Difficulties Faced by EFL Student Writers in Attempting to Persuade an Intended Audience

This study examined the difficulties that university EFL students encounter when attempting to persuade an intended audience in writing, particularly in effectively providing evidence to support their reasoning. A class of first-year Japanese university students participated in the present study. The students were given the following prompt: “Write a response to Mr. David Brown, an American cook, who is considering whether to live in an urban city or a rural town when moving to Japan with his sociable wife and elementary school-aged children.” A quantitative analysis was conducted to determine whether the students (1) adopted an email text type, (2) provided reasons specifically related to David, his wife, and his children, (3) effectively incorporated appropriate evidence from external sources, and (4) included proper references. The results revealed that more than half of the students struggled to effectively integrate supporting evidence and cite sources correctly. Additionally, an in-depth qualitative analysis showed that even some highly rated compositions exhibited several problems. For instance, some compositions failed to clearly indicate which parts were taken from external sources, while others used overly general information that lacked value as evidence. Moreover, most of the students relied on Japanese-language sources on the Internet, rather than consulting a wider range of credible materials in English. Considering the importance of effectively using external sources, EFL composition courses should place greater emphasis on teaching this skill as a fundamental component of both academic writing and real-world writing.