Worries of Novice Researchers in Writing Research Papers

Due to 'pressures' to publish research papers, a group of novice researchers (n = 9) was encouraged to attend a 'Write right' workshop. The participants were asked to fill out a self-report anxiety questionnaire to understand their worries in writing research papers in English. Afterwards, they were asked to write an essay on situations that provoke their anxiety when writing research papers. Descriptive analysis of the survey questionnaire revealed their worries on the process of research paper writing and evaluation. Additionally, responses of the participants in the open-ended question included their worries on the following situations: grammar usage (n = 6), appropriateness of word use (n = 4), weak English writing skills (n = 3), negative perception of the readers, writing arguments, writing the discussion, difficulty of the research topic, lack of research background, unsure of methods in writing 'arts' research, unsure if its research, difficulty of finding the topic, data analysis, writing a sentence, and designing the paper. Such worries were thematized into technical writing-related worries, research writing-related worries, research knowledge-related worries, and negative perception. Further, error analysis, which was used to explore their written outputs, showed grammatical, lexical and syntactic errors. Data triangulation confirmed that their writing apprehensions are due to lack of writing skill and lack of confidence in writing research papers. The responses of the participants were used to redesign the workshop as series of group and individualized sessions to respond to their needs. Some resources on technical and research writing, research methods and publishing papers are also recommended. [This paper was published in: "International and National Conference on Learning Innovation in Science and Technology" (ICLIST & NCLIST 2018). p171-180.]