Difficulties Faced by Jordanian Undergraduate EFL Students in Writing Research Problem Statement

Abstract

The current study aims at investigating the difficulties encountering Jordanian EFL students in the writing problem statement section. The study grouped those difficulties into two main categories, namely academic skills difficulties and language skills difficulties. It has been noticed that undergraduate and postgraduate students lack the required skills enabling them to conduct a well-constructed research article, which sparkles the idea of this study. In addition, no previous study has examined the challenges encountered by Jordanian EFL students when conducting a research paper in general and the problem statement section in particular. To collect the required data of the present study, twenty Jordanian EFL students had a teaching program about research writing skills. They were introduced thoroughly to all sections of the research article, with special emphasis on the research problem, section which is the main concern of this study. The participants were given a month to accomplish their research papers before submission. The study results reveal that the participants lack the academic skills enabling them to conduct a well-constructed problem statement section. More specifically, the vast majority of the participants fail to provide an overview of their topics and to identify their research gap within the current literature. The study also shows that the participants face serious grammatical errors when writing the research problem section. It could be concluded that conducting a scholarly research article in general and problem statement, in particular, is a demanding issue and need to be further highlighted by researchers and academicians to identify the challenges facing learners.