GRADUATE STUDENTS’ CHALLENGES IN ACADEMIC WRITING

Abstract

Graduate students, unlike other learners, are constantly under pressure, with more responsibilities and challenges in their daily lives, let alone their academic life. Many studies have been carried out among ESL/EFL undergraduate students' writing strategies and challenges (e.g., Cheng, 2002; Wang & Wen, 2002; Mustafa, 2018; Zhang et al., 2021), yet there have not been adequate studies addressing master’s graduate students scholarly writing strategies and writing challenges (e.g., Hemmings et al., 2007; Gomez, 2014; Molinari, 2019). Also, the number of students who are blamed for lacking the appropriate preparation to write academically at the graduate level is proliferating (Holmes et al., 2018; Collins, 2015). The aim of this mixed methods study was to 1) investigate EFL graduate students’ academic writing strategies in their writing practices, 2) study EFL graduate students’ perceptions and attitudes towards academic writing, 3) explore the sources that EFL graduate students’ access to attain their writing tasks, 4) investigate the challenges that the EFL graduate students’ encounter and struggle with in academic writing, 5) explore the faculty members’ perceptions on what is problematic in graduate students academic writing practices, and 6) elicit suggestions from the faculty members to help EFL graduate students in improving their academic writing skills. The study was conducted in the 2020-2021 academic year and the participants were 28 Master's students enrolled in a foundation university in Istanbul, Turkey. A questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the master’s graduate students, while an open-ended questionnaire was used with five faculty members. The study findings exhibited various writing strategies that the master’s graduate students utilize in their writing (e.g., reading scholarly writing, efficient communication with peers, etc.). As for the master’s graduate students’ perceptions and attitudes towards academic writing, almost all participants reported positive attitudes towards academic writing at the vi master’s level and their desire to attend academic writing courses. Also, they reported that they always rely on journals to attain their writing tasks more than on books because access to the latter is scarce and expensive. Furthermore, the students reported various difficulties that they struggle with in scholarly writing (e.g., written assignments, reflective essays, research proposals, research articles, thesis writing). Four themes (academic writing as a main obstacle, influences on the writing process, supervisors' relationship, and socioeconomic problems) were identified as the primary problems the master’s graduate students encountered in their academic writing. The findings from the open-ended questionnaires with faculty members revealed numerous problems (e.g., incompetence in written English, lack of synthesis in writing, inadequacy in using academic writing style to build arguments and claims in their research), among other problems that the master’s graduate students commit in their academic writing. Faculty members' perceptions of the master’s graduate students' academic writing performance suggest that the former do not meet the rigor and demands of academic writing at the master’s level. However, both the students and the faculty members agreed on reading scholarly work as a working strategy to write academically better. Notwithstanding, this study argues that there might be more effective approaches to deal with graduate students' difficulties in academic writing that provide maximum benefits for students. The study supports providing graduate students apt support and guidance to enhance, improve, and advance their academic writing skills