Introduction

The academic writing course in this undergraduate ELT program is given in the sixth semester. The program consists of 10 semesters, so this course falls approximately in the middle. Up to the 5th semester, classes are conducted in either all Spanish language or in a mix of Spanish and English. After the 5th semester, all classes are conducted in English. Writing assignments occur throughout the program. The number and type of writing and the language of the writing varies from class to class. As students, we considerer writing as a very important topic , because most of the time we need write something specific for different subjects and purposes, but even known that writing is an important skill, many students dislike it. We as university students face the matter of writing. Some students overcome or simply do or practice writing naturally but some students do not. To understand the students writing experiences better we conducted a small study. In this short research, i will first describe the research method used. After that, the results of the data analysis are presented, and in the final section, the significance of the findings is presented.

Method
This section describes the participants, the instrument and the analysis method used. The participants of this study were students of our same class, a group of 12 students. A short questionnaire that consisted of five items was designed to collect the data. In the first item, the participants asked what kind of text they are more interested in: academic, literary, scientific, informative or other: in the second one, students mentioned what frequency they write something (always to rarely). The third item asked them to identify what the main problem is in the students when they write. According these survey parameters the students indicated: lack of vocabulary, grammar rules, spelling mistakes or lack of interest and motivation. In the fourth one asked to

identify what the students feel when they write. Finally the fifth item asked what the students expectations from Academic Writing Course are. The results of the analysis are presented in the following section.

Results
This section presents the results of the data analysis. The results are presented in the same order that was described in the previous part. In the first item, most of the students are interested in literary texts (see Fig. 1 below).

Fig. 1-Types of texts that students are interested

Fig. 2 below shows the results for the second item

Fig. 2-Frequency which students write.

Most of the students write something sometimes, no one never and no one always such as the figure above shows. Item three asked participants what their main problem is when they need write something. Fig. 3 below shows the results.

Fig. 3-Types of writing problems

As the figure above describes, the main problem for the students when they write is lack of vocabulary. In addition to the problems that are mentioned, the students indicated other problems like coherence, time and punctuation. And obviously if there are as many problems with the students when they write, the main emotion or feelings associated with this activity is worry such as shown the Fig. 4 below.

Fig. 4-Feelings that students felt when write

Finally in item 5 students were asked what are the expectations about the Academic Writing course, only in the sense of writing. Fig. 5 below shows the results.

Fig. 5-Expectations of the students about the course

Such as we can see in the figure the students hope that this course is going to help them to improve writing, learn new rules, have more interest in writing and in addition of those ones students hope to have more contact with the second language.

Discussion
This study showed several interesting results. After we make all this research about writing and what the problems are that students have when writing, we can see in the results that the main problem in the students is the lack of vocabulary. In addition the students felt worried when they write. This is very interesting for our research this part; because we can to infer that the students felt worried when writing, not because they really dislike it, but because they do not know how to express their Spanish ideas in English ideas. Another important aspect that the results show us is the fact that the students are more interested in literary text and in relation with the time of they dedicate

to writing. It is caused by most of the times the students writing homework for school and in the school focused only in academic or Scientifics writings, fact that is quite important; because if in the school the students could write something of their interest, this could enhance their writing skill. At the end of the survey the students have great expectation that in the course they could improve in writing. As a general conclusion of this research, the students really want to write but they do not have the enough elements or skills to develop a good essay or another specific text, and this is the fact that we need to change if we want to have better writing.

Text by Irving Alfonso Rojas Perez.