Saudi Arabian University Students' Perspectives on Issues and Solutions in Academic Writing Learning

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Introduction
Although professional writing for academic purposes in English is challenging for many expected English speakers, it is especially difficult for postgraduate students of English as an Additional Language who come from non-Anglicized backgrounds in language and culture, particularly Asian college and university students. Most individual EFL learners find it difficult and challenging to learn how to write decent academic English. Few EFL students have considerable writing experience in academic English. These EFL students must master not only grammar, structure, terminology, and other surface-level English composition qualities but also British or American convincing methods and writing genres. Writing style, motivation, expression concerns, difficulty with writing, and other emotions can all affect an EFL learner's ability to express oneself in academic English. EFL students' academic backgrounds and experiences in their home language are also very important in the production of their academic papers. The goal of the research is to identify the problems that postgraduate students at one Saudi educational institution have when studying academic writing as well as differentiate between what students must accomplish and what their goal for learning are.

Research Questions
Four major questions guide this study: (1) What stresses, if any at all, do EFL students face when attempting to write in academics English?
(2) What obstacles, if any, are faced by EFL students when trying to write within academic English?
(3) What teaching techniques to academic writing do students think help or hinder success?
(4) In the students' views, what function, if any, does involvement among native English speakers play in enhancing academic writing?

Literature Review
Recent research investigated into the problems of academic writing. This study expands on earlier research and examines pertinent literature in the following types: (1) Academic writing definition (2) Academic Writing Principles (3) Qualities of successful academic writing (4) Difficulties in teaching postgraduate students academic writing

Academic Writing Definition
Writing for educational reasons is a cognitive and intellectual endeavor because it is a mental product. The image of a single person working alone in a serene setting has added to the notion of writing as a thoughtful and cognitive activity. However, as noted previously, writing can only be understood from the viewpoint of a community rather than one individual (Juliaty, 2019).

Academic Writing Principles
Academic writing is intended to establish a dynamic educational setting in which students can engage. Some basic ideas or rules must be established. Making effective use of knowledge is a crucial element of learning. The ability of learners to access, evaluate, and incorporate the terms, ideas, and points of view of others in order to develop a distinct academic voice is important for performance at the postgraduate level. When presenting their learning, students must be capable to differentiate clearly the information they have learned from others and what they have created (Pecorari, 2006). A student must be realistic about how much accountability he or she has over ideas created, answers discovered, and opinions expressed (Pecorari, 2006).

Qualities of Successful Academic Writing
Mahmood (2020) acknowledge the following characteristics of effective academic writing: (1) Writing should be valued in the target community.
(2) The writer's attention should be stimulated by the topic because he or she thinks there is more to discover about it.
(3) The aesthetic value of the words created by the writer needs to be considered.
The community should help writers find relevant content as well as provide aid and guidance.

Difficulties in Teaching Postgraduate Students Academic Writing
To start with, writing often lacks interaction, which pushes discussion and speech development (Alkhalaf, 2020). Postgraduate writing assignments sometimes require students to examine other sources and use literary structures or genres (Miller, 2014).
It is critical to believe in one's writing ability. Can and Walker find that students' lack of confidence in their writing abilities made revision decisions more challenging, as well as justifying these decisions to feedback givers. This was especially apparent when several faculty members made contradictory comments (Can & Walker, 2014).
Second, teachers commonly complain about foreign English learners' lack of academic writing knowledge and skills. Some of these abilities include organizing, paraphrasing, and summarizing (Numan Khazaal, 2019).
Third, academic writing often asks students to write from the viewpoint of a specialist, even if they do not consider themselves experts on the topic (Miller, 2014).
Essays and related written work enable students to demonstrate some of the most difficult academic objectives; nonetheless, students are usually more puzzled about what constitutes an outstanding essay than they are about the requirements for other types of activities (Gebril & Plakans, 2014).
The teachers struggled in their role as academic writing coaches for international pupils. While they all thought that giving students assistance in the creation of standards sections was vital, they also acknowledged that they considered it hard to give students' academic writing guidance and were confused about what those recommendations should entail (Cennetkuşu, 2017).
In addition, an absence of language abilities remains a problem. Novice writers, in particular, lack linguistic ability and are thus incapable of engaging in fruitful dialogues in their preferred language. Speaking a language properly, according to Warschauer, is crucial for any student to master and enhance academic writing (Shafie et al., 2010).
Teachers can then help pupils build an understanding of the implications of self-mentioning, and they can also teach them to recognize both the options available to them and the effects of those decisions. With this understanding, our students will be more able to gain power over the material they write and overcome the significant challenges when writing for academic reasons in another language (Hyland, 2002).

Research Methodology and Design
The analytic descriptive method was used in this study to facilitate the collection of data and information that could help in the achievement of study objectives. Saudi postgraduate university students represent the population. Throughout the 2020-2021 academic year, the study was done with a sample of 50 higher education learners. A university program for postgraduate learners assisted in the identification of academic writing issues.
Tables 1-3 describe the study sample.     Table 3 shows the distribution of respondents based on their English skills. The table shows that the majority of respondents are 36 with 0.72% medium-level English skills, followed by 12 with 0.24% advanced level, and a few respondents (2 with 0.4% beginner level).

Instrumentation
The present investigation used a survey as the primary data collection tool.

Data Analysis
After collecting the data, the required statistical tests were carried out to examine the information, validate the hypotheses, and address the study's questions. The questionnaire collected all data, which was coded. The statistical tool SPSS 15 was used for every analysis of data for the study. Standard deviations and means were employed in descriptive statistics to analyze the basic features of the research's population. Furthermore, the coefficient of Pearson correlation and ANOVA test were applied to look for significant variations in the subjects' responds among various components, which were then utilized to find connections between the study's variables. The mean scores as well as the standard deviations were generated to examine these hypotheses. Table 4 displays the results. The findings were consistent with previous research on the difficulty of academic writing, such as Payne, Dingwall, (Payne & Carter, 2014).

The First Research Question
The first study question, "What stresses, if any at all, do EFL students face when attempting to write in academics English?" investigated the following hypothesis: One of the primary challenges that students at KSA universities confront is recognizing stylistic variations in written and spoken English within English texts.
Computer-assisted writing education, for example, covered various levels (sentence, paragraph, and essay). All of these levels assisted students in practicing academic writing in various styles. On the other hand, there were other techniques, such as varied requirements or styles, that restricted students' academic writing.

The Second Research Question
What obstacles, if any, are faced by EFL students when trying to write within academic English?
The overall scores in Table 4 illustrate that students experience numerous obstacles in writing for academic purposes, such as: (1) Being aware of the pest words and phrases to avoid.
(2) Going over the syntax in their writing.
(6) They are having trouble integrating words in their writing.
The facts above explain why the majority of Saudi students, who speak fluently, have weak writing skills. If we study the Arabic, we will notice that it favors metaphoric, long phrases, but writing for academia in English is precisely the contrary.

The Third Research Question
What teaching techniques to academic writing do students think help or hinder success? Different teaching methods might either help or hinder academic writing success. Many techniques to facilitating achievement were identified by students.
Based on the questionnaire answers, there are numerous ways that help students succeed in academic writing. Some instances are as follows: (1) Write an outline before beginning to write a draft.
(2) Incorporating all three stages of the writing process (planning, composition, and revision).
(3) Going over what they've written before submitting it.
On the contrary, there are numerous different ways, such as disparities in criteria or styles, that limit students' academic writing effectiveness.

The Fourth Research Question
In the students' views, what function, if any, does involvement among native English speakers play in enhancing academic writing? Native English speakers could help EFL students improve their academic writing skills. Students assessed communication with natives as extremely important for improving their academic writing because natives were able to guide EFL learners on how to create an assignment; the way to write an organized paragraph; how to recognize differences between substances and modifiers; how to effectively employ modifiers; how to determine which abilities are necessary for successful writing within academia; and how to prevent grammatical errors in academic writing. Fareed, Ashraf & Bilal, (2016) corroborate this results by emphasizing the relevance of solving academic writing challenges.

Suggestions for Future Research
For future research, the following suggestions are made: (1) The present research might be performed on a broader scale with varied groups and educational backgrounds to investigate academic writing challenges more thoroughly.
(2) More field studies on other essential abilities such as reading, listening, and speaking should be conducted.
(3) Future research might focus solely on male or female students to examine the impact of gender on academic writing issues.

Conclusions
Based on the data provided, the following conclusions on the difficulty of academic writing were reached: (1) EFL students face several hurdles and challenges with academic writing, notably those caused by distinguishing between spoken and written English approaches. In this context, I must emphasize that Arabic differs greatly from English in the way it is written and spoken. Factors leading to these discrepancies include: 1) script variations; and 2) literary distinctions, with Arabic having a greater number of metaphorical phrases and longer sentences than English.
(2) There are several strategies for teaching academic writing; some are good, such as automated writing training, while others, such as the use of unique writing styles, are damaging.
(3) Natives can assist EFL students in recognizing the skills needed for academic writing, allowing these students to enhance their academic writing.