Perceived Difficulties in Academic English Writing among Thai EFL Learners
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Abstract
This study investigated what difficulties Thai university students have when writing in academic English and explored the methods they use to overcome these challenges. Fifty-four fourth-year students were asked to fill out a questionnaire to see what common writing issues they faced, and eight selected students participated in small groups to share more about their experiences and how they coped with these problems. To reveal the students’ writing problems, descriptive statistics were used to analyze quantitative data using mean scores, standard deviations, and percentages, and qualitative data were grouped with similar ideas from the semi-structured interviews. The results show that the students struggled mainly with two main areas: 1) emotional barriers, such as low confidence and lack of motivation (x̄=3.67, S.D.=0.61), and 2) language problems, such as grammatical errors (=3.50, S.D.=0.53). Thus, the majority of students used different techniques to deal with these challenges, such as creating a supportive writing environment, working in groups, and using online tools to check their grammar.
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