Writing Research Papers in English: Its Purposes and Difficulties for Korean Graduate Students

There are an increasing number of EFL students undertaking degrees in higher education where they are required to complete a thesis in English. The aim of this qualitative study is to explore graduate students’ purposes and difficulties in writing up a thesis in English in a Korean university, focusing on students in science, engineering, and English education. The data comprise questionnaires from fifty students and interviews with six students. The findings reveal that the students tend to learn how to write an English thesis in order to publish research papers, fulfill graduation requirements, and improve their English, particularly their English writing skills. The students in the fields of science and engineering had difficulties at sentence level in academic writing, and those in English education had little knowledge about dealing with the framework of coherence in thesis writing. The study suggests that the graduate courses need to develop a program which aims to integrate goal-oriented and process-oriented approaches to support students in a variety of academic disciplines for an entire semester or for a shorter session as a requirement.