EFL Students’ Academic Writing Challenges at the Foundation Programme in the University of Nizwa: Challenges and Remedy

Many teachers and educationalists in the EFL Context are currently focusing on students’ academic writing challenges. This study aims to explore how do collaborative learning and teaching strategies influence academic writing performance among foundation program students and to find out the types and causes of these challenges, identify why students make such errors and determine strategies to minimize or mitigate them. Moreover, to explore how The study was conducted in the spring 2023 in the Foundation Programme at the University of Nizwa in the Sultanate of Oman. The researchers collected 20 samples of students’ writings from Spring Cycle 1 (approximately two months), and then analyzed errors made. Moreover, one of the researchers interviewed students and teachers to discover their perceptions about academic writing and students’ struggles to write. The present study adopted a constructive grounded theory approach to analyze the collected data, helping the researchers understand the problems that students face. Simultaneously, the researchers used ATLAS.ti, a computer-assisted data analysis software, to enable them to analyze the data adequately. The findings revealed that the students made different linguistic and cognitive errors. The findings obtained from this study may contribute to the EFL field, offering insights into pedagogy, teacher training, and language centres in Oman and beyond. This study highlighted practical recommendations and EFL pedagogical implications