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 reading and thinking, using 
verb tenses and word choice, and ordering 
ideas. Fadda [2] conducted a study on 
determining the academic writing difficulties 
faced by university students. The sample was 
50 postgraduate students answering the 
questionnaire. The findings revealed that 
participants faced many difficulties in 
academic writing such as distinguishing 
between spoken and written English, making 
an outline before writing a draft, identifying 
the skills needed for successful writing, and 
avoiding plague words and phrases. In 2015, 
Awad [7] did a study on examining the 
punctuation mistakes made by university 
English majors. The participants were 100 
students. The results showed that participants 
committed different errors such as the overuse 
of comma, the incorrect use of the capital 
letter, the wrong use of the quotation marks 
and the misuse of the semicolon. In the 
context of Vietnam, Luong and Nguyen [11] 
conducted a study on problems and process of 
writing of a Vietnamese student. The data 
were collected from in-depth interviews. The 
finding showed that the participants did not 
care about grammar or spelling mistakes, and 
he applied a lot of behaviors in his 
Tran Quoc Thao
et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 125 
compositions. Another study conducted by 
Chi and Nguyen [12] explored the tertiary 
EFL students’ paraphrasing ability and 
challenges students faced when paraphrasing. 
They collected data from students’ texts and 
interviews. The results indicated that 
participants often used synonyms for 
paraphrasing, and they had many language-
related difficulties when paraphrasing such as 
lack of understanding of the source text and 
vocabulary. Within the scope of this study, 
this study attempts to explore the academic 
writing difficulties encountered by English 
majored students at a tertiary institution in 
Lam Dong Province. The following research 
question is addressed: What are academic 
writing difficulties encountered by English 
majored students at a higher education 
institution in Lam Dong province? 
2. Research methodology 
2.1. Research site and participants 
The quantitative study was conducted at a 
higher education institution in Lam Dong 
province, Vietnam. The Faculty of Foreign 
Languages at the research site offers two 
English language-training programs, namely 
English Language Education and English 
Language Studies. English majored students 
learn English language skills of Listening, 
Speaking, Reading and Writing in the first 
two years of their BA program. For writing 
skills, students have to learn academic writing 
in the first year. 
The number of research participants was 126 
second-year English majored students who 
were conveniently sampled. Just over a half 
(50.8%) of participants’ previous writing 
score was from less than or equal to 5.0 to 
6.9, and the rest of them (49.2%) got less than 
5.0 out of 10. The vast majority of 
participants (81%) spent from 1 to 2 hours a 
day practicing English writing, while the 
minority of them (11.9%) practiced English 
writing more than 2 hours. Additionally, a 
very small number of participants reported 
that they spent less than 1 hour a day. Finally, 
all participants (100%) did not have any 
experience of taking any international 
language tests. 
2.2 Research instrument 
The closed-ended questionnaire was 
employed for data collection. The closed-
ended questionnaire which was adopted from 
Tanaka [10] included two parts: Part A was 
about the personal information of 
participants; Part B contained main items 
investigating (I) Students’ difficulties in 
academic writing (17 items) in terms of six 
categories: Organization/ Sequence in writing, 
Vocabulary/ Spelling, Grammar, Supporting 
Ideas, Punctuation/ Capitalization and Unity 
and Coherence. The five-point Likert scale (1: 
Never; 2: Seldom; 3: Sometimes; 4: Often; 5: 
Always) was used. The questionnaire was 
translated into Vietnamese so that participants 
did not encounter any difficulty in answering 
the questionnaire. The Cronbach’s alpha of the 
questionnaire was .90, which means the 
questionnaire was very reliable. 
2.3 Procedures for data collection and analysis 
With respect to data collection, the 
questionnaire had been piloted for their 
validity before it was used officially. Then, 
150 questionnaires were administered to 
participants in person. Explanations were 
given when necessary. It took participants 20-
25 minutes to finish the questionnaire. The 
returned questionnaires were 126 officially 
accepted. Regarding data analysis, the 
quantitative data collected from 
questionnaires were analyzed by the SPSS in 
terms of descriptive statistics. The five-point 
Likert-scale from Never to Always was 
interpreted in terms of mean (M) score as M= 
1.00 - 1.80: Never; M = 1.81 - 2.60: Rarely; 
M = 2.61 - 3.40: Sometimes; M = 3.41 - 4.20: 
Often; M = 4.21 – 5.00: Always. 
Tran Quoc Thao
et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 126 
3. Results and discussion 
3.1. Results 
3.1.1 English-majored students’ academic 
writing difficulties 
It can be seen from Table 1 that the overall 
mean score of English-majored students’ 
difficulties in academic writing is 4.11 (out of 
5). However, the standard deviation (SD) of 
.96 indicates that the distribution of students 
who had difficulties regarding academic 
writing was rather scattered, but not seriously. 
This finding means that students often 
encountered certain difficulties in their 
academic writing tasks. 
A majority of students showed their high 
agreement of the difficulties in academic 
writing. Particularly, the difficulties in 
organization/ sequence in writing and in 
punctuation/ capitalization had the highest 
mean score (M = 4.40), while the lowest 
mean score (M = 3.55; S.D = .83) belonged to 
difficulties in unity and coherence. This means 
that students found organization/ sequence in 
writing and punctuation/ capitalization more 
difficult than the other groups. In addition, 
grammar was a hard element faced by students 
(M = 4.29; S.D = .98), and vocabulary/ 
spelling was seen as one of their challenges 
(M = 4.12; S.D = .77). Moreover, students 
agreed that supporting ideas was one of 
elements of difficulties in academic writing 
(M = 3.93; S.D = .69). This result showed 
that participants viewed academic writing as 
difficult factor in English learning. 
3.1.2 English-majored students’ difficulties 
 Academic writing difficulties in 
organization/ sequence in writing 
Table 2 illustrates the students’ levels of 
agreement about the difficulties in academic 
writing in terms of organization/ sequence. 
Specifically, the students strongly agreed with 
they did not know the right pattern for a 
specific type of writing (item 1: M = 4.42, SD 
= .97) and how to organize ideas for the 
assigned writing (item 3: M = 4.42, SD = 
.93). The two items had the highest mean 
score in this term (M = 4.42). Moreover, the 
item that they could not make an outline 
including the main points of their assignment 
before writing also made them feel less 
confident in writing (item 4: M = 4.40, SD = 
.93). In addition, they showed their strong 
agreement that they did not know how to start 
writing (item 2: M = 4.36, SD = .87). 
Table 1. English-majored students’ academic writing difficulties 
17 items 
N = 126 
M SD 
Difficulties in organization/ sequence in writing 4.40 .87 
Difficulties in vocabulary/ spelling 4.12 .77 
Difficulties in grammar 4.29 .98 
Difficulties in supporting ideas 3.93 .69 
Difficulties in punctuation/ capitalization 4.40 .93 
Difficulties in unity and coherence 3.55 .83 
Total 4.11 .96 
Table 2. English-majored students’ academic writing difficulties in terms of organization/ sequence 
No. 4 items 
N = 126 
M SD 
1 I don’t know the right pattern for a specific type of writing. 4.42 .97 
2 I don’t know how to start writing. 4.36 .87 
3 I don’t know how to organize ideas for the assigned writing. 4.42 .93 
4 
I cannot make an outline including the main points of my assignment 
before writing. 
4.40 .93 
Tran Quoc Thao
et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 123 - 130 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 127 
 Academic writing difficulties in 
vocabulary/ spelling 
Table 3 shows that vocabulary/spelling was 
really one of the important difficulties 
affecting academic writing. The majority of 
the participants claimed that they could not 
differentiate between spoken words and 
written ones (item 6: M = 4.39, SD = .59 and 
found it hard to use correct words (item 7: M 
= 4.39, SD = .89), which was the highest 
mean score of this type. Besides, the 
participants showed their agreement that they 
did not have enough vocabulary to write (item 
5: M = 4.36, SD = .79). 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 
consist