The aim of this study is to investigate issues of Indonesian EFL students’ writing skills, covering ability, problem and reason why they got problems in writing comparison and contrast essay. The convergent parallel of mixed methods was used to explore these issues by involving 52 EFL students of IAIN Samarinda who enrolled the academic essay writing course. The three research instruments; essay writing test, open-ended questionnaire and interview were used in the data collection. The findings of this study revealed that the Indonesian EFL students’ writing ability was good that categorized with the mean score 77.83. However, some of them encounter problems in writing aspects including content, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and mechanics. Their reasons in experiencing these problems are not only limited knowledge of writing aspects and comparison and contrast essay itself, but also they had own personal reasons; lack of writing practice, writing dislike, writing anxiety, negative writing perception, low writing motivation, insufficient time given in writing test, and also inadequate teaching writing process taught by their lecturers. Indeed, the teaching writing improvement that involved EFL students and lecturers should be well-integrated in order to alleviate the students’ essay writing problems related to their reasons and to improve their writing ability. Factors caused the writing difficulties will be discussed further and some suggestions will be given on this research.

This study concerned on the EFL students' ability and analyzed the sentence patterns of syntax on the narrative paragraph writing. The QUANT-QUAL of mixed methods design was used in this study. The quantitative data gathered from the test of narrative paragraph writing by involving 30 EFL students of IAIN Samarinda. The qualitative data gathered from the 10 selected documents of narrative paragraph writing that met the criteria. The findings showed that the EFL students' ability of narrative paragraph was categorized excellent (80.33). The highest ability was the writing aspect of organization (86.65%) followed by vocabulary (84.00%), content (83.33%), mechanics (78.60%), and language use (69.08%). The sentence patterns of syntax found on the EFL students' narrative paragraph; its verbs were followed by direct object, infinitive, pronoun, present participle, adverbial phrase, that-clause, conjunctive-clause, gerund, direct objectpreposition-prepositional object, complement of distance and time, verb alone, predicative and preposition-prepositional object.

This study aimed to investigate; the students' preferences toward the lecturer's corrective feedback in the business letter writing and their reasons why they preferred for particular corrective feedback types. A case study was used by involving 15 EFL students who enrolled the Business Correspondence Course. The questionnaire and interview were used as the research instruments. This study revealed that; (1) the students preferred to receive lecturer correction (M=5.00), followed by lecturer-students conferencing (M=4.13), peer-correction (M=2.73), error identification (M=2.00), lecturer commentary (M=1.93), and self-correction (M=1.27). (2) the students' reasons at choosing the lecturer correction were getting the directly good correction from the lecturer, which it would be used as the reference/guide for further improvements both linguistic accuracy and business letter organization. In lecturer-students conferencing, beside they got good correction and grateful appreciation from both their lecturer and other students, they could learn and share the knowledge of errors made together; however they ashamed their linguistics errors, low ability and knowledge in formatting good business letter could be known by others. In peer-correction, the students got the unsatisfied and satisfied corrective feedback from their peers; and they were doubt with their peers' ability and knowledge in giving correction. In Error identification and lecturer commentary, it was difficult for the students to diagnose the real errors and to correct them. Finally, the reasons of self-correction were useless and unsatisfied to evaluate their own work since they had limited ability and knowledge in formatting the business letter writing effectively.

With the advancement of computer program and Internet-based technology, many higher education institutions provide Learning Management Systems (LMS) to facilitate online teaching and learning. This study was intended to explore students’ experiences during the use of the LMS of WeLearn as a tool for writing skills development. It used a case study design and involved two online classes consisting of 24 freshmen ESP computer students in a private higher education institution of Informatics and Computer Management in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It used self-report and observation in the data collection. The findings showed that the students actively used the Welearn system to accomplish the online course. They had positive experiences and perceived the benefits on the use of the WeLearn system. The benefits were easy to use and access as well as was cost-effective. Additionally, the WeLearn system could develop students’ writing skill, linguistic competence, technology skill, high learning motivation, self-management, time management, responsibility, self-confidence, accountability, independence, and creativity. However, the students encountered some challenges such as unstable internet connection, distracted learning concentration, unenthusiastic learning interaction, absence of alert information, and writing plagiarism.