Student Writers’ Academic Essay Writing Problems: Students’ and Teachers’ Responses

Abstract

This study was aimed at investigating the student writers' problems in writing academic essay viewed from students and teachers. The rational is that the ability to write academic essays benefits students at Indonesian Language of Education, Universitas Negeri Padang for academic and career needs as teachers. This descriptive study analyzed the data gained from the questionnaires distributed to 38 students, the native speakers of Indonesian writing academic essay in Indonesian language and 7 teachers teaching Indonesian Language. They were about students' difficulties on prewriting, coherence, cohesion, lexicon, and mechanics which were elaborated into 23 items (devices). The findings indicated that in prewriting, the students experienced difficulty most on planning unfamiliar topics, while teachers responded that generating relevant and consistent ideas was difficult for students. In coherence, both students and teachers agreed that developing main idea into complete paragraphs was the main problems for students. In cohesion, students and teachers responded differently. Students experienced that using ellipsis was the most difficult one, while teachers found that writing a good introduction to the essay and developing main idea into complete paragraphs was the most difficult for the students. In lexical, the teachers' and students 'responses were the same. Using idioms and word collocations was the most difficult one for students. In mechanics, the teachers and the students responded differently. The students experienced writing grammatically correct sentences was the most difficult one, but the teachers identified that using punctuation was the main problem for the students. Overall, those findings indicated some areas of improvement in teaching academic essay.