Problems in Learning English Academic Writing among ESL Undergraduate Students at Public and Private Universities in Malaysia

HRMARS - Academic writing has been a daunting task for most English as Second Language (ESL) and English as Foreign Language (EFL) students. This is due to the facets of academic writing that require the writers to be proficient in English language and adhere to the stylistics use of the language. Past studies have cited that some of the problems faced by students are incorrect use of vocabularies, grammatical errors, unable to maintain cohesion and coherence. However, there is scarce of in-depth studies that focus on problems faced by undergraduate students where comparisons are made between public and private universities. By employing multiple case study approach, a total of 19 undergraduate students were purposely selected from two public and two private universities in Malaysia. To understand deeper into the students’ experience and problems, the researchers conducted focus group discussions, lesson observations, and analysed several related documents. Data were analysed thematically using thematic and cross case analysis where five emerging themes arise which are writing issues, language-related issues, referencing skills, searching for online sources, and lack of written feedback. The paper indicates several implications for teaching English academic writing that could help to bridge practice gap and suggested a few recommendations for future research.