EFL Students' Difficulties and Needs in Essay Writing

Abstract

Having observed the writing class and EFL students" essays in previous semester, the researchers found that their essay were in poor quality. This situation portrays the fact that writing is a complex skill to learn in English language acquisition. This study is aimed to investigate the difficulties faced by EFL students in essay writing as well as exploring their learning needs to have better quality of English composition. Examining essays and administering open-ended questionnaires were done to 33 students of English Department at Widya Gama Mahakam University, Indonesia, to find students" difficulties in broad-spectrum. In addition, semi-structured interview to the writing lecturer was also conducted to dig his perception related to challenging matters about teaching essay writing. The findings showed that students have major difficulties in grammatical, cohesion and coherence terms. Moreover, minor aspects also had been revealed regarding to students" writing, namely paragraph organization, dictions, and vocabulary misspelling. Considering its complexity in accomplishing essay writing task, the students expected more intense guidance from the lecturer, such as continuous consultation regarding to the lecturer"s feedback in their essay draft. The interview result confirmed this issue. The lecturer admitted that limited time and big number of students in one class became his great barriers to improve the quality of the students" essay. These facts drive new challenges for the writing lecturer in two ways; 1) the lecturer should guide students properly by using step-by-step procedures so that the students feel comfortable in writing the essay, and 2) explicit explanation related to the revision given is needed. It is important to note that this issue demands a new and effective teaching essay writing strategy to achieve fruitful outcomes of teaching and learning process especially in essay writing context.

The Current Issues of Indonesian EFL Students’ Writing Skills: Ability, Problem, and Reason in Writing Comparison and Contrast Essay

“…Moreover, the studies of Rasyidah & Antoni (2014), Cahyono et al (2016), and Irwan et al (2018), similarly reported that the Indonesian EFL students' academic essay writing ability was satisfied. However, the result of this current study was irrelevant found by the studies of Eliwarti & Maarof (2014), Wigati (2014), Nugraha (2015), Aunurrahman, Hamied & Emilia (2016), and Ariyanti & Fitriana (2017) reported that the writing ability of Indonesian university EFL students was poor quality in essay academic writing performance. Highlighting the findings of these previous studies and this current study, it could be stated that there was any improvement of the Indonesian EFL students' essay writing ability.…”

“…Seeing the differences research findings concerning the Indonesian EFL students' essay writing performance i.e. studies from Eliwarti & Maarof (2014); Aunurrahman, Hamied & Emilia (2016); and Ariyanti & Fitriana, (2017), they revealed low writing ability. Meanwhile, the studies from Rasyidah & Antoni (2014); Cahyono et al (2016); Sanu (2016); Husin & Nurbayani (2017); and Irwan et al (2018) highlighted high writing ability, indeed it could be said that the essay writing ability of EFL students in Indonesia is still debatable issues in research communities.…”

“…This study revealed that the EFL students had problems in terms of linguistics, cognitive, and psychological. Ariyanti & Fitriana (2017) reported that Indonesian EFL university students were trouble in using grammar, cohesion, coherence, paragraph organization, diction, and spelling errors in essay writing. Additionally, Hasan & Marzuki (2017) analyzed the Indonesian EFL students' ability in writing by asking the students to do writing task in determined time.…”

“…Then, in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Aunurrahman, Hamied & Emilia (2016) pointed out that the EFL students' writing control related to the structures and linguistic features in argumentative essay writing was still limited, especially in developing of critical thinking. Ariyanti & Fitriana (2017) did their study in private university in Samarinda-East Kalimantan, asserted the quality of EFL students' essay writing ability was poor categorized. In short, the finding of these studies claimed that the Indonesian EFL university students' essay writing ability showed unsatisfied writing performance.…”

EAP alignment in EFL writing courses towards developing student’s academic writing skills

“…Therefore, the contents of common writing courses at tertiary levels were not accordingly aligned and compatible with the specific disciplinary content and written discourse of target students' particular fields of study although there may be arbitrary relevance between texts and thematic areas of random fields of study. There was no compatibility of common writing courses with target disciplinary content; this is consistent with Ariyanti and Fitriana (2017), Cahyono et al (2016), Husin and Nurbayani (2017), Rogers (2010), and Thesen (2013).…”