“I feel so bad about making an excellent critical sentence”: Students' Voices through Photovoice in Academic Writing

Abstract

The academic writing challenges that students face have attracted the academics' interest in exploring deeper into the element that causes students' difficulties in composing academic writing using the academic writing difficulties approach. The goal of this study is to investigate academic writing challenges further. The researchers used the photovoice and qualitative research methods, with the exact procedure involved in the research process known as research design: briefing, photographing the objects or events, describing the objects or events, uploading the inspirational video and its question on social media, data gathering, classified, evaluating, and providing feedback, identifying and analysing some responses contextually and theoretically. The study's participants included students from various colleges and some social media users. The findings revealed five academic writing difficulties among 20 data samples: plagiarism, recognizing academic writing characteristics, combining ideas from various writing sources, lacking a distinct writing style, coherent writing, and linking theory to practice. The responses' most common academic writing challenge necessitates a unique writing style. It demonstrates that the participants need assistance with their writing style.