AN INVESTIGATION INTO ESSAY WRITING DIFFICULTIES OF

ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUFI

Vo Thi Thu Thao

University of Food Industry, Ho Chi Minh City
Email: msvothuthao@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
Teaching and learning how to write in English is not an easy task for both teachers and students,
especially how to write essays. Factually, writing essays is one of main parts in the writing course
of English-major students at HUFI and the students need to be skillful enough to have good
knowledge about essay writing skill for graduation. Although there has been countless research
done by researchers to improve the essay writing skill among the learners, the English-major
students at HUFI have still encountered a lot of enormous difficulties that cause an obstruction in
achieving good writing products. As a result, in this paper, the writer primarily investigated into
essay writing difficulties of HUFI English-major students in an attempt to come up with the
possible solutions for dealing with the problems. The data were collected by means of some

difficulties such as grammatical problems, coherence, cohesion, mother language transfer, a lack
of ideas, and time constraint. Then the researcher suggested some possible ways in hope to solve
these problems.
Key words: Writing skill, English essay writing, difficulties, solutions

1 Introduction

As writing is one the necessary means to communicate precisely in global interactions and
business in general, it is studied as a main course by English-major students at HUFI. At
university level, writing is used both as a standard system of communication and as a tool for
in EFL (English as a
Foreign Language) contexts will need English writing skills ranging from a simple paragraph and

problem of English-major students at HUFI that they are incapable of expressing themselves in a
clear, correct and comprehensive manner in essay writing. This is due to many factors. Raimes

language, they are talking not only about the difficulty of finding the right words and using the

Therefore, the focus of this investigation is to identify the obstacles in writing English essays that

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English-major students at HUFI face, and then suggest some corresponding solutions to deal with
those prolems.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 The writing skill

Various researchers have paid attion to the study of writing, along with the other skill of
language. Nunan (2003) defines:
Writing is both a physical and mental act. At the most basic level, writing is the physical act of committing
words or ideas to some medium. On the other hand, writing is the mental work of inventing ideas, thinking
about how to express them, and organizing them into statements and paragraphs that will be clear to a
reader.

Moreover, Richards (2008) notes that learning how to write in either first or second language is
one of the most difficult tasks students encounter. Kroll (2003) also observes that writing is a
complex process involving the mastery of numerous skills that contribute to the overall difficulty
of writing for any language learner. According to Hyland (2003), writing requires composing,
which implies the ability either to tell pieces of information in the form of narratives or
description, or transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing.
Therefore, it is viewed as a continuum of activities that range from the more mechanical or
formal aspects of writing to the more complex act of composing.
Similarly, according to Heaton (1979), the writing skill in a foreign language is complex and
difficult to learn not only the ability to manipulate sentences and use language effectively
whereas mechanical skill is the ability to use correctly those conventins peculiar to the written
language such as punctuation and spelling. In fact, Harmer (2007) defines the writing skill is a
process that should be carried out through different stages, including drafting, editing, planning
and final draft. In other words, the writing skill is considered to consist of planning, reflection
and the organization of ideas. Scholars regard the writing skill as a cognitive skill that writeres
are required not only to focus on sentence structure, lexical choices, spelling and punctuation, but
also master the linguistic knowledge and integrate ideas coherently and cohesively in written
discourse.
To sum up, writing is one of the most complicated skills in learning and practicing a language,
for it is a productive skill that needs various competence such as linguistic competence,
sociolinguistic competence and discourse knowledge as well as knowledge about language use
such as grammar, structure and vocabulary. As a result, language learners in general, English
language learners in particular, might be faced with a variety of obstacles in the writing process;
hence, these leaners might also encounter the most prevalent essay writing difficulties. In the
following section, the researcher intends to mention the problems related to the essay writing.

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2.2 The difficulties of English essay writing
There are several aspects of difficulties that EFL students may have in EFL writing such as poor
handwriting, poor spelling skills, or problems with grammar. On the other hand, in this review,
the reseacher would clarify two biggest problems like coherence and cohesion that students
encounter in their English essay writing.
Firstly, Johns (1986:247) defines that co
a multitude of reader-and-text- -based features mean cohesion (i.e., the
linking of sentences) and unity (i.e., sticking to the point). Reader-based features mean that the
reader interacts with the text depending on his/her prior knowledge. Recently, coherence is

Benjamins, 2006:192). Besides, Kouch (2004) points out that coherence conveys the ability of the
writer to combine sentences altogether in the text so that the reader is able to read and understand
it easily. In other words, coherence is the ability to create meaningful correct sentences with the
suitable choices of vocabulary items and following certain rules of word arrangement. Lee

some common essay writing problems as follows:

writing a paragraph without a topic sentence;
too specific controlling ideas;
difficulty in writing the thesis statement;
tendency om deviating from the controlling idea.
Another aspect is EFL essay writing cohesion. Many researchers agree that cohesion is related to
linking ideas and connecting sentences and phrases. The importance of text cohesion is claimed
that a text can stand as a text by means of cohesion.
semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a

readability in which writer needs to establish a link through the use of various cohesive devices
such as reference, ellipsis, substitution, conjunctions and lexical cohesion. To conclude, British

are constantly rubbing out what they have written while at the opposite extreme the writing is

2.3 Factors causing poor EFL writing

motivat

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The first problem is lack of motivation. For language learning, motivation is a key to get
successful. Harmer (2006) emphazies that many factors cause low motivation among learners,
including the fear of failure in reflecting their knowledge about the language, the fear of making
mistakes, and the uncertainty to show their productions. Needless to say, there are situations
wh
assignment may actually be. Obviously, it is a natural and wide-spread state that may be the result
of many outside and inside reasons. To overcome this challenge, instructors need to establish
writing habit among the students and encourage them to voice their thought.
Secondly, poor writing is also attributed to lack of reading. In fact, it is demonstrated that better
readers are better writers. According to Raimes (1998:42) emphasizes that the more students
read, the more they become familiar with the vocabulary, idiom, sentence patterns, organization
flow, and cultual assumptions of native speakers of the language. In addition to writing strategies
to raise the competence to write, reading is considered as the effective strategy to be followed and
appreciated. In other words, lack of reading is among causes leading dissatisfaction in English
essay writing.
In addion to the lack of motivation and reading, the impact o
target language hinders students from writing. In fact, each culture has its own ways of
organizing and perceiving speech and its own rhetorical conventions. Blanchard & Root
(2004:203) states that writing remains difficult to acquire and each language has its own writing
conventions that the writer needs to learn them without interfering with other language or
languages. In some cases, it seems that students are unaware of English writing rules, and their
mother language is activated in their minds instead of thinking in the target language. Therefore,
they simply put words together to create their own writing work as the same way they do in their
mother language. All in all, the influence of the first language is truly a obstacle in English essay
writing.
Lack of time is also a common problem that harm ability to produce creative writing.
There are many reason resulting in the lack of time such as unexpected incidents, personal

time to complete the assignments.

edia, the free

loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges
in difficulty from coming up with original id

outer reasons like depression, personal problems, or external distractions, severely obstructing
ability to write for shorter or longer periods of time.

a serious writing problem among most of the students. To put simply, the Internet development

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makes students lazy to brainstorm and develop ideas in their own ways; students likely depend on
sample essays. Consequently, students might feel that their abilities are just not enough to
perform this or that academic assignment, and this may cause the lack of self-confidence. As a
result, they might create discerning plagiarized materials to finish their assignments.
To sum up, research on the sources of EFL writing allows the reseacher to easily identify
difficulties in the process of English essay writing.

3 METHODOLOGY

The involved participants in this study were 76 second year English-major students. These
students were taking part in the Writing 3 course, which focuses on English essay writing, after
they finished the Writing 1 and 2 courses that train the students in sentence and paragraph writing
skills. The participants need to learn how to achieve academic English essay writing not only as a
compulsory subject of the English language curriculum but also as an English competence
requirement for their future jobs. The Writing 3 course lasts for 30 in-class periods and 60 self-
study periods, in which the students are required to write some types of essays such as process
essays, cause/effect essays, comparision/contrast essays, and argumentative essays.

First, the questionnaires were designed to ask students about their difficulties in essay writing and
factors affecting their writing, and then were handed out in class at the final in-class meeting.
Second, an interview was given to the immediate teacher including open-ended questions to gain

employed to get a clear picture about the writing problems of the English-major students.

4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

The questionnaires were delivered to the students at the middle of the course when they finished
how to write three kinds of essays, including process essays, cause/effect essays, and
comparison/contrast essays. The questionnaires consisted of two parts the former was utilized
to find out difficulties the students encounter in their English essay writing, and the latter asked
g. First, the students were directed to choose from
suggested difficulties they meet. The results were demonstrated as in Table 1.

Table 1:

Essay Writing Difficulties Frequency Percentage (%)

Coherence 46 60.5

Cohesion 40 52.6

Writing a thesis statement 30 39.5

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 Essay Writing Difficulties Frequency Percentage (%)

Writing a conclusion 27 35.5

Lexis 45 59.2

Grammar 36 47.4

Spelling 15 19.7

Punctuation 13 17.1

Capitalization 11 14.5

As shown in Table 1, coherence is the most challenging problem (with more than 60%).
Following coherence, 59.2% face difficulty in lexis, over 52% in cohesion, and over 47% in
grammar. The students also meet other problems like writing a thesis statement and a conclusion.
The challenges in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are proven to hinder just a small
number of the students.

reading as the main source. About 35% admit that they lack motivation in writing practice. One
more reason res

responded by a few students (as shown in Fig 1).

Fig 1: Chart Sources Affecting Essay Writing

When carrying out the interview with the incharge teacher, the researcher finds out the
difficulties the teacher realized in the essay writing class, which include organizing ideas,
choosing right words, coherence, and cohesion, etc. Moreover, the teacher observed the class
during the process of practicing essay writing and learned that the students had low motivation,
was lazy in reading, lacked vocabularyand used to express their thoughts as if they were
translating word by word as in their own language. Hence, it comes clear to record that the results

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in the questionnaires are reported as the same ideas said. In order for the learners to feel
comfortable and write a sound essay, they are urgently encouraged to build their reading and
writing habits since both skills are interrelated. The teacher agrees that reading is believed as an
input for EFL learners.

same problems when writing. An ana

confident to convey thoughts, organize ideas improperly, use awkward grammar, lack coherence
and cohesion.

5 RECOMMENDATIONS

There are many challenges in coming up with a good essay that is easy to read and attractive to
readers. In order to enhance essay writing skill among English-major students, there is a must for
the reseacher to come up with some solutions.
The first thing that need to be done is to create an environment that boosts learners to write down

concerns and interests are acknowledged, when they are given numerous opportunities to write
and when they are encouraged to become participants. It is also pointed out that it is both

are allowed this freedoom, their work is more successful and the quality of was better. As a
result, teachers should insprire students by suggesting several topics and encourage them to find
an aspect that may interest them.
Another way to help improve writing skills can be to encourage students to form reading habit.
Students should be recommended to read a lot; in fact, reading will help them increase their
knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, knowledge of the world as well as writing
style. Therefore, teachers should provide students with extensive reading materials and guide
them how to solve with that in terms of reading and writing. However, when students read to get
ideas, teachers should emphasize the risk of copying information and stress the consequences of
plagiarism.
Furthermore, it is advisable that teachers should create a positive atmosphere by arranging
students in pairs and groups to help students to get rid of the panic of writing and facilitate the
writing task. It is further important for teachers to assign homework activities to promote their
autonomy and responsibility. Students should be en

To solve the writing difficulties, students can be suggested using writing strategies such as free
writing, journal writing, writing e-mails and diaries. What is more, it may be profitable if teachers
add computer-based writing as a part of the course so that students are able to practice rapid
drafting. Students should be motivated to learn how to use English collocation dictionaries in

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their writing to enlarge their vocabulary and develop lexical usage. All in all, practicing the
writing strategies can make students feel at ease to write their essays.
Finally, teachers need to spend a great deal of time checking, marking, and giving feedback to
their students. F
discussion between teachers and students are suggested for revising and correcting essays.
Additionally, teachers should stimulate peer correction to train them to read critically, share
ideas, and give comments. From these activities, students may learn something from their
mistakes and get better.

6 CONCLUSION

To sum up, writing instructors should bear in mind that writing essays in English is not a simple
task to do and requires much time and effort. Hence, the present study is an attempt to investigate
major writing difficulties faced by English-major students at HUFI. Being familiar with the
problems that HUFI English-major students have would help the instructors better understand

different difficulties that prevent them from writing effective essays. In addition, it has been
found that less practice in reading, lack of motivation, impact of the first language, grammatical
weakness, etc. were the main reasons resulting in essay writing problems. To remove this
obstruction, it was recommended for both students and teachers to follow some given remedies.

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