Investigating EFL Students’ Difficulties in Writing Literature Review

Abstract

This descriptive study aims at identifying the difficulties EFL Master 2 students encounter when writing the literature review. For the sake of reaching the aims of the present study, a questionnaire and an interview were used to gather data at the Department of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia. On the one hand, the students’ questionnaire was handed to (70) Master 2 students out of a total of (140). It aims at identifying the difficulties encountered by the students when writing their literature review. On the other hand, (10) teachers out of (32) teachers were interviewed to have further data obtained. The results obtained indicated that Master 2 students do struggle with writing their literature review writing. These difficulties consist principally of an inability to locate relevant literature, to identify the gap in previous literature, and to critically evaluate and select the most important sources in previous literature. Based on the findings, some pedagogical recommendations were suggested to overcome these difficulties