Although the medium of instruction of these programmes is English, achieving a certain IELTS (International English Language Testing System) or TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) score is often the only entry language requirement (Wang, Andre & Greenwood, 2015). This is amplified by insufficient attention to testing candidates' academic literacy prior to programme entry. First, many L2 students have not received formal training in academic writing before entering their programmes (Hyland, 2016). Three interrelated factors can explain this. L2 students at the graduate level can find academic writing even more taxing. The principal source of difficulty for undergraduates has been found generally to be vocabulary, which is compounded by another two essential elements of academic writing, register (tone and style) and organisation (cohesion and coherence) (Evans & Morrison, 2018 Hinkel, 2011). This challenge has stimulated extensive research which has subsequently prompted writing interventions in higher education. These findings have significant pedagogical implications, for example, the need for providing appropriate writing models and writing interventions for L2 graduate students in Engineering.Д®nglish academic writing presents a challenge for almost all writers and particularly for English as a second language (L2) and English as foreign language (EFL) students. employing Google Translate) do not fully meet faculty expectations. The study also revealed that some student strategies for managing academic writing challenges (e.g. local language features), whereas that of most faculty was challenges at the discourse level (i.e. The primary concern of most L2 graduate students was challenges at the sentence level (i.e. The study identified major differences between students and faculty regarding academic writing challenges. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data gathered from 82 graduate students and 24 faculty in Engineering in three universities in Hong Kong, the study revealed similarities and differences related to topics previously identified in the literature. This paper investigates the academic writing challenges encountered by L2 postgraduate students in Engineering and the strategies they developed (or, from the perspective of faculty, should develop) to address these issues.

Academic writing challenge