The aim of this research was to explore the writing strategies used by ELT students and the difficulties they experience in academic writing. A questionnaire was used to collect the data that was obtained from 34 second-year students, studying at the English Language Teaching Department of Education Faculty at a foundation university in Istanbul, Turkey in 2017-2018 academic year. The results of the present research revealed that the participants of the study are aware of the importance of using metacognitive writing strategies in the completion of quality writing assignments. It also became clear that the participants pay attention to the identification of what they specifically want to say at the pre-writing stage. That is, they use brainstorming techniques and prepare an outline before they begin to write their first drafts on a given topic. The participants favor peer feedback at the pre-writing stage but not at the post-writing stage. The most frequently used writing strategy was found to be revising strategy. However, it also became clear that the participants prefer self-revision or teacher feedback for the improvement of their papers. Finally, the findings of the study indicated that the participants experience many difficulties in writing, such as finding relevant references, choosing a significant topic, paraphrasing, referencing and citation, expressing own voice, coherence and cohesion, using conjunctive cohesive devices appropriately, and language use, respectively. Keywords: Academic writing difficulties, writing strategies.