with a particular problem for a

particular reason in writing These issues not only have an impact on their

academic writing but will also have a big impact on their professional progress

in the future

2.2.3 Writing difficulties at university environment

Although writing is a difficult skill, it becomes even more complicatedwhen it comes to university settings It seems that they make mistakes with

grammar, coherence, and cohesion whenever they start writing According to

Al Fadda (2012), adult learners still perceive writing as a challenging task when

it comes to academic writing These people have gained a lot of experiencewhile studying in this environment Learners who want to master the skill mustmeet the requirements of grammar, vocabulary, layout, and other components

of the language Not only that, but they also have to master writing styles in

other places and languages where things can affect their writing Moreimportantly, students need to have a solid foundation of experience in their

mother tongue if they want to become proficient in second language writing,especially academic L2 writing

2.3 Writing strategies

2.3.1 The concept of writing strategies

Writing strategies are defined as useful and essential ways that a writerapplies to improve his ability to write Raoofi, Binandeh, and Rahmani (2017)

believed that writing strategies play an important role in the development of L2

writing Research investigating the connection between L2 writing success andwriting ability showed that a student with a lofty ability in writing would get

more success as they used more writing strategies than those who had lower

writing ability (Behizadeh, 2019) Besides, there was a link between L1 and L2writing strategies (Alhaisoni, 2012; Qiu & Lee, 2020) In fact, L2 learners werefamiliar with transferring some strategies and techniques that were used forwriting in their mother tongue Those strategies are learned in L] at first, thenapplied in L2 Therefore, a learner with good writing strategies in L1 is morelikely to perform well and get more success in L2

2.3.2 The types of writing strategies

Strategy is defined as useful tools or specific actions to solve a problem

(Henry, 2021); particularly, strategies are employed to finish writing tasks For

Hosseinpur & Kazemi (2022), successful writers use rhetorical, meta-cognitive,

cognitive, communicative, and social-affective strategies when they writebecause of the following reasons: firstly, rhetorical strategies help to deal withtypes of texts and their structures; secondly, meta-cognitive strategies arerelated to writers' self-regulation concerning cognitive procedures whenproducing a text; thirdly, cognitive strategies allow writers to process, store, andtransform different types of knowledge; fourthly, communicative strategiesfocus on sending messages effectively; and lastly, social and affective strategiesassist in interacting with other people However, Mu & Carrington (2007) andRaoofi et al (2017) recognized that there were four macro-strategies that awriter used in his writing, including rhetorical strategies, metacognitivestrategies, cognitive strategies, communicative strategies, and social or affectivestrategies In rhetorical strategies, writers consider organizing strategies,

cohesive strategies, and genre awareness effective methods to organize and

present their ideas in writing conventions acceptable to native speakers of theL2 language Also, writers use meta-cognitive strategies to ensure the writing

process is going in the expected direction, like planning strategies and

evaluating and monitoring strategies For cognitive strategies, writers do thewriting by generating strategies, revising strategies, and imitating strategies.The last, the writing will be perfectly finished as social or affective strategiesare used to cooperate with others by clarifying some questions and regulatingemotions, motivation, and attitudes This strategy is great when it consists of

reducing anxiety, drawing on previous experience, and maintaining high

motivation and confidence

On the other side, Boonyarattanasoontorn (2017) selected and dividedwriting strategies into seven micro-strategies, including resourcing, planning,verification, retrieval, monitoring, deferral, and evaluation As a result, writershave always applied strategies in their writings, and resourcing and retrieval are

two types of strategies that are widely used in every writing, while evaluation

and planning are the least frequently used strategies According to Raoofi et al.(2017), it was stated that writing strategies refer to the techniques and operationsthat students employ to write more effectively or to produce better writing.Therefore, writers always need strategies to improve their writing abilities,

whether they are the most used or the least used.

2.3.2.1 Rhetorical strategies

According to Hosseinpur et al (2022), rhetorical strategies are the ways

the writer uses to present his ideas in an acceptable way The author recognized

that rhetorical strategies include the organization of an essay (beginning,

development, and ending parts), the use of the mother tongue (L1) to organize

paragraphs and sentences (generated ideas translation), the presentation of ideas

in writing conventions acceptable to native speakers of that language following

a format or model that is called “genre consideration”, and the comparisonbetween different rhetorical conventions

2.3.2.2 Meta-cognitive strategies

Masriani, Mukhaiyar, and Wahyuni (2018) showed that meta-cognitivestrategy refers to the global skills of the students that reflect their self-awarenessconcerning their level of understanding and degree of motivation In anotherway of speaking, metacognitive strategies refer to students' global skills andknowledge about cognition for helping them raise their self-awareness, directtheir own learning, and monitor their own progress (Larenas, Leiva, andNavarrete, 2017) Lestari & Wahyudin (2020) stated that learners used them as

a conscious process to control their language learning Meta-cognition is management, the ability to plan (finding focus), monitor (checking and

identifying problems), and control learning (reconsidering written text andgoals) The strategies, which are classified by Ehrman, Leaver, and Oxford

(2003), include planning, goal setting, focusing, using schemata, monitoring,

assessing effects, and looking for opportunities to support them with planning,generating, processing, and presenting information

The strategies that can help students overcome writing difficulties and

anxiety are also mentioned Additionally, metacognition is the cause of attribute

success in writing (Mata, 2019; Oxford, 2011; Parodi, 2003) For example,Parodi (2003) declared that a good writer needs great meta-cognitive ability.This implies that the writer should be aware of his or her learning process inorder to be an effective writer

use of a dictionary (which can also appear as a social strategy) are involved in

cognitive strategies There are seven sub-strategies in cognitive strategies,

consisting of generating ideas (repeating, lead-in, inferencing, etc.), revising

(making changes in plan or written text), elaborating (extending the contents ofwriting), clarification (disposing of confusions), retrieval (getting informationfrom memory), rehearsing (trying out ideas or language), and summarizing(synthesizing what has been read)

According to Rodriguez (2014), cognitive and meta-cognitive strategieshave a close relationship with each other The difference between both strategies

is using the former to support learning development and the latter to monitor

and control learning In fact, cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies worktogether in the writing task

2.3.2.4 Communicative strategies

Hosseinpur & Kazemi (2022) defined communicative strategies, which

include three sub-strategies such as avoidance (avoiding some problems),

reduction (giving up some difficulties), and sense of readers (anticipatingreaders’ responses), which help writers express their ideas effectively

According to communication theories, writers use different discourses fordifferent communicative purposes Writing occurs in many different forms.Mandalaki & Daou (2021) identified that personal writing, reporting, research,academic writing, poetry, business writing, and technical writing are differentstyles of written discourse Besides, Al-Gharabally (2015) point out thatacademic writing needs the combination of structural sentence units into a more-or-less unique, cohesive and coherent larger structure (as opposed to lists,

forms, etc.) Students entering academic disciplines must learn the genres and

conventions of that particular disciplinary community (Yuvayapan & Bilginer,2020) Understanding the conventions of an academic discourse community

provides writers with a special literacy to do the writing Inferred from

communication theory, communicative strategies are conceptualized in EFLwriting instruction as well, and this conception will help to classify EFL writingstrategies

2.3.2.5 Social/affective strategies

Raoofi et al (2017) indicated that social strategies aim at developingawareness of and feelings for others and contain the actions chosen in order tointeract with other people or to help them overcome learning difficulties Effortregulation strategies were added to the Writing Strategy Scale in order toevaluate how students regulate their effort strategies in writing and to whatextent they exert regulation on their effort for L2 writing skills Affectivestrategies serve to regulate emotions, motivations, and attitudes (for example,

strategies for reducing anxiety and for self-encouragement) The social/affective

strategies are used to interact with the community with the goal of supportingand controlling emotions, motivation, and attitude during the process of writing(Valle Fiallos & Yanacallo Guachamin, 2023) There are some sub-strategiesfor this type as well, including resourcing (referring to libraries anddictionaries), getting feedback (getting support from professors and peers),

assigning goals (dissolving the load of the task), and rest/deferral (reducing

anxiety)

In general, it is believed that the writing process is a very complexdevelopment influenced by many factors such as culture, politics, education, the

economy, the social environment, community and language cognitive

development, and communication Furthermore, these five categories of writing

strategies will be regarded as a framework for the classification of EFL writing

strategies As a result, these strategies are necessary to be acknowledged well

by students who want to create an amazing effect on their writing

2.4 Essay writing

An essay is a piece of writing that contains some paragraphs to show a

writer's viewpoints, contributing to the process of discussing a topic or an issue

(Oshima & Hogue, 2007; Zemach & Rumisek, 2005) Besides, it is claimed that

an essay is the combination from paragraphs that support a thesis with morerelated details and shreds of evidence (Connelly, 2013) Additionally, the essay

is one writing material, which must be mastered by university students when it

is longer than a paragraph, is divided into some types like opinion, descriptive,narrative essay, and others (Hikmah, 2019)

Toba, Noor, and Sanu (2019) showed that there are two basic types ofessays: formal and informal While a formal essay is used to give readers anidea and persuade them to accept the point with details and evidence, an

informal essay pays attention to sharing a writer's personal feelings or experiences However, a clear goal, subject, and logical arrangement of

supporting details are strictly required in both formal and informal essays

(Connelly, 2013).

The structure of an essay is all agreed to consist of three basic parts: theintroductory paragraph, body paragraph, and conclusion paragraph in essayorganization (Connelly, 2013; Oshima & Hogue, 2007; Zemach & Rumisek,

2005) The introduction introduces readers to general statements and a thesis

statement In general statements, a writer writes the background information of

the topic by transferring general points into specific ones, and a thesis statement

is to inform readers of the content of the essay by stating the main ideassystematically A thesis statement helps to limit the range of the topic and makethe further content follow the right direction In the body paragraph, one or moreparagraphs appear in which each topic sentence is put and provided with

supporting ideas and a concluding sentence, sometimes The last, the conclusion paragraph, is a sign to inform the reader of the end of the essay, and a writer

will make a summary of the main points and show readers his final thoughts

Besides, Liunokas (2020) said that essay is a text that is longer than a

paragraph and has three main parts, namely introduction, body, and conclusion, which must be found in an essay If writers eliminate one of three parts, their

essays may have minus points or examiners will regard them as incomplete

essays To write a good essay, writers must provide their writing with unity and

coherence, along with the syntactic aspect The unity and coherence link thecontents of the essay together while the syntactic aspect relates to the

grammatical structure of sentences And, a good essay will always be supported

by unity and coherence, and grammatical sentences

According to Jawas (2019), essay writing is common academic writing

for students at the university level where the students are expected to make an

argument on a given topic academically (Jawas, 2019 Hence, writing an essay

is regarded as quite a demanding and complex task In schools and universities,

writing has tended to be the least-cared skill (Graham, 2019) Moreover, the

teaching of writing emphasizes more on writing theories and grammar ratherthan the expression of ideas (Abkar Alkodimi & Mohammed Hassan Al-Ahdal,

2021)

Moreover, Nikolenko, Rebenko & Doronina (2021) stated that teachers

and examinators are not strange with essay writing because students are often

required to verify the variety of academic skills in the essay format Academic

writing allows students to analyze, convey understanding, develop criticalthinking, concentrate on technique and style, and integrate written information

coherently and cohesively Besides, in the university setting, providing essay

writing is not only essential to have the undergraduates receive a generalEnglish course for assessing their writing skill competence, but also to assistthem in developing their writing proficiency ( Nikolenko et al., 2021) Also,Parra and Calero (2019) stated that the essay is considered the most universalform of students’ writing skill assessment to analyze the accurate and effectivelanguage use of English learners Therefore, EFL teachers can find out and

analyze common errors committed by non-native speakers and provide

strategies and procedures for academic writing improvement However, thedevelopment of academic writing in the university setting is not paid attention

to, compared to the other skills, so students often have difficulties in producing

free-error writing papers (Nikolenko et al., 2021)

2.5 Previous studies

A lot of studies on the difficulties of students have been conducted and

have given worthy results This part will be a brief conclusion of related studies

on writing problems that were done in various learning contexts

Al Fadda (2012) carried out research entitled “Difficulties in Academic

Writing: From the Perspective of King Saud University Postgraduate Students”

to investigate the difficulties students at King Saud University encountered

when learning academic English writing and to distinguish their learning needs and objectives There was the participation of KSU postgraduate university

students in learning from 2009 to 2010 This investigation is done using thequantitative method by administering questionnaires The findings showed thatstudents had many problems with plague words, grammar, pronoun-antecedentagreement, subject-verb agreement, sentence structure, and _ sentencecombination

A study undertaken at Tay Do University by Ly et al (2021), “EFL

Student’s Problems With Paragraph Writing At Tay Do University, Viet Nam”

to achieve the aim of the current study on this issue in 2021 First-year students

of English at TDU are the subject of this research To get a deep understanding,

the research used both quantitative and qualitative methods with three

instruments, including a questionnaire, interviews, and observations Through

questionnaires and observation, it was discovered that the most common issue

is grammatical problems They applied prepositions in the wrong way, whichmakes the writing difficult to understand Besides, the wrong use of subject-verb agreement leads the writing to the wrong meaning Lastly, problemsrelating to parts of speech and tenses left the readers confused andmisunderstood

In a study conducted by Mohamed and Zouaoui (2014) about “EFLWriting Hindrances and Challenges: The Case of Second Year Students ofEnglish at Djillali Liabes”, the researchers were aimed at discovering the

linguistic and academic needs of students, as well as their writing habits and

strategies In addition, English university students’ inability to comprehensivelywrite and the weak prerequisites for written expression were also examined.This study was conducted with the participation of second-year students whowere selected from two different groups of students at Djillali Liabes University

in the Department of Foreign Languages section of English The authors used a

variety of collection tools and qualitative methods that would help them test theabove hypotheses and build validity The findings demonstrated that students

faced some common problems like language proficiency, vocabulary and

grammar, sentence structure and paragraph development, connections betweenideas, problems of transition, missing words, and style, but the biggest issuerelated to language proficiency

Another study titled “EFL Students’ Difficulties and Needs in Essay

Writing” was carried out by Ariyanti and Fitriana (2017) to survey EFL

students’ difficulties in essay writing and explore their needs in learning for a

better quality of English composition at Widya Gama Mahakam University 33students joined in and helped compel the research when the researchers used

both quantitative and qualitative methods with an open-ended questionnaire andsemi-structured interview The findings were that all students had problems withgrammar, cohesion and coherence, paragraph organization, diction, andvocabulary misspelling Among those matters, the majority of students facegrammar, coherence, and cohesion problems

Enneifer (2021) carried out a study “Tunisian EFL Students’ Perceptions

toward Their Writing Difficulties” to investigate students’ writing difficulties.

The participants were selected from three groups of students in the Faculty ofLetters, Arts, and Humanities in Kairouan, Tunisia, including first-, second-,

and third-year students The researchers used both quantitative and qualitative

methods in their research 120 students took part in the questionnaire and 30

students in the semi-structured interview They revealed that the first-year

students had difficulty with punctuation, while the second- and third-year

students had trouble with essay organization though they were fully aware of

the matter for the first-year students

Salma (2015) undertook a study about “Problems and Practical Needs

of Writing Skill in EFL Context: An Analysis of Iranian Students of AligarhMuslim University" to make an investigation on the finding of writingdifficulties among Iranian students of Aligarh Muslim University (A.M.U.) andpractical needs The quantitative method with a questionnaire was used, but it

was done both open-ended and closed-ended for twenty Iranian students at

A.M.U They found that writing was difficult because Iranian students just cared

about passing the examination Also, they only write messages or emails that do

not get any complaints from others As a result, most of them wanted to improvethrough reading rather than writing itself

Farooq, Uzair-Ul-Hassan, and Wahid (2012) carried out a study titled

“Opinion of Second Language Learners about Writing Difficulties in the

English Language” to investigate difficulties in writing of second language

learners in Pakistan Five hundred and twenty students were chosen from two

out of nine towns in the city of Lahore, including boys and girls All participants

completed a questionnaire, which was based on a five-point Likert scale with

24 items that related to vocabulary, first language interference, spelling,grammar, punctuation, and rhetorical problems The findings illustrated that allstudents lacked vocabulary, poor spelling, LI interference, and a poor

understanding of grammatical structure when writing Moreover, the female students faced more issues than the male students in general.

A study on “Students’ Difficulties in Writing English -A Study at TheThird Semester Students of English Education Program At University of

Bengkulu Academic Year 2011-2012” (Pratiwi, 2016) was undertaken to find

out the challenges of third-semester students in writing English The participantswere all students at the University of Bengkulu, consisting of 79 students, andthe qualitative method was used in this study All of them took part in the test

of writing a composition that was scored using the ESL Composition Profile

suggested by Jacobs, ET all (1981) It is revealed that students had trouble with

language use and vocabulary, organization and mechanics, and content

Boonyarattanasoontorn (2017) carried out a study “An investigation ofThai students’ English language writing difficulties and their use of writing

strategies” to examine difficulties in writing and writing strategies among

undergraduate students in Thailand The data was collected using a quantitative

method with a questionnaire 157 students took an immediate course, and the collected data was measured using a five-point rating scale questionnaire The

result was that students had a high rate of problems in grammar, which was the

most problematic Cognitive strategies, particularly resourcing strategies, were

frequently used by the students, but there was no relationship between theirwriting ability and their usage of writing strategies

A study was conducted by Alisha, Safitri, and Santoso (2019) about

“Students’ Difficulties in Writing EFL” to find out the English writing

difficulties of students in SMK KB Pusdikpal Cimahi in the academic years

2017-2018 In the study, 30 students were chosen using the purposive sampling

method, and it was done using a quantitative method with a questionnaire Aquestionnaire with 15 closed items and one open item The result indicated thatstudents had a big problem with English writing The important cause is a

shortage of vocabulary mastery and language use They assumed that they felt

confused in choosing the word for writing because they did not have a large

source of knowledge in constructing sentences grammatically Besides, spelling

was challenged when they were often hesitant about writing

Aldabbus and Almansouri (2022) conducted a study titled “AcademicWriting Difficulties Encountered by University EFL Learners” to find out EFL

students at the University of Benghazi learn academic writing The study aimed

to get quantitative data from 36 participants, both undergraduates and graduates,

using only the questionnaire As a result, the researchers were only able to get

24 copies returned, though the questionnaires were delivered to both students in

class and through WhatsApp It was revealed that both graduates and

undergraduates had some troubles in academic writing, such as choosing theappropriate academic words, difficulties in developing a thesis statement,organizing ideas, and writing coherent paragraphs In addition, they got intotrouble because of a lack of resources, low English language proficiency, and alack of writing practice opportunities It was hoped to benefit a lot by improvingstudents’ writing challenges

In 2018, Kao and Reynolds conducted research titled “4 Study on theRelationship among Taiwanese College Students’ EFL Writing Strategy Use,Writing Ability and Writing Difficulty” to investigate the link between the use

of writing strategies, writing ability, and difficulty The participants were 331students, including 79 male and 252 female students, from three universities of

science and technology in Taiwan The questionnaire was mainly used in this

study as an instrument for quantitative methods, and all collected data was

analyzed with the tool Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) The result was that the preparation strategy used was an effective way of evaluating

EFL students’ abilities, and it had implications for teachers in enhancing their

students’ abilities using this strategy.

Abas and Aziz (2016) conducted a study with the title “Classification ofL2 Writing Process and Writing Strategies” to briefly discuss the writingprocess and writing strategies, the researchers chose some EFL-proficient

writers The whole research was done with a qualitative method of observation

in particular By giving each participant a writing assignment, the researchers

collected data about the writing process, with the topic relating to old knowledge

or experience to motivate outlining, listing, and using online materials It alsodemonstrated the fact that a strategy may not work well on another, even if itbrings specific learners’ great success

In short, writing difficulties have a significant impact on students’

writing enhancement processes The findings from the previously reviewed

studies demonstrate that students always get into trouble with common

problems such as grammar or vocabulary in various universities, although they

can recognize them in their writing However, the research gap from thesestudies lies in the research context because very little research has been

conducted in the English language teaching landscape in Vietnam, in general,

and in universities, in particular This is why the researcher focused on this topic

with the population at AGU to explore more about students' writing problems

and strategies The findings obtained from this study can also be expected to be

a worthy source of information for English-majored students to realize their

common writing problems in order to adjust their learning outcomes usingappropriate suggested strategies Teachers at An Giang University can find it

useful to acknowledge their students' difficulties and instruct them to apply new

methods that are more effective in their writing teaching As a result, this studywill also be an available and useful source of documents for others to determinethe difficulties and strategies of L2 writing in diverse learning contexts

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the methodology of the research There are eight

parts in this chapter, including the research design, the context of the study, the

description of participants, the description of the research instrument, datacollection procedures, data analysis of collected data, the validity andreliability of the research, and a summary of the research process

3.1 Research Design

Both quantitative and qualitative approaches to data collection andanalysis were employed in this study The combination of these two approaches

is called mixed-methods research design According to Sahin & Oztiirk (2019),

mixed research design is a method that applies both quantitative and qualitative

approaches to the collection and analysis of data from a single study or frommultiple studies in a program In order to get the best research results, the authorbelieves that both quantitative and qualitative research methods will make thedata collection more efficient and diverse, and then the obtained results will also

be more specific and authentic Although the mixed research approaches are

qualitative and quantitative, the data are actually only parallel, not mixed(Fetters, 2019) In addition, participants in mixed research are not necessarily a

group of people in the same discipline, but they are often people from different

disciplines with different perspectives and problem-solving approaches (e.g.,Thapa, Vermeulen & Deutz, 2022) In general, using a mixed approach allowsresearchers to obtain data on the general situation of students' writing difficultiesand how they solve those problems with the quantitative method, while thequalitative method will help students and teachers gain insight into problemsand come up with solutions

First, a questionnaire as a quantitative method was used in this study tofind out the difficulties that EFL students faced in learning English essay writingand the ways that they overcame those problems and mastered their skills Aquestionnaire is a tool that collects data with a series of questions distributed to

respondents Also, questionnaires are defined as written instruments that

provide respondents with a series of questions or statements, and they have to

react either by selecting available answers or writing out their answers (Dornyei

& Dewaele, 2022) In this study, the researcher was allowed to get an overview

of writing difficulties from a large number of students without wasting muchtime

Second, online semi-structured interviews, which were used as a

qualitative method, allowed the researcher to obtain a deeper understanding of

EFL students’ difficulties and their self-improving methods for the development

of their English essay writing skills The semi-structured interview is more

suitable to answer ‘why’ questions than ‘how many’ or ‘how much' questions

due to its flexibility (Sahin et al., 2019) Because the semi-structured interview

is flexible, it provides the author with the means to cope with unexpectedavenues (Blandford, 2013) In this study, online interviews were conductedinstead of face-to-face interviews because of their convenience Thanks to this

method, students could choose the best fit period, or even join in the interviews

at night time Therefore, online semi-structured interviews are believed to be

the most suitable way for collecting qualitative data easily and effectively (Adeoye-Olatunde & Olenik, 2021) The author can also address the aspects that are very important to individual participants, and they are able to gain a profound understanding of the research questions when every question and

answer are not similar to each other It is believed that a more comfortable

atmosphere will be created for interviewees, and the answers will be more

reliable and useful

3.2 Study Context and Population

The study was carried out with the population of English-majored

sophomores and juniors studying in the English Linguistics program in the

Faculty of Foreign Languages at An Giang University during the second semester of the academic year 2022-2023.

At the time of the research, these students were enrolled in English essaywriting courses with projected grades of B2.2 and CI.2 for sophomores and

juniors, respectively The course books used for these courses are published by

National Geographic Learning, which feature bundles of integrated reading andwriting skills The target outcomes for both levels are students’ ability in essaywriting

Because the study focused solely on English essay writing, thepopulation of sophomores and third-year students were chosen because they metthe research objectives of uncovering students' challenges and strategies in

English essay writing.

In this research, the random sampling method was utilized to choose and

invite 258 students (approximately 70% of the population) from the majored English Language program to complete the questionnaires, including

English-147 sophomores and 111 juniors The participants were chosen randomly Ingeneral, the selected participants were 185 female and 73 male students A more

detailed description of participants who joined in answering the questionnaire

is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 The description of the questionnaire participants

Frequency Percent (%) Second-year 147 57

Years of students Third-year 111 43

Total 258 100.0

Female 185 71.7

Gender

Male 73 28.3Total 258 100.0

3.3.2 Interview Participants

After the quantitative data gathered from questionnaires was analyzed,

the author continued conducting interviews with respondents who currently have an "average", "good", "very good," or "excellent" CGPA ranging from 2.0

to 4.0, and they were chosen with a purposive sampling method Table 2 shows

the descriptions of the participants for the interviews.

Table 2 The description of the interview participants

Interviewee Gender Year of student Current CGPA

1 Female Second-year Good

2 Female Second-year Average

3 Female Second-year Average

4 Female Third-year Very Good

5 Female Third-year Very Good

6 Female Third-year Very Good

7 Female Third-year Very Good

8 Female Third-year Good

9 Female Third-year Good

10 Male Second-year Excellent

11 Male Second-year Very Good

12 Male Second-year Good

13 Male Third-year Good

The reason for choosing students with various CGPAs in the interview

sessions was that they could give clear and different ideas about their writingdifficulties and ways of improving their abilities According to Mahajan andSingh (2017), students with good or excellent results know more precisely whatthey should achieve at the start and end of every class Moreover, students withthat knowledge will give more detailed information, knowledge, andexperiences about their issues and self-improvement process Besides, students

with average scores can show a difference in their learning process, providing

distinctive learning strategies

3.4 Research Instruments

In this study, the researcher employed both quantitative instruments

(questionnaires) and qualitative instruments (semi-structured interviews).Questionnaires were used to investigate the difficulties of EFL students whenlearning English essay writing and their strategies for self-improvement Inaddition, the face-to-face and semi-structured interviews would explore the

same thing, but in a more in-depth manner.

3.4.1 Questionnaire

3.4.1.1 Description of the questionnaire

The goal of the questionnaire was to investigate the difficulties

second-and third-year EFL students studying in the FFL face in learning English writing

at An Giang University and find out what writing strategies they employ to copewith these difficulties The total number of participants in this questionnaire was

258 EFL students who major in English Linguistics (EL)