Özet:

Writing a research paper is one of the areas that ELT students have difficulty throughout their university education and future academic career. The aim of the present study is to investigate how ELT students tussle with research paper writing. Gender, research methods course and students’ years of studying are chosen to be independent variables for this study. Data was collected through a survey questionnaire adapted from Köksal and Razı 2011 and conducted on 117 students studying English Language Teaching at Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, which is a state university in Burdur. The study results reveal that, students have problems most in lacking experience in scholarly writing, lack of critical reading skills, referencing and being talented or gifted. Also, the findings show that there is no significant difference between male and female students in terms of the writing difficulties they experience. Moreover, according to the results, there is no significant difference between students who took research methods/skills course and students who did not. The results did not reveal any significant difference with respect to the students’ years of studying, either. Also, with respect to students’ level of writing skills the study reveals that there is a significant difference between students who defined their English as ‘excellent’ and those regarding their English as ‘bad’

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