Challenges Encountered by the First-Year Students in English Writing Paragraphs

By and large, writing plays a vital part in acquiring English proficiency. Especially in tertiary education, students usually experience various challenges and difficulties in writing English. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the significant writing challenges reported by first-year English major students at Van Lang University. The researcher can explore the writing challenges from the students’ perspectives by employing the semi-structured interview using the qualitative method. Thirty Faculty of Foreign Languages students participated in the semi-structured interviews to collect data for the study. The findings reflected that the use of vocabulary was the most challenging factor for students from good to poor English writing competencies. Spelling and grammar were also significant challenges encountered by most students with low-level writing competencies. Meanwhile, punctuation was the students' least challenge when writing a paragraph. This study will make some important contributions to the deep understanding of the writing challenges struggled by EFL students. Identifying the major writing challenges enables the teachers to explore effective teaching methods and classroom activities to facilitate the students’ writing processes.