Exploring students' challenges in writing English academic paper: a case study in English Language Education Department of UINSA

This qualitative research investigated the students’ challenges in writing English academic papers. The aims of this research are to find out the challenges faced by the students in writing English academic papers and the strategies they use to solve the challenges. The subject of this study was students from 2nd-8th semester of English Language Education Department of UINSA. In collecting the data, interviews with 2 lecturers who teach writing subject and 4 students from 4th-8th semesters who have written English academic papers during their study were conducted. Also, online questionnaires were distributed to 72 students from 2nd-8th semesters. The results of this study highlighted the following: (1) The challenges are mostly faced by the students in writing English academic papers are the grammatical aspects and the difficulties in developing coherent, cohesive English academic paper to make it understandable. (2) The strategies used by the students in solving those challenges in writing English academic papers include learning from good example of academic papers, reading a lot of references and do brainstorming to explore idea. These findings imply that most students have difficulties in grammatical aspects when they write English academic papers and the strategies that mostly used by the students to solve those challenges is learning from good example of academic papers.