Needs Analysis of EFL Master Students when Writing for Research Purposes

Abstract

Within academic settings, EFL students are struggling when putting pen to paper to write for research purposes. This may be because this type of writing is highly conventional, addressed to a targeted knowledgeable audience and aims to achieve a specific communicative purpose. Owing to this, this study attempts to conduct students' needs and to define their difficulties in respect to research writing. 49 Master 2 students, majoring in linguistics in the English department, M'sila University, to whom a questionnaire was addressed, constituted the sample of the work. The findings revealed that students, though generating positive attitude towards academic writing and research writing genres, face writing difficulties of linguistic and epistemological nature. The results also reflected students' urgent need for supervision assistance and research writing courses to improve their academic writing and raise their awareness of what research writing looks like.  These findings could be an endeavor to design writing courses where the priority is given to students' academic needs and to selected contents that should target the conventions of research writing.