Exploring Students’ Obstacles in Writing Comparison and Contrast Essay

This study aims to explore students’ obstacles in writing comparison and contrast essay and how students cope with obstacles in writing comparison and contrast essay. This study is qualitative research and the participants of this study were ten fifth-semester students at English language Education at State Islamic University of Ar-Raniry Banda Aceh who have studied comparison and contrast essay in the essay writing course. Semi-structured interview was used to obtain the data and to answer two research questions of this study. The result revealed that there are four difficulties in writing the essay, they are; organizing comparison and contrast essay, developing ideas, distinguishing transition signals and difficulty in organizing point by point method. The study also shows that the students cope with obstacles in writing comparison and contrast essay very well by browsing website, reading books, journals and write a lot, watching videos on YouTube and reviewing the material learnt at class.