Abstract
The present paper discusses undergraduate essay writing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Latvia. The goal of the paper is to examine the basic problems in student comparison/contrast essays. The analysis of 23 essays revealed that some students had problems with determining the purpose of communication and selecting an appropriate thesis statement to fulfil the task. Moreover, another problem was linked with the choice of the topic sentences and their supports which develop the controlling idea of the thesis statement, as well as the choice of information for the concluding paragraph. The analysis of the rhetorical patterns and linguistic signals revealed that one essay might display features of several patterns: comparison/contrast, description, problem- solution, cause-effect, illustration. Thus, the research showed that structuring of the comparison/ contrast essay in the target language is one of the problematic aspects in EFL undergraduate writing in Latvia.
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