Examining the Master Level Students’ Difficulties in Academic Writing in English

Academic writing is an advanced formal composition written with a specific purpose. It is a structured writing retaining certain elements that frame it outstanding from other ordinary writings. The crucial objective of this article is to examine the difficulties encountered by the master level fourth semester students in academic writing in the Faculty of Management at Makawanpur Multiple Campus, Hetauda in the academic session 2021- 2022. A cross-sectional survey research design was executed to carry out the research study. The five point 35 Likert type questions were administered to assemble the primary data. A simple random sampling technique, lottery method, was used to form the sample size of 81 students from the population comprised of 102 students by maintaining the 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error. The study concluded that the first largest number of students had difficulties in starting the writing, contents in writing under the conclusion section, the general length of each section, giving examples in writings, conditional sentences, adverbs , adjectives and drawing recommendations; the second largest number of the students had difficulties in choosing an appropriate academic topic, generating information, writing the introduction section, writing the body section, writing topic sentences, writing causes and their effects, using cohesive devices, in writing different sentences of comparisons and contrasts, using quotations, summarizing, paraphrasing, indirect form, using prepositions, tenses, conjunctions, feedback, polishing sentences, editing spellings, editing punctuations , and using appropriate words. The students were not sure about their difficulties in supporting the topic sentences by giving reasons and evidence, and use of passive voice. They did not have difficulties in citing and referencing the sources. This research article will be beneficial to teachers as it exposes them the particular problems that they will support their students in solving the problems through teaching.