Academic writing was important to make the students to be more academic in writing and foster their critical thinking. However, to make a good academic text, some students still face the difficulties. Hence, this research is conducted to find out the first year students’ difficulties in writing English academic text and the factors causing the first year students difficulties in writing academic text at an English Language Department. This research used qualitative research approach and descriptive qualitative as the research design. The research took place at English Language Education Department at a private university in Yogyakarta. The data were gathered by interviewing four first year ELED students. The findings of this research revealed that the first year students had several difficulties in writing academic text. They were difficulty in generating the ideas about the topic, giving supporting detail, organizing the ideas, expressing the idea, and using the correct grammar. Related to the factors that causing the difficulty, the research found that the factors include the lack of critical thinking, the lack of reading, exhaustion, the unclear explanation from the instructor, the lack of vocabulary, and the lack of grammar knowledge.