CHALLENGES IN DEVELOPING ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS AMONG EFL LEARNERS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/Keywords:
academic writing, EFL learners, writing anxiety, rhetorical competence, first-language transfer, syntactic complexity, genre-based pedagogy.Abstract
Academic writing represents one of the most cognitively demanding and complex competencies required of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in higher education. Mastery of this skill demands not only grammatical precision and lexical breadth, but also structural coherence, rhetorical awareness, critical thinking, and adherence to scholarly conventions. This study examines the primary linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural barriers encountered by undergraduate EFL students in acquiring academic writing proficiency. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach combining corpus-based error analysis of student research drafts and semi-structured diagnostic surveys, the study identifies recurring bottlenecks, particularly in syntactic complexity, academic register, hedging, and argument formulation. The findings highlight pedagogical gaps in genre-based instruction and propose actionable instructional frameworks to mitigate writing anxiety, minimize first-language transfer interference, and enhance scholarly communicative competence.
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