Exploring tertiary English - Majored students’ academic writing difficulties

 TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 123 
EXPLORING TERTIARY ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS’ 
ACADEMIC WRITING DIFFICULTIES 
Tran Quoc Thao
1*
, Nguyen Hoang Nhat Quyen
2 
1Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) 
2The University of Dalat 
ABSTRACT 
This paper endeavors to present the findings of a study on the writing difficulties in terms of six 
aspects in academic writing, namely organization/sequence, vocabulary/spelling, grammar, 
supporting ideas, punctuation/capitalization, and unity and coherence encountered by English-
majored students. The research participants were 126 English-majored students from a higher 
education institution in Lam Dong province, Vietnam. The participants took part in answering 
closed-ended questionnaires. Quantitative data were analyzed by SPSS in terms of descriptive 
statistics. The findings revealed that participants often faced a variety of writing difficulties in 
academic writing. Remarkably, among six aspects of academic writing difficulties, participants 
had more difficulties in deploying organization/sequence and using grammar and 
punctuation/capitalization than the other aspects. Additionally, the aspect of unity and coherence 
in academic writing was the least difficult one from which they suffered in academic writing. 
Pedagogical implications are recommended for improving the quality of the teaching and learning 
of academic writing in the research context and other similar ones. 
Keywords: academic writing; English-majored student; higher education institution; 
writing difficulties 
Received: 08/10/2020; Revised: 16/10/2020 ; Published: 20/10/2020 
TÌM HIỂU KHÓ KHĂN CỦA SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH 
TRONG KHI VIẾT HỌC THUẬT 
Trần Quốc Thao1*, Nguyễn Hoàng Nhật Quyên2 
1Trường Đại học Công nghệ Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh 
2Trường Đại học Đà Lạt 
TÓM TẮT 
Bài báo này trình bày kết quả nghiên cứu sáu nhóm khó khăn trong viết học thuật, cụ thể là cấu 
trúc/ trình tự, từ vựng/ chính tả, ngữ pháp, ý bổ trợ, dấu câu/ viết hoa, liên kết và mạch lạc mà 
sinh viên chuyên ngành Ngôn ngữ Anh gặp phải. Nghiên cứu này gồm có 126 sinh viên chuyên 
ngành Ngôn ngữ Anh tại một trường đại học ở tỉnh Lâm Đồng tham gia trả lời bảng câu hỏi. Dữ 
liệu định lượng được thống kê mô tả bằng phần mềm SPPS. Kết quả cho thấy, đối tượng tham gia 
nghiên cứu gặp nhiều khó khăn trong viết học thuật. Trong sáu nhóm khó khăn, đối tượng tham 
gia nghiên cứu gặp khó khăn về cấu trúc/ trình tự và sử dụng ngữ pháp và dấu câu/ viết hoa nhiều 
hơn các nhóm khó khăn khác. Ngoài ra, họ gặp ít khó khăn nhất về liên kết và mạch lạc trong quá 
trình viết học thuật. Dựa trên những kết quả này, các đề xuất nhằm cải thiện chất lượng dạy và học 
viết học thuật được đưa ra cho ngữ cảnh nghiên cứu này và các ngữ cảnh tương tự. 
Từ khóa: viết học thuật; sinh viên chuyên ngành Ngôn ngữ Anh; bậc đại học; khó khăn trong khi viết 
Ngày nhận bài: 08/10/2020; Ngày hoàn thiện: 16/10/2020; Ngày đăng: 20/10/2020 
* Corresponding author. Email: tq.thao@hutech.edu.vn 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34238/tnu-jst.3686 
Tran Quoc Thao
et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 124 
1. Introduction 
Writing is a difficult skill in ESL/EFL 
teaching and learning. According to Grami 
[1], writing is a difficult skill to learn or teach 
because it is not a simple cognitive activity 
but rather complex psychological production 
that requires “careful thought, discipline and 
concentration” (p. 9). In addition, as academic 
writing is a challenging skill, especially, in a 
second and foreign language, difficulties in 
academic writing should be greatly 
considered. Fadda [2] states that academic 
writing is connected with thinking or 
conscious mental processes because of an 
outcome of the part of a student that makes it 
possible for him or her to think, feel 
emotions, and understand things. What is 
more, EFL learners in some areas may 
encounter a number of difficulties in 
academic writing. Casanave and Hubbard [3] 
and Rabab’ah [4] have highlighted that Asian 
students are assumed to confront obstacles in 
academic writing and find it hard to get 
acquainted with English academic writing. 
The common difficulties in academic writing 
can be grouped as organization/sequence, 
vocabulary/spelling, grammar, supporting 
ideas, punctuation/capitalization, and unity 
and coherence [1-4]. 
In the context of Vietnam, EFL learners are 
observed to encounter different difficulties in 
writing and expressing their ideas through 
writing. Despite the fact that the majority of 
them have learned English since elementary 
school, they still face many writing problems. 
As for English majored students, many of 
them are seen to struggle with academic 
writing during their studies. They have 
difficulties in the writing process in terms of 
text organization and sentence structures, and 
they do not have sufficient vocabulary, 
especially academic words, and language 
structures to express their ideas while writing. 
What is more, their writing is often influenced 
by their mother tongue, so they write English 
by translating word by word from Vietnamese 
to English, which causes confusion for readers. 
Prior studies in different contexts have 
revealed that students confront a number of 
difficulties in academic writing. 
Internationally, many researchers [2], [5-9] 
have been involved in examining writing 
difficulties encountered by EFL learners. 
Boonpattanaporn [8] did a study on English 
essay writing strategies used and difficulties 
faced by English majored students. The study 
involved 272 students in answering a 
questionnaire. The findings indicated that 
participants used direct translation strategy 
most and encountered difficulties in getting 
the readers’ attention, getting started, 
spending too long r ... Finally, the lowest 
mean score of this term belonged to the use of 
the correct spelling of words (item 8: M = 
3.33, SD = .90). 
 Academic writing difficulties in grammar 
According to the data from Table 4, the 
participants realized that grammar had a 
significantly influence on academic writing. 
Most of the students could not differentiate 
between formal structures and informal ones 
(item 11: M = 4.42, SD = .90), which was the 
most difficult item in grammar. Next, the 
difficulty in using correct tenses in writing was 
always a serious problem (item 9: M = 4.40, 
SD = .90). The lowest mean score of grammar 
was difficulties in using correct structures in 
writing (item 10: M = 4.03, SD = .52). 
 Academic writing difficulties in writing 
supporting ideas 
Table 5 describes that supporting ideas had 
effects on academic writing. Students had 
many difficulties while finding ideas relevant 
to the topic (item 12: M = 4.40, SD = .70) and 
finding supporting ideas (item 13: M = 3.45, 
SD = .88). 
 Academic writing difficulties in 
punctuation and capitalization 
Table 6 illustrates difficulties in academic 
writing in terms of Punctuation/ 
Capitalization. Punctuation is not only an 
integral part of the forms of an academic, but 
also a more powerful style effect when used 
well, so it is clear that the majority of 
participants agreed that they found difficulties 
in using punctuations (item 14: M = 4.40, SD 
= .62). This mean score was the same as item 
15 (M = 4.40, SD = .82) “I have difficulties in 
using capitalization”). 
Table 3. English-majored students’ academic writing difficulties in terms of vocabulary/spelling 
No. 4 items 
N=126 
M SD 
5 I don’t have enough vocabulary to write. 4.36 .79 
6 I can’t differentiate between spoken words and written ones. 4.39 .59 
7 I find it hard to use correct words. 4.39 .89 
8 I have difficulties in using the correct spelling of words. 3.33 .90 
Table 4. English-majored students’ academic writing difficulties in terms of grammar 
No. 3 items 
N=126 
M SD 
9 I have difficulty in using correct tenses in writing. 4.40 .90 
10 I have difficulties in using correct structures in writing. 4.03 .52 
11 I can’t differentiate between formal structures and informal ones. 4.42 .90 
 Academic writing difficulties in unity and coherence 
Table 7 shows that the mean score of difficulties in academic writing in terms of unity and 
coherence. Particularly, difficulties in focusing on the main ideas of the writing had a higher mean 
score (item 16: M = 3.61, SD = .72) than linking ideas in writing (item 17: M = 3.48, SD = .72). 
Tran Quoc Thao
et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 128 
Table 5. English-majored students’ academic writing difficulties in terms of supporting ideas 
No. 2 items 
N = 126 
M SD 
12 I cannot find ideas relevant to topic. 4.40 .70 
13 I have difficulties in finding supporting ideas. 3.45 .88 
Table 6. English-majored students’ academic writing difficulties in terms of punctuation/ capitalization 
No. 2 items 
N = 126 
M SD 
14 I have difficulties in using punctuations, e.g. comma, stop, etc. 4.40 .62 
15 I have difficulties in using capitalization. 4.40 .82 
Table 7. English-majored students’ academic writing difficulties in terms of unity and coherence 
No. 2 items 
N=126 
M SD 
16 I have difficulties in focusing on the main ideas of the writing. 3.61 .72 
17 I don’t know how to link ideas in writing. 3.48 .77 
3.2. Discussion 
This study revealed some significant results. 
First, participants often faced a number of 
academic writing difficulties. One of the 
possible explanations for this may be due to 
the fact that their writing skills were low as 
seen from their writing scores in previous 
course were low. Nearly 50% of the research 
participants had less than 5.0 points out of 10 
for their writing. Second, it was found out that 
participants encountered academic writing 
difficulties in deploying organization/ 
sequence and using grammar and 
punctuation/capitalization than the other 
aspects. The findings of the writing 
difficulties obtained in this research were 
similar to that of the study of 
Boonpattanaporn [8] and Luong and Nguyen 
[11]. They have found that participants often 
had difficulties in using grammar in writing. 
This is due to the fact that in Vietnamese the 
aspect of tenses does not significantly 
contribute to the meaning of the utterances 
since the time reference of the sentence could 
be expressed via means of words themselves, 
not grammatical aspects. According to Fadda 
[2], the principal difficulty faced by EFL 
students is grammar such as subject-verb 
agreement and connection of a group of words, 
usually containing a verb to form a logical and 
consistent paragraph because it is pretty 
challenging to distinguish between words and 
phrases in written and spoken forms. 
Moreover, this can lead to grammatical errors 
that may prevent students from interpreting 
and summarizing other people's compositions 
as stated by Amin and Alamin [6]. 
In terms of the organization of the paragraphs, 
the majority of the participants of the study 
expressed that it was hard to follow a certain 
structure of the text, especially the English 
style of writing. English styles of expressions 
are certainly different from Vietnamese ways 
of making voice heard. In the English 
language, the first sentence often contains the 
most crucial idea, and the following ones 
would be considered as secondary carrying 
the role of supporting the topic. Meanwhile, 
Vietnamese language does not require a norm 
like that. Wenyu and Yang [13] pointed out 
that students following an obvious description 
of the main facts about writing topics and a 
certain set of decisions about how to write 
those topics can easily organize their ideas 
and connect them to each other. Based on 
students' answers, the explanation for this 
problem may be that their understanding of 
coherence, the academic terms, the English 
structures and the organization of academic 
writing is barely adequate. Therefore, it is 
understandable that Vietnamese students 
would find it hard to master the structure or 
Tran Quoc Thao
et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 129 
the organization of the essays or paragraphs. 
It would take some time for the learners and 
teachers to get used to a new style of writing 
in the situation of learners not writing often in 
their real life. Such a finding is partially 
corroborated with that of the study conducted 
by Chi and Nguyen [12] who found that the 
lack of understanding the writing style could 
contribute to the prevention of producing 
good writing. 
Furthermore, participants stated that they 
found punctuation to be one of the most 
difficult aspects in writing. This was quite 
opposite to the expectation. However, this is 
explainable when we think of Vietnamese, a 
language that would accept a long sentence 
with commas being considered as the 
separation of the ideas while the English 
language requires a strict rule of punctuation. 
Some discussions of the relevant research on 
punctuation errors suggested that it is 
necessary for EFL students to know the 
meaning of the importance and purpose of 
special symbols that they add to writing to 
separate phrases and sentences to express 
what they are writing. In particular, Carey 
[14] pointed out that the meaning of 
punctuation is to take away ambiguity and 
create an understandable connection among 
words. Besides, according to Connelly [15], 
vagueness can stem from the use of irregular 
punctuation. In addition, Truss [16] declared 
that clear meaning can be conveyed through 
correct punctuation. This result was similar to 
Awad’s [7] study. He found out the various 
common punctuation mistakes made by 
English-majored students. His findings 
showed that students were marked down for 
poor punctuation because of their unsuitable 
punctuation. For instance, they used the 
comma in place of the full-stop. Similarly, 
Adas and Bakir [5] and Gomez [9] addressed 
that students got hard to do their writing and 
to use punctuation. As stated by Gomez [9], 
an extensive number of commas were used in 
students’ English statements. 
4. Conclusion 
This study has come to conclusion that 
English majored students encountered 
academic writing difficulties always in 
organization/sequence in writing, grammar 
and punctuation / capitalization but often in 
vocabulary, supporting ideas, and unity and 
coherence. This conclusion may recommend 
that students should practice in relation to 
these language areas on a more regular basis. 
One of the strategies they can adopt for 
overcoming such weaknesses is to seek peer 
support and mutual correction. In this way, 
learners can make use of peer corrective 
feedback in terms of lexical use, knowledge of 
grammar, and textual and mechanical elements 
in the process of practicing academic writing 
with peers. Also, they can consult their 
academic writing teachers for language support 
in cases in which their peers are unable to help 
them with the corrections. Most importantly, 
learners can make use of online resources for 
samples of academic writing texts as well as 
free writing correction services. Additionally, 
learners are advised to read extensively as the 
more they read, the more they can improve 
their writing skills. As for teachers, it is 
imperative that they should frequently utilize 
motivational approaches in order to foster their 
students’ resilience in developing academic 
writing skills. To this end, teachers can provide 
students with more practice tasks that focus on 
areas of academic writing with which their 
students are still struggling. 
This study still bears some limitations. First, 
the sample size was not big enough to make a 
generalization, so the findings may not be 
representing the whole picture of the topic of 
studies. Second, the questions in the 
questionnaire may not cover all the aspects of 
writing and the answer may possibly fall on 
other different categories. Only one research 
instrument was employed for data collection; 
therefore, the collected information may not 
be sufficient for all aspects of writing. 
Tran Quoc Thao
et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 130 
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