EFL Students’ Challenges & Solutions During and After the Pandemic: A Four-Year Study in an Academic Writing Class
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1501.25Keywords:
Academic Writing, EFL learners, writing obstacles, COVID-19 pandemicAbstract
Academic writing is a genre of writing which is considered challenging and difficult by many language learners. The underlying reason is that there are many requirements to make a good piece of writing. Many skills are required in this type of writing, including, for example, paraphrasing, synthesizing, and summarizing. Academic Writing students therefore often face various problems in this “nightmare” course. This study was thus conducted to delve into the problems that 60 Academic Writing students faced, and their alternative solutions during and after the pandemic. From the data collected, it was found that in general, the students faced similar problems like having difficulties in paraphrasing, finding ideas, collaborating with others, understanding the materials, having a lack of confidence, and concentrating on the lectures. In a particular situation, that is, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were two other significant problems faced by the students: an unstable Internet connection and hindrances to work collaboratively online. Three university lecturers were also interviewed to find their opinions about what Academic Writing lecturers could do to help students minimize their learning obstacles. This study is hopefully useful for teachers of Academic Writing to discover the common problems that their students may encounter. As for the students, it is hoped that through this study, they can anticipate emerging problems and solve them.
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