EFL Instructors and Student Writers’ Perceptions on Academic Writing Reluctance

Abstract

Students' disengagement in class activities is usually interpreted from the instructors' viewpoints, disregarding students' perceived causes of the phenomenon. This study investigated instructors and students' perceptions on writing reluctance, aiming at exploring possible convergence and divergence between the participants' ideas. Twelve instructors and thirty seven students completed a questionnaire developed by the researchers. It includes linguistic factors (e.g. task difficulty, linguistic competence and content knowledge), psychological factors (e.g. readership, self-confidence, anxiety, and motivation), methodological factors (e.g. strategy training, feedback, and L1 writing experience) and interpersonal factors (e.g. warmth, enthusiasm, and vigor). The mean scores of the participants were then calculated and compared. Results indicated that the participants' perceptions on reluctance to writing diverge to a large extent. 'Task difficulty' was reported by the instructors as the most influential factor in academic writing reluctance. From the learners' point of view, however, 'lack of readership' was considered as the most important factor in this regard.

Student perceptions of difficulties in second language writing

“…Moreover, they are not interested in the topics. As Asadifard and Koosha (2013) suggest, the results also suggest and support that they are not willing to write due to their prior negative experiences with writing tasks; thus, they need encouragement provided by the teacher since they reported that they feel a lack of appropriate interpersonal relationships between their teacher and themselves. Thus, they believe they do not have adequate writing activities to encourage them to write.…”

“…Lastly, these items may be misinterpreted by students in various ways depending on their contexts. Asadifard and Koosha (2013) found that there is a high degree of reluctance among students towards writing activities; they are perhaps among their last choices, or they try not to engage themselves in writing unless they have to. Also, they stated that when the students feel their works may not be thoroughly checked, they gradually lose their interest in writing hence reluctance may be the outcome.…”

A metaphorical analysis of EFL writers’ views about writing in English

“…In the same vein, another study on EFL instructors and student writers' perceptions on academic writing reluctance, in an Iranian context, by Asadifard and Koosha (2013) reports striking results as well. The study reports firstly on the mismatch between instructor and student writer perceptions regarding task difficulty that 100% of the instructors declared that reluctance depends on task difficulty while the 16% of the students agreed with the instructors, and some 54% students stated reasons other than task difficulty for reluctance.…”

Indonesian University Students’ Perception on Instructor-Initiated Writing Activities

“…Most interestingly, Asadifard and Koosha (2013) find that learners and instructors may have different perceptions concerning the factors causing lack of engagement in writing activities initiated by the instructor. This perception difference is possible to become the main reason behind students' disengagement as well as the unnoticed blind spot when instructors design the pedagogical approach for the writing class.…”

“…To highlight it once again, scholars who researched on writing reluctance (e.g., Asadifard & Koosha, 2013;Meiketo & Tessema, 2012) have agreed that there is a strong indication where instructors and students perceive factors which cause disengagement differently. Instructors tend to believe that the cause of disengagement merely is because students are not well prepared to engage and they lack the prerequisite skills that could enable them to engage.…”