Thuyloi university english majored students’ challenges in writing skill

3 ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to find out the mistakes and provide solutions to and challenges in writing skills that students majoring in English at Thuyloi University are fa

INTRODUCTION

Writing is a language skill that people use as an essential medium to express their thoughts, ideas, and attitudes In the process of learning English, writing skills are often considered difficult for learners, because to be able to write English well requires learners to have language knowledge, including the ability to use linguistic knowledge, the ability to use contextual vocabulary, the ability to organize ideas, and logical and coherent thinking "Writing is a difficult skill for native and nonnative speakers alike because writers must balance multiple issues in their writing such as content, organization, purpose, audience, vocabulary and mechanics which means using the right punctuation, spelling and capitalization" (Abu Rass, 2015, p 49-59)

Learning to write is a relatively complex and time-consuming process Thus, English learners need patience and regular practice In the process of teaching English writing skills, teachers must constantly explore and apply creative and appropriate teaching methods to create excitement, which may gradually help learners improve their writing ability and become more confident when learning this skill

Students often show negative attitudes towards writing This is due to their fear of making mistakes in writing as they are not confident to express their thoughts through writing In this regard, to the researchers' best knowledge, few studies have been conducted to show the attitude of students towards writing (Abdul-Kareem, 2014; Mohammad, 2020; Yahya,

2017) The negative attitudes generally arise from their incompetence in syntax, coherence, idea expansion, content selection, topic sentence, rhetorical conventions, mechanics, organization, lack of vocabulary, and inappropriate use of vocabulary In these studies, writing s ms to be the most difficult skill to improve, ee therefore, it needs a lot of time and requires more attention In addition, writing skill is significant for students because in educational contexts, it is the major factor for a successful and much better academic performance However, learning to write well is usually problematic Most students often face various difficulties in writing, and they believe that it is a challenging task to take

In fact, English in general and English writing skills in particular are a big barrier for Vietnamese students today According to the statistics of English subject scores of the Ministry of Education and Training, in the national high school exam in 2022, there are 446,648 English high school graduation exams with scores below 5, accounting for 51.65% (My Ha, 2022) This has shown the low English proficiency of the majority of Vietnamese students Although they have been learning English since elementary schools until universities, not to mention extra English classes at international English centers, many students still do not meet the requirements of English skills for work in businesses and agencies The difficulties in English writing skills are also clearly shown in the IELTS exam results as IELTS test takers often receive the lowest band in writing compared to the

3 other skills - Listening, Reading, and Speaking (Prasad, 2022) As mentioned above, writing skills require many different aspects of knowledge, so it is no wonder that writing becomes an exceedingly difficult skill for most students, even in their mother tongue

Thuyloi University always considers English an important subject in the learning curriculum The university focuses on teachi ng English to all stud ents in the first and second year Moreover, this subject has also become one of the compulsory subjects in the training process for all students Since 2021, the School of International Education [SIE] of Thuyloi University has developed the English-majored program with 2 main majors that include English Management and English translation and interpretation to help students receive intensive training in this language

However, English in general and English writing skills in particular are usually d ficult if for most non-English majored and English majored students The low English entrance exam scores of this university’s students may be one firm evidence for this statement Thuyloi University used to specialize in training students in the fields of irrigation, electricity, and engineering, so at first, these majors did not require high test scores and proficiency in the English subject Students entering this university only need to pass the

“benchmark” As a result, the majority of students' knowledge of English is still limited Their language skills, especially writing skills are not good Nevertheless, students majoring in English are no exception Although the admission score is higher than the

7 average level of other majors, in general, the English skills of English major students of Thuyloi University are still diverse According to the list of English language majors’ scores published by Thuyloi University on school website (điểm chu n ẩ trường Đại học

Th y L i, 2022), the entrance scores of this major in the last ủ ợ two years were quite high They were 23.55 in 2021 and 25.70 in 2022 In addition, there were also many students who are admitted to the university by the high school profile with score 24.00 in 2021 and 24.34 in 2022 This leads to different levels among English major students It can be inferred that a part of English majored students at Thuyloi University may also face challenges in writing skills

This research study aims to find out the difficulties in writing of English majored students at Thuyloi University It also intended to offer some recommendations on how to help students overcome those problems In order to achieve the above objectives, the following research questions were addressed

1 What common writing mistakes are English-majored students facing?

2 What challenges in writing skills are English-majored students facing?

3 What are some strategies/recommendations/solutions to help improve students’ writing skills?

LITERATURE REVIEW

Review of theoretical background

Writing is a graphic representation of speech A student communicates his or her thoughts and feelings through writing and speaking skills Speaking creates a communication situation between the speakers who deliver their message to the listeners However, in the case of writing, it is quite different; the writer conveys his message through his feelings and ideas Furthermore, writing is the act of forming letters or characters and artistically assembling them to express ideas; it is an essential component of learning any language

8 Several academics define "writing." It is defined as a "transformation of knowledge that involves convincing readers of the value, significance, and credibility of one's work" (Tardy, 2005, p 325) It obliges the learners to possess the capacity to incorporate various necessary skills, which may involve gathering, revising, synthesizing, and rewording the information (Akiko Tetsuro, 2001) Likewise, Abdul-Kareem (2013) describes writing & as “the construction and development of techniques taught in universities, such as organizing and generating students’ ideas and critical thinking and developing vocabulary and grammatical syntax” (p 1553) Sperling & Fredman (2001) tried to define the nature of writing as a set of sub-processes that include planning and reviewing Observing this process, the researchers believe that steps need to be followed when writing an essay Regardless, there are some points to keep in mind, such as the quality of the language and the addressee being written about

Writing is a necessary skill for university students, as it is the primary mode of communication in academic and professional settings The ability to write clearly and effectively is crucial for students to succeed in their academic coursework and beyond Writing skills help students present their ideas coherently, communicate with clarity, and express their thoughts persuasively

University courses demand a high level of writing proficiency, and students are expected to produce a variety of written assignments, such as essays, research papers, and case studies Writing skills are crucial for students to excel in these assignments and earn good grades Moreover, writing skills are essential for building critical thinking skills, which are critical for academic success Lado (1971) states that graphemes are a graphic representation of a language, and information is conveyed through the written medium through the use of conventional graphemes Furthermore, Gathumbi and Masembe (2005) proposed two categories to evaluate students' essay writing: basic and advanced skills The correct use of vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and being well-written are basic skills of writing

9 Strong writing skills allow students to think critically by analyzing and synthesizing information, making logical connections between ideas, and developing well-structured arguments Writing skills also help students develop research skills by enabling them to locate and evaluate credible sources, organize, and analyze data, and present their findings in a clear and concise manner

In addition to academic success, writing skills are also required for professional success

In the workplace, employers often value good writing skills as they help employees communicate effectively, write clear and concise reports, and engage with clients and stakeholders Writing skills are, therefore, an essential part of employability, and students who possess strong writing skills are more likely to succeed in their professional careers

In conclusion, writing skills are vital for university students, and it is essential for universities to prioritize teaching and enhancing these skills in their curriculum By providing students with the necessary tools and support to develop their writing skills, universities can equip them with the skills they need to succeed academically and professionally.

Main challenges in writing skills

Writing properly is considered a crucial challenge for university students The most typical challenges emerge due to a lack of motivation, a lack of ideas, incomplete syntax, inadequate writing facilities, and teachers’ feedback Further study is essential to uncover and assess those variables that negatively impact students’ writing skills, so challenges in writing can be more effectively managed if the components that create them are recognized (AbuRass, 2015) In his research, Mehrabi (2014) indicated that, in contrast to receptive skills and potentially even speech, writing demands a greater understanding of grammatical structure Writing, in both practical and communicative senses, has specific qualities that result in diverse inputs to total language development Manchón (2011), as referenced in Sanjana (2015), claimed that writing is employed regularly in language practice for learning other languages

10 Both writing- -learn and learning-to to-write tasks help to develop the learners’ foreign language skills Ur (1996) recognized that the principle and purpose of writing skills are to express ideas and convey the message to the reader Additionally, the writers should be attentive to some formal aspects such as neat handwriting, correct spelling, correct use of punctuation and vocabulary, and standard grammar These characteristics are necessary because higher standards of language are usually required in writing than in speaking He also stated that more accuracy of expression, more careful creation, and a more particular and different vocabulary are also key features of writing The most important point when a student submits a piece of original writing is to check whether the ideas and events presented are interesting and significant or not Additionally, the writer should organize his thoughts and ideas and present them through the writing in a way that the readers can read and understand it easily and feel pleased to read it However, maintaining a fair balance between content and form is one of the problems in teaching writing skills (Sanjana, 2015) Klimova (2010) performed research on students from the Faculty of Informatics and Management at the University of Hradec Králové The study's goal was to explain writers' abilities After reviewing students' written activities, the results revealed that students made errors in two areas, one of which was the stylistic component of their writing This mostly concerns register and appropriateness, overly lengthy sentences, poor words, or phrase choices, and so on It also clearly illustrates that EFL students confront this challenge when writing

In general, challenges in writing can be categorized into linguistic, psychological, cognitive, causal, and pedagogical categories (Fareed, Ashraf, & Bilal, 2016) Furthermore, an unsuitable structure complicates the content and comprehension of the text; they struggle with the structural components of English Likewise, an incoherent text fails to communicate ideas, which causes a lack of confidence in students even if they have mastered syntactic, lexical, and grammatical command over text composition Also, learners' lack of confidence is affected by a teaching strategy that does not conform to their learning styles and cultural backgrounds Poor writing skills are attributed to two factors: the teacher and the student Teachers lack an appropriate educational approach to teaching writing, effective feedback for students, prompt feedback, and, most importantly,

11 the ability to motivate students Students, on the other hand, face a number of difficulties, such as L1 transfer effects and a lack of reading, motivation, and practice (Fareed, Ashraf,

According to extensive research, writing in a second or foreign language learning context is a complex, difficult, and demanding task According to Alsamadani (2010), "this difficulty and complexity arise from the fact that writing includes discovering a thesis, developing support for it, organizing, revising, and finally editing it to ensure an effective, error-free piece of writing" (p 53) Although writing has been recognized as an extremely important skill, particularly in the academic context, research studies have found that it does not have a deserving place in language programs (Dempsey et al., 2009; Badger and White, 2000; White and Arndt, 1991) Language usage refers to students' correct application of grammatical rules, correct verb forms, subject-verb agreement, proper sentence structure, appropriate vocabulary, entire phrases, and avoidance of precise translation from the mother tongue to the target language (Tyner, 1987; Kharma, 1987; Zamel, 1985) As a result, students will struggle to express themselves adequately unless they have a clear idea of what they will write about and adhere to writing principles Moreover, grammar and spelling are essential for conveying accurate and clear messages because "misused grammar or spelling can frequently lead to problems and terrible losses" (Muslim, 2014, p.107) Language use problems are defined as learners' inability to fulfill the following requirements in thei r writings: correct grammar, a variety of vocabulary, meaningful punctuation, correct layout conventions, spelling accuracy, using a variety of sentence structures, linking ideas and information across sentences to develop a topic, and developing and organizing the content clearly and convincingly (Hedge,

Review of previous studies

The writing skill is generally recognized by students as a difficult skill among the three skills of listening, speaking, and reading because it involves a lot of unlimited factors such as time, language knowledge, vocabulary, etc It requires the writer to have a good knowledge base, and a lot of practice, but in school, this skill has not been given much

12 attention, leading to confusion in the process of learning English for students If pupils have a weak foundation in writing, it can cause significant drawbacks in their writing performance In order to understand more about the actual difficulties in writing, we have consulted the previous research articles of many authors It has been pointed out that the main difficulties leading to poor writing skills in English majors’ students are vocabulary, grammar, motivation, lack of ideas, teacher’s feedback, poor spelling, and facilities

The first challenge is about vocabulary In a study by Mohamed Ali Al-Khairy in 2013 in Saudi Arabia with 75 participants from Taif University, the main problem they had was employing the right vocabulary in their academic writing Most of the students failed to communicate their ideas because of their weak vocabulary (Shagia Afrin, 2016) Students who have a strong vocabulary can communicate ideas more effectively while speaking or writing, and students with little vocabulary can benefit from using an electronic dictionary and engaging in more reading activities (Mohamed, 2022) Learners' inability to employ suitable discourse markers, the wrong vocabulary to represent their ideas, or the habit of using the same words over and over again in their writing (Abdullah, 2020) Similar to this, it was discovered that the word order was improper and made it difficult to explain meaning (Fareed, Almas, Bilal, 2016) Because of their limited vocabulary and lack of expertise in word choice, EFL students frequently utilize the same words, misuse vocabulary words, and write with unclear meanings (Ahmed, 2019) Also, they select inappropriate words or phrases that do not further the meaning (Shagia, 2016)

The second challenge is about grammar Writing requires a strong understanding of grammar Grammar gives details that aid readers in understanding what it means (Mohamed, 2022) They struggle with sentence construction, cohe rence, and cohesion, including punctuation, tense, articles, subject-verb agreement, capitalization, fragments, and spelling (Shagia, 2016) Similar to Shagia Afrin (2016), grammar and syntax problems were the language concerns in the learners' writing, prepositions, articles, tenses, singular/plural, verbs, sentence structure, and the usage of colloquial and spoken idioms were among the mistakes (Fareed, Almas, Bilal, 2016) Grammatical issues are

13 one of their main writing challenges since it is difficult and challenging for learners to compose sentences with proper English structure (Ahmed, 2019)

It is also suggested that one difficulty students can encounter is a lack of motivation on the part of both teachers and students (Fareed, Almas, Bilal, 2016) If students lack motivation, they might not want to carry on with their learning (Saydullayeva Nasiba, Umarov Bobir Norboyevich, 2022) They simply want to pass their English course with a passing grade That demonstrates their lack of enthusiasm for English, which hinders their academic success They lack motivation and experience stress in the classroom when learning English (Shagia, 2016) If students can choose to write about their topics of interest, they are more motivated to write, and th efore, the quality of wer riting can be improved (Ibrahim Mohamed Alfaki, 2015)

Lack of ideas and focus were also mentioned as contributing factors to writing issues (Fareed, Almas, Bilal, 2016) Students lack topic knowledge, and they cannot write well, so they lack the confidence to put their ideas on paper (Fareed, Almas, Bilal & Shagia,

2016) Sometimes, students spend too much time thinking and trying to come up with ideas because they do not have enough ideas to start writing (Salem Saleh Khalaf Ibnian,

2017) Also, several pupils claim that the subject's complexity and their lack of interest prevent them from understanding it (Awham Rasheed Mohammad, Khaldoon Waleed Husam Al-Mofti, Juma'a Qadir Hussein, 2020)

Teachers' feedback is also a factor that greatly affects students' writing skills The majority of students agree that teaching writing skills, one of the most important and challenging skills for EFL learners, is something the teacher should take very seriously (Ahmed, 2019) As long as the teachers’ feedback is more supportive, more attentive, and l s judging, students can learn a lot from that and improve their writing (Ibrahim, 2015) esThe writing instructor should include encouraging remarks in their written feedback to inspire students (Ibrahim, 2015) Sometimes, the evaluation provided by the teachers is sometimes confusing, incorrect, and imbalanced (Ibrahim, 2015), which do not help students improve their writing

14 Another challenge students face in their writing tasks is poor spelling Those who have trouble with spelling will find it difficult to develop this ability (Mohamed, 2022) Numerous mistakes in spelling and punctuation were also discovered in Pakistan and Bangladesh (Fareed, Almas, Bilal & Shagia, 2016) Students frequently spell words based on how they pronounce them, they make spelling mistakes like missing, adding, transposing, and substituting letters, among other things (Shagia, 2016)

The seventh and also the final challenge to students' writing skills is that the lack of other necessary facilities will impede the development of their writing abilities (Fareed, Almas, Muhammad, 2016) The size of our classrooms and the length of our courses are also possibly contributing factors; these conditions prevent students from developing their writing skills The ambiance in the classroom is unsuitable for learning (Fareed, Almas, Bilal, 2016) Also, it appears vital to provide classrooms with the required audio-visual tools in order to maintain students' interest in learning the English language and make up for whatever deficiencies they may have developed during their time in school (Ali Al- Khairy, 2013)

Researchers from many countries where English is a second language have pointed out many errors and challenges faced by English majors’ students Specifically, there are seven main mistakes that most students make: vocabulary, grammar, motivation, lack of ideas, teacher's feedback, poor spelling, and facilities This study will examine whether or not students majoring in English at Thuyloi University encounter the same errors and challenges as above In the same vein, we try to provide some recommendations for improving writing skills in English learning.

METHODOLOGY

Participants

The sample of the study included 133 students who were the first- and second-year English majors at Thuyloi University The number of male students who joined the English major was quite low Therefore, for this study, the female participants are 108, while the male participants are 25 They are all between the ages of 18 and 21 and speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue According to the statistics of the survey questionnaire, the participants are admitted to the university by different admission methods, such as high school profile, university entrance exam score, or direct admission

Where are you from? -Ha Noi

16 Especially, nearly 80% of students passed the school by the high school profile Moreover, first-year students tended to use their high school profile to apply for admission, but second-year students mostly used their scores on the national high school exam This shows that the accuracy level of academic ability, specifically the English level of the first-year students, is not as good as that of the second-year students Furthermore, since the majority of students come from urban areas and only 21.8% of students are from rural areas, it is easy to explain why there is such a big difference in students’ English levels

In addition, in terms of the amount of time students studied English at school, most of them studied English for seven years or more, which means that they had considerable knowledge in English on average That is also partly reflected in their scores and our survey, in which their high school exam scores are quite good (6–8 and 8 or higher) However, there were still about 10.5% of students with scores below average.

Research instruments

The instrument used in this research was a questionnaire The researchers conducted a practical survey to collect data from the participants The questionnaire was adapted from the ones in Phil Wood ‘s (2018) study and Shagia Afrin’s (2016) study The researchers consulted the questionnaires in the above studies since they had the appropriate evaluation criteria and composition for this study The questionnaire consisted of three parts The first part is general information, including seven questions about the personal information of the participants in order to assess the ability to generalize the practicality of the researchers The second part contains items about difficulties and challenges in the writing skills of English-majoring students at Thuyloi University This part included two sub-sections: the writing mistakes and the challenges Section one comprised 18 questions with five main items involving the following proposed difficulties of English writing skills: (1) vocabulary, (2) grammar, (3) punctuation and spelling, (4) sentence structure, and (5) coherence and cohesion Additionally, there is an open-ended question asking what skill they thought to be the easiest or most difficult Section two was about writing

17 challenges In this section, there were 17 opinion questions with four main items that included challenges in writing English: (1) motivation, (2) lack of ideas, (3) teacher’s feedback, and (4) writing facilities Finally, the third part was recommendations, advice, and solutions This part consisted of 12 Likert scale questions and offered learners essential and useful advice on writing English The last question was also an open-ended question asking for some suggestions to help learners improve and strengthen their English writing skills The questions in the questionnaire were set to obtain information about their opinions, attitudes, problems, and solutions as an English-majoring student These questions were designed to gather information about the problems they are facing while writing and the ways to deal with them.

Data collection process

This research project was conducted at Thuyloi University It started in the second semester of the academic year 2022-2023 The researchers used Google Forms to create the questionnaire and sent it to all participants via email Then the data were collected from the answers of participants by the statistics of the Google Forms In this study, the researchers used quantitative data collected by closed-ended and optional questions The data of the study were analyzed through the use of descriptive methods such as statistics, frequency, opinion, and selection.

Data analysis procedures

The result of the survey conducted among the participants was counted as percentage The researchers processed the data manually and put these percentages in tables and from which inferred the findings From the responses of the participants, the researcher finds out the reasons and solutions for their writing problems (Afrin, 2016)

FINDINGS

What challenges in writing skills are English-majored students facing?