ABSTRACT
It cannot be denied that writing is one of the essential skills that EFL students need to develop. To most of them, transforming thoughts into English is usually a daunting task. In that regard, this study explores the metacognitive strategies and difficulties of NUIC freshmen in English Academic Writing. It aims to know if they use a plan or strategy every time they write on any topic. In addition, it also aims to identify the difficulties that they encounter in writing based on content, structure, and language. There are 115 respondents of this study out of 135. All participants received a questionnaire with 44 questions overall using Likert scale. Based on the findings of this study, it is concluded that NUIC EFL students have problems on metacognitive strategies and difficulty in writing due to their low English proficiency and this insufficiency led them to severe comprehension problems in all levels’ reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
KEYWORDS
metacognitive, academic writing, English, writing difficulty, writing strategy, language