Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia p–ISSN: 2541-0849 e-ISSN: 2548-1398

Vol. 7, No. 12, Desember 2022

 

AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ PROBLEMS IN WRITING ESSAYS

 

Wahyuni Rahmi, Clarry Sada, Dwi Riyanti

Universitas Tanjungpura

Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

 

Abstract

This research aimed to describe the problems sixth-semester English students face in writing essays and determine the factors that cause the problems. This research was designed to be qualitative, with a descriptive study as the methodology. The subject of this researcher was the twenty students in the sixth semester of the English language education study program, faculty of teacher training and education, Universitas Tanjungpura in the academic year 2022/2023, taken as the sample of the research by using the purposive sampling. Document analysis, qualitative surveys, and interviews were used to get the data. Tools of data collection used were documents, open-ended questionnaires, and interviews. The findings revealed that students had problems writing essays, especially with organization, mechanics, grammar, and vocabulary. Besides, it was also found that the factors caused the problems in writing essays were lack of knowledge, loss of motivation and practice, "writer's block," lack of ability to find related information and facts, lack of ability in word choices and vocabulary mastery, and unsupportive environment.

 

Kata kunci: Essay Writing; Students’ Problems; Descriptive Study

 

Introduction

In English teaching-learning activities, writing is one of the English skills that should be mastered by English language learners. Writing is considered one of the indicators of the student's success in learning English. According to Hyland (2022)., writing is vital to teaching and learning activities in higher education, which is a way for students to create and demonstrate their understanding of their courses. Writing helps students improve their communication and critical thinking skills. Writing improves students' ability to communicate and refine their ideas to others.

On the other hand, during education, a student's task is to complete a predetermined course. Usually, when completing these courses, students are given assignments in the form of essays, proposals, or even final assignments. Students are required to be able to develop good and correct writing skills.

 

 

 

According to Rezeki (2017), students' writing skills require producing texts with good consistency and coherence following grammatical and syntactical rules and writing mechanisms. Therefore, students' academic writing skills are one of the parameters that determine the success of their studies.

In the English Language Education Study Program, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Tanjungpura, especially for undergraduate students, one of the skills related to writing must be mastered by students, namely skills in compiling scientific descriptive studies within the scope of education. In this case, essay writing is one course that requires students to complete their studies. The essay is an important part of creating academic writing. In this current situation, many students, especially those in the university, need help writing their academic papers, like essays.

In addition, many students nowadays, particularly those in universities, need help to write properly about academic papers such as essays. The truth is that academic writing skills are important. Based on preliminary research conducted with several students at Universitas Tanjungpura, the researcher discovered that when students were writing essays, they encountered problems that caused the writing to fall short of the student's expectations. It has been stated that only sometimes, in writing, the results are positive. Students recognize the importance of academic writing skills. Students need help writing basic sentences of writing, such as those used in essays (Ayana et al., 2020).

Some previous studies have conducted similar research. The primary research was conducted by Faizah et al. (2022). The findings of the research showed that students had problems writing essays. Those problems are related to finding and developing ideas, the mechanics of writing and citation, grammar use, writing conventions, finding appropriate vocabulary, and problems in the coherence and cohesiveness of the text. Another research by Alfaruqy et al. (2022) also had done similar research with the previous research above. In this research, the findings showed that students had errors in faulty sentences consisting of the basic sentence structures, errors in using correct grammar, errors in mechanics, errors in vocabulary, and errors in the context of format.

Although there has been research on essays, as shown in previous research conducted by Faizah et al. (2022), which focused on problems in essay writing in general, and also research conducted by Alfaruqy et al. (2022), there is still little information about argumentative essays faced by students, such as those at Universitas Tanjungpura. Therefore, to fill this gap, the researcher conducted research at Universitas Tanjungpura to expand previous research findings. In line with the statement above, the researcher intended to investigate whether the use of Webtoon could answer two research questions as follows: 1) What are the problems faced by sixth-semester English students in writing argumentative essays? Furthermore, 2) What factors cause problems in writing argumentative essays for sixth-semester English students?

 

 

 

Research Method

The researcher conducted a qualitative research approach with a descriptive research design as a research methodology because, in this method, the things studied were related to events experienced by the subject of the study. According to Creswell & Creswell (2018, p. 41), “Qualitative research is an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.” Furthermore, "descriptive research focused on providing an accurate description or picture of the status or characteristics of a situation or phenomenon" (Johnson & Christensen, 2014, p. 407). This means that the study being researched only focuses on the research topic. On the other hand, according to Nassaji (2015), descriptive research is a method used. This method aims to draw and classify the phenomenon being researched.

The researcher chose to use descriptive research because the researcher wanted to find out and analyze the problems in writing essays that happened to the students in the sixth semester in Universitas Tanjungpura Pontianak, especially those in the English Language Education Study Program. Then, this research was also used to describe the factors that cause the problems in their essay writing. In conducting this research, the researcher selected participants by using purposive sampling. "Purposive sampling is all cases that mean some criteria that would be useful for quality assurance" (Creswell, 2014, p. 209). This research included twenty students in the sixth semester of the English language education study program, faculty of teacher training and education, Universitas Tanjungpura.

In the data collection phase, the researcher collected data through document analysis, followed by a qualitative survey, and ended with the interviews. "Document analysis can be written or text-based artifacts (textbooks, novels, journals, meeting minutes, logs, announcements, policy statements, newspapers, transcripts, birth certificates, marriage records, budgets, letters, e-mail messages, etc." (Ary et al.,2014, p. 445). The researcher started the research by conducting document analysis in the form of students' essays writing to classify what problems they found in the writing they made. The topic of the essays predetermined by the researcher was "Online Learning Should Be Used in Teaching and Learning Activities." All students were given the same title, aiming to observe and analyze students' understanding of the given topic.

The researcher continued with conducting the qualitative survey. According to Jones et al. (2013), the survey is used in research data by collecting information from large groups. This research used an open-ended questionnaire in a qualitative survey to generate long-form written/typed responses. This questionnaire aimed to learn more, in other words, to cross-check students' writings previously written by them. The questionnaire was distributed online through Google Forms to students who previously agreed to become research participants, namely those who were asked to write essays. The results of this open-ended questionnaire were written responses from students containing their opinions and experiences regarding the questions asked.

The research continued with an interview with the students who were chosen as research participants. According to Gay et al. (2012, p. 386), "An interview is a purposeful interaction in which one person obtains information from another." The researcher used semi-structured interviews in this study. In practice, the researcher conducted interviews in stages, each tailored to a different class of students. Each student had an estimated 15 - 20 minutes for the interview. Throughout the process, the researcher submitted questions that students must answer based on their circumstances when writing essays.

The researcher first gathered a sample of students who had participated in a qualitative survey for this interview. The researcher needed more information to clarify the statements made by students in the qualitative survey. As a result, the researcher conducted interviews to learn more about students' difficulties when writing essays and the factors that contributed to them.

In the analyzing phase, the researcher used initial names to replace the participants' real names when analyzing the data. This was done to protect the participants' confidentiality and to keep them safe from unwanted things in the future. Furthermore, the researcher analyzed the data using data from Creswell in 2014. To conduct the analysis, the researcher just adopted four of six steps of the data analysis proposed by Creswell (2014), namely; 1) Organizing and preparing the data for analysis, 2) Reading or looking at all the data, 3) Advancing how the description and themes represented in the qualitative narrative, and 4) Interpreting qualitative research.

The data analysis process began with gathering all the research findings from document analysis obtained from students' essay writing and qualitative surveys using open-ended questionnaires and interviews. Then, the researcher continued reading and writing the entire data transcript, which included students' writing, their responses in a qualitative survey using an open-ended questionnaire, and their explanations during the interviews. Furthermore, the researcher conducted the discussion by replacing the names of students who became participants with initials.

Furthermore, the data was supplemented with information derived from various responses analyzed from students' qualitative survey responses and interviews conducted using an open-ended questionnaire and a list of interview questions. Moreover, it concluded with the researcher's interpretation of the research, which was the researcher's opinion because the findings were related to the problem being studied, which is the problem found in the process of students' essay writing and the factors causing those problems. The researcher was flexible in conveying personal, research-based, and action meanings as the final results of data analysis.

 

Results And Discussion

The problems faced by the sixth-semester of English students in writing essays

            This part was intended to discover and describe the students' problems in writing essays. The researcher analyzed the data based on the research questions that had been formulated. The researcher used document analysis on students' essay writing to answer the first research questions, supplemented by data from an open-ended questionnaire and interviews. The researcher discovered that students frequently experience problems when writing essays are problems related to organization, mechanics, grammar, and vocabulary after analyzing the data.

Organization was one of the problems found in students' essay writing. This was related to how the structure of the essay was written by students in their essays. The problems were in the form of the structure of the essay, including the introductory paragraph (including topic and thesis statements), body paragraphs (supporting sentences), and concluding sentences. As an example, the researcher took two essays writing written by students that were written by CV and ARS.

The essay written by CV had an inappropriate structure, namely between the introductory paragraph, the body paragraph, and also the concluding paragraph. The first paragraph of the essay had no thesis statement in it. While the second until the fifth paragraphs needed to be clearer to be indicated as the body paragraphs. Those paragraphs did not show clear supporting sentences, including the evidence. It also happened to the last paragraph, which was supposed to be the concluding paragraph, but CV needed to clarify the statement.

In addition, for the essay written by ARS, the arguments presented were unclear, especially in the body paragraphs. In the body paragraphs, reading what ARS wanted to convey concerning the discussed topic was rather difficult. Besides, ARS also combined the body paragraphs into one, which should have been better separated into three parts. Aside from analyzing the problems related to the organization in students' essays through document analysis, the researcher also analyzed the problem through open-ended questionnaires and interviews. Some students stated in the questionnaire and interviews that they needed organizational help as stated by one of the students in the following excerpt.

The problems that I have when I write essays are the difficulties to find the evidence supporting my statement, the unity, and coherence between one sentence to another. Besides that, I also have problems such as lack of ideas, lack of imagination in writing, and also lack of sources that can be used as references.

(Interview with Er).

As indicated by the excerpts from Er, and also based on some of the students' essays writing, they supported that the students had problems related to the organization.

The next problem discovered in students' essay writing was the problem related to the mechanics. The problems of mechanics discovered in students' essays writing were related to capitalization and punctuation. As an example, the researcher took three essays writing written by students that were written by Ii, BYB, and YN. In the essay written by Ii, it was found that some of the first letters of the first words used in the sentences did not use the capital letter. As it was known, the first letter of the first word in a sentence must use a capital letter. The same problem is also found in the essay written by BYB. In the essay by BYB,some of the sentences still need to use capital letters for the first words of the sentences.

Moreover, the essay by YN was an example of an essay with a punctuation-related problem. The researcher found that there are some of the sentences missed the punctuation mark comma (,). In addition, from the open-ended questionnaire and interviews, it was found that students had problems related to mechanics, especially the use of punctuation. One of the students said, “Sometimes, when writing, I found it difficult to use correct punctuation. It is because when I don’t use the correct punctuation, then it can make the essay I made do not clear enough.” (Interview with UAAM). As indicated by the excerpts from UAAM, and also based on some of the students' essays writing, they supported that the students had problems related to mechanics.

Another problem found in students' essays was the problems related to grammar. The researcher took some examples of students' writing to prove that there were grammar-related problems. The examples were taken from RAPE, VJ, and Er. In the essay written by RAPE, there were ungrammatically sentences. RAPE used the incorrect form of the verb "become," which was supposed to be “becomes” as it was followed by the subject "it." it was also found that RAPE had the incorrect verb "other advantages," which was supposed to be "another advantage." A similar problem was also found in the essay made by VJ, which was the use of the word “become” that was supposed to be “became” because it was followed by the word "has," as it was indicated that the verb used was stood for present perfect tense.

On the other hand, Er also had some ungrammatical words in the essay. In the essay written by Er, it was missed the use of a possessive form of the pronoun "it," which was written in the text as "it is flexibility," which was supposed to be "its flexibility." Another ungrammatical word was the word "learner," which was supposed to be "learners," as it was followed by the word "have." Moreover, Er had a problem with the use of “an internet connection” after the word "have," which is supposed to be "the internet connections," as it was prescribed how the words should be used. Furthermore, it also found that Er had an ungrammatical word, "benefits," which was supposed to be "benefit," as it was followed by the word "another."

Besides, the researcher also got similar problems related to grammar from students' statements in the questionnaires and interviews. Students had explained about it in the questionnaire and also interviews. Two of the students said that “I have problems in grammar and getting stuck because I'm always thinking about what to write from Indonesian to English.” (Interview with FA) and “When writing the essay, I find it difficult to use appropriate grammar writing an essay.” (Interview with RJ). As indicated by the excerpts from FA and RJ, and also based on some of the students' essay writing, they supported that the students had problems related to grammar.

The last problem found in students' essay writing was related to vocabulary. It was related to the use of pronouns. The researcher took one example of students' essay writing, with the most prominent problems seen being related to vocabulary in the form of using appropriate words or pronouns written by GZ. In the essay written by GZ, in almost every paragraph, there was a sentence that used first-person pronouns such as "I, we, you, me," which should not be recommended for use in essay writing. Those expressions were unrecommended because using those in an essay could make the writing wordy, make the writer appear less confident in the presented ideas, and give the essay an informal tone.

Furthermore, from the analysis through open-ended questionnaires and interviews, some students stated that they had problems related to vocabulary. Two students, ARS and MM, stated that they face vocabulary-related problems when writing essays as shown in the following excerpts.

The problems I experience are usually a lack of ideas; vocabulary is not yet sufficient. It is a problem for me when choosing suitable and not convoluted words is also difficult for me. Those require a lot of time to think to choose the right words.

(Interview with ARS)

It is a problem when writing. I feel hard to connect the ideas in my writing. besides that, I'm also lacking in using formal vocabulary in writing essays.

(Interview with MM).

As indicated by the excerpts from ARS and MM, and also based on documents being analyzed that were students' essay writing, they supported that the students had problems related to vocabulary.

 

The factors that cause problems in writing essays to the sixth semester of English students

This section was intended to find out and describe the answers to the second research question related to the factors that cause students to have problems in writing essays. The researcher analyzed by using the results of the interview. The types of questions asked during the interview sessions required students to respond with answers accompanied by explanations. This was due to the researcher asking two questions during the interviews, which the students responded to by providing information about the factors that caused their difficulty in writing essays. According to the interviews, some factors cause student essay writing problems.

The first factor was the students' understanding of the topic covered in the essay. Factors related to students' knowledge and understanding of the topics caused students to procrastinate. Furthermore, their lack of knowledge of a topic discussed could be caused by a lack of motivation and a lack of practice in writing the essay itself. These stated CV: "For me, the factor that causes the problem in my writing is lacking knowledge about the topic I want to investigate or I do not familiar with it." (Interview with CV). That statement was also supported by RAPE, who said that "It happens because I lack motivation in writing, I have a habit of procrastinating the writing, and lack of practice in writing essays." (Interview with RAPE). According to the excerpts from CV and RAPE, the students' difficulties in writing essays were caused by a lack of knowledge, including a lack of motivation, a lack of practice, and a procrastination habit.

Students ' inability to think was another factor contributing to writing essays' problems. As a result, their writing needs to be completed or meet their expectations. These were stated by two students during the interview session, Ii and GZ. Ii said, “The cause I have problems writing essays is negative thinking. Before I made essay writing, I would think, "I think that is difficult to do." And it made me lazy to do it early." (Interview with Ii). Moreover, GZ stated that “In my opinion, the factor causing the problem is the writer's block. It makes me feel like I need some break from the writing that I do." (Interview with GZ). According to the excerpts from Ii and GZ, they supported the idea that the student's problems in writing essays could be due to students inability to think clearly, also known as writer's block.

In addition, a lack of ability to find information became another factor that caused students to have problems in writing essays. Students explained that when they had a new topic being discussed, sometimes they needed help finding information that was accurate, relevant, and reliable. This was stated by one of the students in the interview session, namely FA. FA said, “The factors that cause problems in writing essays are the lack of looking for references that can be used to make arguments and looking for valid facts or evidence that can support my essay writing.” (Interview with FA). As indicated by the excerpt from FA, students supported that the lack of finding related information could cause problems in writing essays.

The next factor that caused students problems in writing essays was the need for more ability in word choices and vocabulary. Some students stated that when writing, they found it hard to choose the correct words to use in their essays. In addition, some of them also explained that they needed to be mastering the vocabulary better, which caused them to have problems writing essays. BYB and M, two of the students interviewed, had made statements related to the factors that caused the problems in their essay writing: a lack of ability to choose word choices and vocabulary as indicated in the following excerpts:

I think the factors causing the problems are lack of ability in creating ideas, lack of vocabulary and lack of grammar.

(Interview with BYB).

I think the factor causing the problem in my writing is because my word choice is not very good. So, it seems that the idea I want to convey is already quite good, supported by facts, but because the word choice is not that good, that makes me unsatisfied with what I'm writing about.

(Interview with M).

As indicated by the excerpts from BYB and M, they supported that the students' problems in writing essays could be caused by the lack of ability to choose word choices and vocabulary.

Last but not least, there was also another factor found in the interview sessions related to the factor causing students' problems in writing essays. During the interview, a student, Er, said that the environment could be a factor causing problems in writing essays. The student said that when trying to write, a good environment was needed. This was because when writing, sometimes there were people around who could interfere with writing activities, so the writing could have been better. "Individual, like maybe I have another problem, so I can't focus on writing. And then the environment, when I write, I should be focused. However, sometimes it is hard because my friend like playing music, doing something noisy." (Interview with Er). According to the excerpt by Er, the students supported that it could be said that an un-surrounding environment can also cause problems in writing essays.

This research aimed to find out and describe the problems in students' essay writing and the factors causing those problems. The research was done with twenty students in the sixth semester of the English language education study program, faculty of teacher training and education, Universitas Tanjungpura, in the academic year 2022/2023 as the sample of the research. As is explained in the results section, the researcher found there are two main findings that researchers obtained from the interviews done with the students. For this discussion section, it will explain those two main findings.

One of the problems students face when writing essays is a problem related to organization. The analysis discovered that the organization problem was related to how the structure of the essay was written. It was related to the structure of the introductory paragraph (including topic and thesis statements), body paragraphs (supporting sentences), and concluding sentences. The finding of this research is in line with the previous study conducted by Cekiso et al. (2016), which found that students struggled to write introductions, developed coherent paragraphs, and write conclusions. Students' essays revealed that their introductions needed to adhere to academic writing standards.

This is also in line with the study conducted by Ashrafiany et al. (2020), who found that students needed to gain knowledge of the subject to determine the topic of the essay. They struggled to find topics and organize or compile essays because they must determine the topic and the information used in the essay. Therefore, the organization becomes one of the problems students experience when writing essays.

The next problem was related to mechanics. The problems were related to capitalization and punctuation in their writing. For capitalization, it was found that some students did not use the appropriate words at the beginning of the sentences. Meanwhile, for the punctuation, there still needed to be the use of punctuation in their essay. This finding is in line with the previous research conducted by Rahmatunisa (2014), which found that students had problems putting correct punctuation, making it a problem faced by EFL students. This is because writing not only expresses ideas but also organizes words.

Another problem was discovered in students' writing, which was the problem with grammar. Some of the essays written by students had ungrammatically sentencesAsidees from that, from the open-ended questionnaire and interview, students assumed it was a struggle to use correct grammar in their essay writing. Some students stated that they needed help dealing with grammar when writing an essay. They stated that they needed clarification about which tenses to use in each essay paragraph.

This research finding aligns with the previous research by Bukit (2020), who found that students made tense mistakes when making sentences. They need to pay more attention to how to use the tenses when writing. This caused misinformation to be channeled through the writing they made. Moreover, similar previous research by Toba et al. (2019) also explained that errors found in students' work were subject-verb agreement, tenses, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, plural forms, -s/-es, and -ed forms. This means that grammar problems are also found in writing essays.

Moreover, vocabulary-related problem is also found in students' writing. When doing the analysis, the research found that some students use first-person pronouns, which should not be used in essays. If the vocabulary used needed to be clearer, then it could make the essay became unreadable. Excerpts by the students also showed that when writing essays, they were unsure which vocabulary to use for their essays to be good and appear more scientific. This was because they were less accustomed to using vocabulary that can be described as more scientific.

The finding of this research is in line with research conducted by Ariyanti & Fitriana (2017), who found that some students used nonacademic words in their essays, such as "thing," which was not considered academic or scientific word diction. Furthermore, as it is well known that mastery of vocabulary is essential in essay writing, this can help writing become more expressive. According to the current findings and previous research, some problems arise for students when writing essays. The problems are divided into four categories: organization, mechanics (punctuation and capitalization), grammar, and vocabulary. Students assumed that if these problems arose while they were writing essays, the results of their essays writing would suffer as a result.

The researcher used interviews to find those factors related to the next findings of this research, which is about the factors that cause students' problems in writing essays. One of the factors that influenced the occurrence of problems in writing essays by students was the need for more knowledge, less motivation, and less practice in writing essays. This caused students to procrastinate on work or assignments. When students do this in their essays, it can lead them to less-than-optimal writing, especially regarding organization. Due to conditions in students who lose enthusiasm to do something, enrich themselves with essay writing exercises, and achieve specific goals, this can impact the essay writing process being worked on. This research finding is in line with the  previous research conducted by Fareed et al. (2016), which showed that undergraduate students' problems with writing activities were influenced by a lack of reading and writing practice, low motivation, and a lack of ideas. As a result, their writings produce less than optimal results.

The next factor that causes problems in students' essay writing is the inability to think clearly. In this case, students writing essays experienced writer's block as a result of difficulties encountered during the writing process. The difficulties could manifest as a lack of clarity of thought and organization, a lack of focus and inspiration, overthinking the topic, and other similar disorders. Those factors can be said as the factors that cause students' problems in writing, especially the problems related to mechanics and grammar. This is in line with the research conducted by Sari (2018), which found that students needed help to write their ideas because the features of the Indonesian language differ greatly from those of English.

In addition, students' problems in writing essays were also caused by needing more ability to find information that was accurate, relevant, and reliable to the topic. In this case, if the conditions mentioned earlier occur to students, the results obtained from their writing are affected, especially made them had problems related to the organization. If the writer has difficulty finding information to support his argument, it will affect the essay being written, particularly for readers. The finding of this research is similar to the previous research conducted by Nenotek et al. (2022), which described that students' problems in writing essays included aspects of content such as thesis statements, developing ideas related to personal experience, illustrations, facts, opinions, and descriptions of use/cause, comparison/contrast.

Besides, other factors also affect student problems in writing student essays, namely, a lack of ability to choose words and master vocabulary. Students who wrote essays, in this case, stated that they spent a significant amount of time thinking about the words to use in their essays, which made them feel that their ability in word choices and mastering vocabulary was lacking. When they make such statements, their lack of vocabulary is a contributing factor to the problem related to vocabulary itself. This aligns with the previous research conducted by Febriani (2022), who found that students needed more vocabulary mastery and choosing the right words to use in writing essays.

Moreover, the un-surrounding environment (such as noisy and unconducive conditions) also affected students' problems in writing essays. When students are in an environment that is not conducive to writing, such as a place that is too noisy or has too many people, their writing will suffer. This allows students to have problems in writing, especially those related to organization, mechanics, grammar, and vocabulary. The finding of this research is similar to the previous research done by Budjalemba & Listyani (2020), which found that a non-conducive environment, such as inappropriate time and class settings, and rigid regulations in academic writing are all factors that contribute to students' writing problems.

 

Conclusion

In summary, there are two main findings that the researcher obtained from doing this research. When writing essays, students experience problems in the organization, which affects the sentence structure of essays, which makes their writing in-coherent. In addition, students also faced other problems related to mechanics, such as punctuation and capitalization problems in writing essays. Sometimes, they could have used the capital letters of each first word in the sentences, and the words were miswritten. Besides, students needed help with the grammar used in essay writing. They also needed help using vocabulary, such as using words that could cause an informal tone in the essays, which affected sentence production.

Furthermore, students also pointed out the factors that caused students problems in writing essays. The factors were the lack of motivation and practice in writing essays. This caused students to procrastinate on work or assignments, which affected them to have problems related to the organization. Writer's block also became another factor causing problems related to mechanics and grammar in writing essays. Whichit caused students who were working on essay writing activities to be unable to continue what they had written, or they were said to be stuck at a certain point in the story being worked on. Students also explained that they needed more ability to find accurate, relevant, and reliable information.

Besides that, the lack of ability to choose words and master vocabulary also affected students' writing and made them have problems in the form of vocabulary. Students who wrote essays stated that they spent much time to think the words used in the essay, which made them feel that their ability in word choices and mastering vocabulary needed to be improved. Another factor was the un-surrounding environment which made students need help with organization, mechanics, grammar, and vocabulary. When students are in an environment that is not conducive to writing, such as a place that is too noisy or has too many people, their writing will suffer.

Aside from the findings of this research, the researcher found a limitation of the research conducted. The limitation is related to the research's scope, which employs a small number of participants, namely only students at a specific level. Future research of this type would be preferable to use a wider scope, such as a larger number of participants or taking samples from several classes at the same level.

 

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Wahyuni Rahmi, Clarry Sada, Dwi Riyanti (2022)

 

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Syntax Literate: Jurnal Ilmiah Indonesia

 

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