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ideas presented and also to apply, analyze, synthesize, or evaluate the ideas being expressed. The quality of the writing, therefore, depends on the quality of the
writers’ thinking as they process ideas and present them in order to communicate their own informed perspective on the subject.
The last, of course, any writing situation calls for a writer, and the characteristics of the writer affect what is written and how it is produced.
Experienced writers usually approach writing with more abilities and confidences than the inexperienced.
2.6 Problems in ESLEFL Writing
Numerous studies about the problems ESLEFL learners face when they write have been conducted. A 1998-2002 study by Izzo cited in Newfields,
2003 revealed some of the most common sentence-level errors of Japanese university students writing in English. He noted how many universities EFL
writing courses did not teach academic writing skills. As a result students’ essays tended to lack organization and contained features inappropriate for academic
writing. Previously, another study by Hirose 1998, cited in Newfields, 2003 showed how Japanese EFL students had difficulty in writing cohesive paragraphs
in English since most high school EFL classes focused on sentence-level translations.
Fujioka 2001, cited in Newfields, 2003 also surveyed how Asian EFL students acquired academic writing skills. Most respondents in her study indicated
that their writing instruction had a strong grammar focus and concerned with
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paragraph-level form. Critical thinking skills were seldom taught. The value of extensively reading academic papers was underscored by Fujioka. Extensive
reading might enable respondents to gradually gain a sense of what the features of academic writing.
While teaching academic writing to Asian EFL students, Newfields 2003 noticed certain problems came up constantly. He said that there were seven
consistent problems: the first problem is inappropriate genre – many Asian EFL students fail to understand how academic writing is a distinct genre; too often they
write the same way they speak – in a casual tone. The second one is errors of logic – if students focus on sentence level grammar, they often disregard discourse
level features such as cohesion and coherence; four particularly frequent logical errors in student writing are: overgeneralization, contradiction, errors of causality,
and supported claims. The third problem faced by Asian EFL students is lack of balance –
academic essay should strive for balance a semblance of objectivity and fairness but many students writers have a tendency to present just one perspective andor
rely on a single information source. The fourth is redundancysuperfluosity – if a composition is required to have minimum word length, excessive redundancy is
often to occur, some students repeats information needlessly to fill up space. The fifth problem is time management issues – writing semester-length
research report is like running a marathon, it is essential to maintain a steady pace when working on full-length report. The sixth problem is plagiarism – some
students do not seem to realize how much writing is like a fingerprint; it is usually
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easy to detect passages from other sources. The seventh problem is lacking of clear citations – the custom of keeping detailed citations when writing academic
reports is by no means universal in Asia. Student writers often omit references entirely or else neglect key details.
Similar facts were also found in many non-English speaking countries, such as in Iran, Korea, Vietnam, and other Asian countries. A study conducted by
Shokrpour and Fallahzadeh 2007 revealed that related to writing, the students at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences had difficulties in vocabulary, spelling,
punctuation, cohesive devices and coherence. It is not much different from EFL writing problems in Korea. Kim 2005 found that his respondents faced
difficulties mostly in organizing their writing, expressing ideas related to a given topic – of contents, and grammar and word usage or collocation expression.
Thuy 2008 reported that Vietnamese students tend to present their ideas inductively and indirectly in L2 since inductive and indirect presentation is
frequently conducted in their L1 as one popular culture practice. It is a fact that cultural aspects of the L2 writing setting can create difficulties for learners
coming from a different academic culture. Furthermore, Mojica 2010 who observed twenty-six EFL students coming
from different nationalities such as Korean, Turkish, Thai, Chinese, and Mandarin, noted that vocabulary and grammar were not the only problems
encountered by the students. There were other problems related to aspects of language and skills of writing, as organizing ideas, addressing the prompt, and
giving supporting details.
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Ahmed 2010 said that despite various approaches to the teaching of writing having evolved from different teaching methods, tackling EFL writing is
still one of the most challenging areas for teachers and students. Egyptian student teachers of English at Helwan Faculty of Education who have to pass many
academic courses in English still face problems in cohesion and coherence of their English essay writing.
It can be concluded that the problems of ESLEFL writing encountered by ESLEFL learners are quite similar. They have problems not only with language
skills spelling, vocabulary, grammar and syntax but also with writing skills punctuation, cohesive devices, coherence and organization.
Related to IELTS, a large number of studies have been also carried out investigating issues related to writing section of the IELTS test. For example,
Moore and Morton 1999 conducted a research on authenticity in the IELTS Academic Module Writing Test. From the findings, they speculated that the type
of writing prescribed in IELTS Task 2 items may have more in common with certain public non-academic genres – the newspaper editorial and letter to the
editor – than the characteristic of the academic domain. Mickan and Slater 2003 investigated candidates interpretation of prompts
and compared the written responses of English background speakers with those of IELTS intending candidates, who were not English background speakers. Their
findings suggest implications for item writers and for teachers preparing candidates for IELTS examinations.
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OLoughlin and Wigglesworth 2003 conducted a study on task difficulty in the IELTS Academic Writing Task 1. The study examined firstly, the extent to
which the difficulty of the task is affected by the amount of information provided to the candidate and secondly, the extent to which the difficulty of the task is
affected by the presentation of the information to the candidate. The findings indicated that there were no substantial differences in difficulty between the tasks,
either in terms of the amount of information presented or in terms of the differences in presentation of the tasks. Brown 2003 wanted to find out whether
handwriting and neatness have any impact on the overall judgment of the IELTS writing quality of the candidates or not. The findings of her study clearly indicated
that in general the quality of handwriting in IELTS did not have an impact on the scores awarded to essays, and that increased legibility results in higher ratings.
Despite numerous studies on IELTS Writing, in Indonesia there is no research on students’ problems in completing the Writing tasks of IELTS.
Instigated by the fact, the researcher conducted a study on exploring students’ problems in accomplishing Writing Task 1 of IELTS Academic Module.
2.7 IELTS Test
