Introduction- Acquisition of skills related to academic writing is highly crucial to ensure students’ competency in producing high quality graduates at university levels. Despite of major needs and demands to acquire skills in academic writing, majority of ESL learners particularly in higher institution are still struggling to meet the university’s requirement for graduation. ESL students in the context of university levels are generally unfamiliar with the mechanisms in academic writing. As a result, these students are unable to write using appropriate structures and contexts. Purpose – The current study aims to analyse ESL students’ current needs and competency in academic writing. Methodology – A total of 65 ESL learners in a public university in Malaysia responded to a questionnaire adapted from Choo (1998) to discover their content-related knowledge in academic writing. Data collected from the study were analysed quantitatively using descriptive analysis. Findings – The findings yielded that majority of the students (76.9%) were currently having difficulty to write academically and almost half of the respondents (46.2%) believed that literature review section is the most difficult section in an academic paper. Significance – Findings from this study provide useful insights for future researchers to design and develop appropriate learning materials for ESL learners to enhance their academic writing skills.

Mastering academic writing is one of the skills to be acquired by all university students. Ability to master academic writing skills enables university students to be more competent in presenting ideas and information related to their field. Inability to master required skills in academic writing will consequently impact the students’ performance in fulfilling the graduation requirement. Generally, students in higher learning institutions (HLIs) are constantly struggling with unfamiliar styles and mechanisms in academic writing. The current situation subsequently resulted students’ incompetency in presenting their ideas and discussion. In this study, the researchers aim to discover the students’ expectation for an academic writing skills course and their current competency academic writing skills. An adapted questionnaire from Choo (1998) was used as the main instrument in this study to 65 undergraduate TESL students in public higher learning institution (HLI) in Malaysia. Analysis of data was done quantitatively using statistical software. Results from the analyses revealed that more than half of the respondents (76.9%) agreed that academic writing skills are regarded as complex skills to be acquired. In addition, the results also yielded that almost half of the respondents (46.2%) believed that literature review section is the most difficult section in an academic paper. Results from this study will be able to guide future researchers and educators in producing more teaching and learning related to academic writing mastery.