Writing is frequently a difficult skill for any language user, which is to say that writing presents a fairly challenging task for both native and nonnative speakers. For English as a second language (ESL) students, it seems fair to say that writing academic papers is particularly difficult. ESL students must learn to create written products that demonstrate mastery over contextually appropriate formats for the rhetorical presentation of ideas as well as mastery in all areas of language, a Herculean task given the possibilities for error. It is partially the multiplicity of skills involved which contributes to the overall difficulty of writing. Collins and Gentner (1980) make the following observation about native-speaker writing:

If various aspects of writing are seen as “structural levels” that must be coordinated, it is reasonable to hypothesize that success may vary from level to level. For example, one particular student might exhibit greater mastery over sentence structure while another might exhibit greater mastery over overall text structure. Further, because of the particular difficulty that ESL students may have with the code of English (as partially predicted by principles of cognitive theory; McLaughlin 1987: 133–142), extending the amount of time allotted to producing an essay might affect the level of mastery exhibited on any or all of the levels identified by Collins and Gentner.