EFL Students’ Academic Writing Development Through Draft-Rewrite Cycles: Evidence from Private Universities

Abstract

Academic writing remains a major challenge for EFL students, particularly when composing the introduction or background of the study section of thesis manuscripts. This section requires students to establish the research context, present a clear problem, connect previous studies, identify a research gap, and justify the significance of the study. This study aimed to investigate how draft-rewriting cycles helped EFL pre-service teachers develop effective background sections and to identify the aspects of academic writing that improved through the stages of first draft, content revision, organisation revision, language editing, and proofreading. Employing a qualitative case study design, the research involved 20 EFL pre-service teachers from a private university. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, and students’ thesis manuscripts. The data were analyzed using qualitative procedures consisting of data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing or verification. The findings revealed that draft-rewriting cycles supported students by transforming writing from a one-time task into a staged, reflective, and manageable process. The first draft helped students express initial ideas and reveal writing difficulties. Content revision strengthened the clarity of the research problem and relevance of supporting information. Organisation revision improved coherence, paragraph unity, and logical flow. Language editing enhanced grammar, vocabulary, sentence clarity, and academic tone, while proofreading improved mechanics, formatting, and citation consistency. The study concludes that draft-rewriting cycles are pedagogically valuable for supporting EFL students’ academic writing development, especially in private university contexts where students have diverse educational and linguistic backgrounds.