Chien, Shih-ChiehShih-ChiehChienMiguel WEI-YAN LI2025-07-252025-07-252022-10-0514751585https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85139309796https://scholars.lib.ntu.edu.tw/handle/123456789/730770As more and more literature shows, EFL doctoral students often encounter problems when writing the discussion section. The majority of past research on advisors' or students' perceptions centered on students' problems when writing the dissertation on the whole. However, the problems of the discussion section were seldom addressed. Based on interviews with nine advisor-student pairs from natural and applied sciences and social sciences in Taiwan, this study explored the problems encountered by students in writing the doctoral dissertation discussion section. The results showed that (1) compared with their advisors, students' overall understanding of the purposes of writing the discussion section was inadequate; (2) there was to some extent a gap between advisors and their students in terms of understanding students' problems in writing the discussion section; (3) both advisors and students within/between each group (i.e., natural and applied sciences/social sciences) gave different explanations regarding students’ writing problems; and (4) the understanding of genre was enacted differently across disciplines. The implications are discussed.falseAdvisor-student perceptionsDiscussion sectionDoctoral dissertationEFLWriting problems[SDGs]SDG4journal article10.1016/j.jeap.2022.101183