Exploring Academic Writing Needs of Indonesian EFL Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Academic writing is noteworthy competence to be accomplished for English as a foreign language (EFL) students to fulfill their academic needs at the university. To do so, Indonesian tertiary universities accommodate and foster this competence using academic writing course. The study, therefore, sought to look into: 1. what undergraduate EFL students’ perceptions of the importance of academic writing to their current study and future career, 2. what the students’ perceptions of the difficulties of academic writing, 3. what the students’ attitudes towards their previous and future academic writing courses. The present study investigates students’ needs emerging in academic writing during classroom practices to gain insightful and profound perspectives for forthcoming needs of the course. Data were collected through a five scaled questionnaire of need analysis distributed to thirty-four EFL students from a private university, and a focus group interview involving nine participants. Results indicate 61% (Mdifficulties=3.05) of students faced difficulties in both general skills and language problems of academic writing and a new course was expected to provide moves/steps for writing the sections in a research article. The present study then suggests that e-database resources are needed for academic papers models and references hence its efficiency and flexibility in prospective academic writing.