AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT DONG NAI TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY IN WRITING ACADEMIC ESSAYS

Tóm tắt

University students in Vietnam are facing a growing demand to use English in their academic and future career endeavors. Among four skills, English writing is a significant challenge for students, particularly those pursuing a major in academic English language, as they are expected to demonstrate the proficiency in a diverse range of writing styles. Consequently, writing difficulties among students have consistently emerged as a primary concern in writing courses. Nevertheless, Dong Nai Technology University has not yet done any research study to examine this particular element. The objective of this study was to examine the challenges encountered by students when attempting to meet the criteria of an academic English essay. Subsequently, some solutions were applied to enhance the quality of students’ essays. The author of this study employs a questionnaire and an interview to investigate the English-majored students’ essay writing practice and challenges at Dong Nai Technology University. The survey was sent to a total of 140 students, and the findings revealed that students had not only a low frequency of writing practice but also encountered many barriers to meet writing criteria including task achievement, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, coherence and cohesion . In addition, the interview’ results provided a more comprehensive picture of students’ challenges in writing academic essays. The study also indicates the importance of teachers’ feedback and students’ reading and writing practice in enhancing students’ writing proficiency.