University Students' Attitudes and Challenges Regarding Academic Writing

Abstract

University students are frequently tasked with composing various types of academic texts throughout their education; however, it is widely acknowledged that many students struggle with academic writing. The project titled Advanced-Level Language Use at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) is one of the umbrella projects of the Digital Innovation and Competence Education consortium, designed to identify and address linguistic and communicative challenges in higher education. Within this framework, our research group focuses on examining and enhancing academic writing competencies. In our project, we conducted a competency assessment to measure university students' writing skills. We also aimed to evaluate students’ attitudes toward academic writing and to identify the specific areas that require development in academic writing skills. This study focuses on the latter issue: it examines the results of an online questionnaire aimed at assessing students' perceptions of academic writing and identifying the factors contributing to their challenges in composing academic texts in Hungarian (typically their native language). The questionnaire was delivered to all students at ELTE, a total of 951 individuals completed it, with 947 consenting to the use of their responses for research purposes. Consequently, our analysis is based on this sample.