The Academic Writing Challenges of Undergraduate Students: An Exploratory Study at a Sino-Foreign University in China

It is essential for students to achieve a desired level of competence in academic writing in English Medium Instruction (EMI) undergraduate programmes since their academic performance is closely subject to the quality of produced academic texts. However, at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), a leading Sino-Foreign Cooperative university in China, Year 1 students who lay their language foundation by taking EAP classes are observed to experience academic writing difficulties as they accommodate their existing writing knowledge to the conventions of academic writing at the tertiary level. Having adopted a questionnaire and focus-group interview, this study aims to investigate writing difficulties encountered by Year 1 students among 48 B1-level participants. The findings are subdivided into three thematic sections: (1) students’ general attitudes towards academic writing; (2) students’ perceived difficulties of academic writing; and (3) students’ adopted writing strategies. It is notable that, despite the effectiveness of the current EAP teaching, overall, half of the participants still regard academic writing as difficult. While these students experience various levels of difficulty in referencing, idea generation and development, organisation, lexis and grammar use, they proactively implement numerous writing strategies to tackle these barriers. Accordingly, pedagogical implications will be examined for enhancing EAP teaching praxis.