Academic writing requires students to be equipped with important elements of writing to enable them to write effectively. However, numerous studies have found that many Malaysian undergraduate students struggle with academic writing, particularly in the areas of mechanics of writing. Thus, this study is conducted to investigate their difficulties in academic writing, and to identify the most significant difficulty they encountered. The instrument is adapted from Habibi et al (2017) which focused on six problems in academic writing. They are poor organisation or illogical sequence, problems of word choice, grammatical errors, spelling problems, punctuation problems, and capitalisation. A total of 231 undergraduate students were involved in this study. The findings show that the majority of the students experienced academic writing difficulties which are grammar, word choice, and organisation or illogical sequence. On the other hand, they did not perceive spelling, punctuations, and capitalisations as difficulties encountered in academic writing. Therefore, it can be concluded that major difficulties in academic writing involve complex mechanisms which would affect the students to write effectively. It is recommended that educators strategically emphasise on suitable writing strategies that include mechanics of writing.
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