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Al-Ishlah: Jurnal Pendidikan
Vol.14, 1 (April, 2022), pp. 909-920
ISSN: 2087-9490 EISSN: 2597-940X, DOI: 10.35445/alishlah.v14i1.1352
http://journal.staihubbulwathan.id/index.php/alishlah
Exploring University Students’ Difficulties in Writing English
Academic Essay
Seprianus A. Nenotek1, Zuvyati A. Tlonaen2, Herry A. Manubulu3
1 Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana; timorarwadi@yahoo.com
2 Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana; zuvyatitlonaen@ukaw.ac.id
3 Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana; lia.manubulu02@gmail.com
ARTICLE INFO
ABSTRACT
Keywords:
Academic writing;
Writing skills;
Difficulty in English Writing
skills;
Academic essay
Academic wiring is one of the essential skills in academic
writing, and it is vital to support students' self-development
through opinion writing, grant essay writing, and others. This
study explores students' difficulties in writing English
academic essays and the dominant challenges using a mix-
method approach. The qualitative is used to collect data, while
the quantitative is used to find the difficulty percentage—the
data analysis uses indicators from Brown (1999). The sample
of this study was 30 students in the fifth semester of the
English Education Study Program at Universitas Kristen
Artha Wacana. The results showed that students still
experienced severe difficulties in four aspects of academic
writing; content, organization, discourse, and mechanics. The
most dominant difficulties (97%) were found in; 1) thesis
statement; 2) related ideas; 3) development of ideas; and 4) use
of description/cause and effect, comparison/contrast; 5)
practical introduction; 6) topic sentence and 7) reference.
Writing essays are challenging for students in the English
Education Study program. Further research is recommended
to investigate the causal factors and find practical strategies
for teaching academic writing courses.
Article history:
Received 2022-01-28
Revised 2022-02-28
Accepted 2022-04-05
This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license.
Corresponding Author:
Zuvyati A. Tlonaen
Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana; zuvyatitlonaen@ukaw.ac.id
1. INTRODUCTION
Academic writing is one of the courses offered at both university and school levels (Ariyanti, 2016;
Bailey, 2015; Mahmoudi & Buğra, 2020; Oshima, & Hogue, 2007) and is considered complicated by most
students (Ashraf, Rubab & Ajmal, 2020; Marpaung, 2017; Brown cited in Rachmawati & Susanti, 2016)
because of the ability to produce language (Prihatmi, 2017). Academic writing is different from
procedural, descriptive, or non-fiction writing, such as novels and short stories called creative writing,
and personal writing is categorized as informal writing (Bailey, 2011; Oshima & Hogue, 2007).
Academic writing has rules such as writing with a formal, systematic structure and in a formal language
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and has logical organization (Bailey, 2015). Bailey (2011) also added that academic writing must be
objective and accurate. Thus, students must at least have this ability to achieve formal writing. What
makes academic writing is complex that students generally do not know such conventions in writing,
causing students to commit plagiarism (Silfiani, Aziz & Daud, 2018; Subasman, 2020) which is defined
as “the practice of claiming credit for the words, ideas, and concepts of others” (APA in Razi, 2015).
Academic writing becomes challenging not only due to a lack of grasp of academic writing conventions
or a lack of writing habits but also due to the cognitive process. As stated by (Kasiri & Fazilatfar, 2016;
Choemue & Bram, 2021) that academic writing involves “a cognitive process”. It demands mental
processing and the ability to display suitable verbal repertoires. Ertmer & Newby (2013) added that in
order to generate an extensive written discourse that is both linguistically accuracy and socially
suitable, academic writing demands the ability to combine a wide range of diverse sorts of information.
In addition to explaining the complexities of academic writing above, students must write in English,
so this will be one of the 'additional' difficulties for students. Therefore, students need extra effort to
learn or acquire writing and English language skills.
Numerous previous studies have shown that students face numerous challenges in writing
English academic essays. Al-Badi (2015) found that students' difficulties in academic writing were in
language use, coherency, cohesion, finding relevant topics and sources, referencing, and citations.
These problems occurred because of not knowing academic writing conventions. Similar to Belkhir &
Benyelles (2017), they found that students had difficulties in cohesion and coherence, first language
transfer, and low writing practice. Toba also found these difficulties, and Pablo & Lasaten (2018) found
that students lack various ideas and transitions to build paragraphs and choose incorrect vocabulary,
grammar, and pronouns. It can be said that students almost have errors in all aspects of academic
writing, as also found by Al-Mukdad (2019). Even postgraduate students face such difficulties. Imani
& Habil (2012) said that grammaticality is one of the common challenges for Non-Native Speaker
postgraduate students. Problem with grammaticality was also found by Ariyanti & Fitriana (2017).
Arab postgraduate students struggled mainly in their English academic writing (Al-Zubaidi, 2012) due
to a lack of English language skills and attitude towards writing, which caused their writing to be
unimproved. Also, students can not differentiate the spoken and written language, create outline before
making draft, and identify the skill required for good writing (Al Fadda, 2012). Thus, it can be inferred
that students in various parts of the world at the school or university level both undergraduate and
postgraduate students experienced difficulties in English academic writing.
Most students fail because they do not become familiar with the scoring rubric (Trinh, 2020). A
scoring rubric is used as a tool for a teacher to evaluate the performance of his or her students (Hima &
Saputro, 2017). It has some benefits such as support for learning, skill development, having good
thinking, etc. (Andrade in Mahmoudi & Buğra, 2020). Writing rubric might help them prepare their
writing when working on their task to get a good score in the writing course. There are various forms
of assessment in academic writing. The assessment generally focuses on content, organization,
grammar, and mechanics (Hafidz, 2021; Styati & Irawati, 2020). It depends on which aspects teachers
want to assess. Brown in Brown (2001) proposed six aspects of assessing students' writing; 1) content,
2) organization, 3) discourse, 4) syntax, 5) vocabulary, 6) mechanics. Brown’s assessment was used in
this research to explore students’ complexities in academic writing. This research only focused on four
aspects; the content, organization, discourse, and mechanics. It is necessary to explain scoring rubrics
for writing to the students at the beginning of the course so that students can recognize the aspects of
writing to be assessed by teachers.
Students of the English Education study program, Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana, also
experienced difficulties writing academic essays. Only a few students were able to complete academic
writing courses. The lecturers have conveyed things relating to academic writing and given writing
exercises, but the students still cannot execute their writing tasks well. During the class, the students
committed to plagiarism to complete their tasks to get a good score on their writing tasks. However,
plagiarism did not make their writing better, and of course, it was out of the instructions given by the
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lecturer, and the things discussed were definitely out of topic. Therefore, this study aimed to explore
the difficulties experienced by students of English Education study programs in writing English
academic essays. Previous researchers have already done this kind of research. However, the previous
studies mainly used qualitative methods and were limited to describing what aspects of writing found
by the students were difficult, so the findings or research results were more of a description of the
complicated aspects of writing. This study used a mixed method. This study explored the aspects
considered problematic by looking at the number of students who encountered difficulties in the
writing aspects proposed by James Brown and determined which difficulties are the most dominant.
The importance of doing this research is to map the difficulties faced by students in writing English
academic essays so that lecturers can find practical solutions, such as designing academic writing
learning strategies and also preparing study materials that focus more not only on the structure of the
essays but also on aspects of academic writing, especially on aspects that have more dominant
difficulties aiming at minimizing the difficulties they experience in writing so that they can execute
their tasks well so they can pass the course with good scores.
2. METHODS
This study used a mix-method. Students’ essays, written in English, were documented and
analyzed to discover the difficulties in writing English academic essays and determine the dominant
difficulties. The quantitative method was used only to find out the percentage of the problematic
aspects students experienced in writing English academic essays. The dominant difficulties were also
obtained (total error/total number of students x 100). The data were analyzed qualitatively. The
population of this study was 70 fifth semester students (class A and B) of the English Education Study
Program, Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana, the academic year 2018/2019. However, only 30 students
from class B were taken as samples for this research. The samples were selected by using the purposive
sampling technique. Compared with class A, it was found that 30 students from class B; 1) wrote their
essays off-topic and 2) made common errors in academic writing conventions. The documents obtained
were 30 student essays. Students were instructed to compare studying in the library with using the
internet. Before writing the essay, students were asked to analyze their topic and make underlying
question(s), the thesis, and the argumentation to support the thesis. They were also asked to outline.
Teachers rechecked and gave feedback on the topic analysis and the outline. Students revised and then
started to write their complete essays. The instrument used was the rubric for academic writing from
James Dean Brown (1991) cited in Brown (2001). Brown’s six general categories for evaluating writing
consist of 1) content; a) thesis statement, b) related ideas, c) development of ideas through personal
experience, illustration, facts, and opinions; 2) organization; a) effectiveness of introduction, b) logical
sequence of ideas, c) conclusion, d) appropriate length; 3) discourse; a) topic sentences, b)paragraph
unity, c) transition, d) discourse markers, e) cohesion, f) rhetorical conventions, g) references; 4) syntax;
5) vocabulary; 6) mechanics; a) spelling, c) punctuation, d) citation of references. This study explored
only four aspects: content, organization, discourse, and mechanics. Researchers analyzed students’
essays, took notes, categorized, made percentages, and interpreted the results after gathering the data.
Topic was given
Outline making
Topic analysis by
students
Revision/feedback by
teachers
Data analysis
(reading, taking note
Essay writing
Data
interpretation
Qualitative
and quantitative
Research
procedure
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Figure 1. Research design
3. FINDINGS
The samples were 30 students from class B. There were 30 essays taken as samples. The data had
shown that the students have difficulty in all aspects of essay writing, namely content, organization,
discourse, and mechanics. The data were analyzed by exploring aspects of writing, taking notes of
errors, making the percentage of how many students made errors in the four aspects, and determining
the dominant difficulties.
The result of data analysis showed that twenty-nine students experienced difficulties in all aspects
of content, namely thesis statement (97%), related ideas (97%), development of ideas through personal
experience, illustration, facts, opinion (97%), and use description/cause-effect, comparison/contrast
(97%). Students also made errors in organizing their writing. There were twenty-nine (97%) students
were challenging in writing an introduction, 29 students (97%) made errors in constructing their ideas
logically, and 27 (90%) made errors in the concluding paragraph. Only 12 (40%) students did not
achieve the determined length of the essay (did not follow the instruction of the lecturer), and 29 (97%)
students were out of focus. In the discourse part, 97% of students were difficult in writing topic
sentences, paragraph unity (67%), transitions (67%), discourse markers (67%), cohesion 47%, rhetorical
convention 87%, and references 10%. In the mechanics, students were difficulty with spelling (6%),
punctuation (27%), and citation of references (97%) (see table 1).
Table 1. Students' complexity in writing an academic essay
No
Indicator
Total of students
making errors
Percentage
of error
Content
1
Thesis statement
29
97%
2
Related Ideas
29
97%
3
Development of ideas through personal
experience, illustration, facts, opinion
29
97%
4
Use of description/cause effect,
comparison/contrast
29
97%
Organization
1
Effectiveness of introduction
29
97%
2
Logical sequence of Ideas
29
97%
3
conclusion
27
90%
4
Appropriate length
12
40%
5
Consistent focus
29
97%
Discourse
1
Topic sentence
29
97%
2
Paragraph unity
20
67%
3
Transition
20
67%
4
Discourse markers
17
47%
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5
Cohesion
17
47%
6
Rhetorical Convention
26
87%
7
Reference
3
10%
Mechanic
1
Spelling
2
6%
2
Punctuation
8
27%
3
Citation of references
29
97%
Sources: Brown’s rubric of essay writing
Table 2. The dominant complexities
No
Indicator
Total of students
making errors
Percentage of error
Content
1
Thesis statement
29
97%
2
Related Ideas
29
97%
3
Development of ideas through personal
experience, illustration, facts, opinion
29
97%
4
Use of description/cause effect,
comparison/contrast
29
97%
Organization
1
Effectiveness of introduction
29
97%
2
Logical sequence of Ideas
29
97%
3
Consistent focus
29
97%
Discourse
1
Topic sentence
29
97%
Mechanic
1
Citation of references
29
97%
4. DISCUSSION
This study aimed to discover the complexities that students deal with in writing academic essays
and the dominant complexities that occur in their essays. Therefore, this study investigated students’
complexities in writing academic essays and the dominant complexities they made in their essay
writing. After analyzing the data using Brown's (1991) rubric of essay writing, it was found that
students encountered difficulties in writing academic essays and made some errors in the aspect of
content, organization, discourse, and mechanics. Those errors were considered as the complexities that
the students dealt with. This result has proven that students have not mastered the rules in academic
writing, so they make errors in their writing. This section began with the aspect of content to
mechanics.
In writing an academic essay, students must make a claim, support it, and have a clear argument
assembled with facts to make the content more trustworthy. It should be evident in the content of the
essays written by the students (Booth, Colomb & Williams, 2008). Brown's rubric mentioned that
content consists of thesis statements, related ideas, developing ideas through personal experience,
illustration, fact, and opinion, using the description of cause/effect, comparison/contrast (Brown, 2001).
The students found difficulties in all content items (97%), and only one out of 30 students could present
good writing compared to 29 other students. The students have problems with topic analysis, and if it
happened, they could not make underlying questions the focus to be answered in their essays. Wijaya
(2020) stated that the thesis statement answers the topic questions. Before writing their task, they were
asked to analyze the topic by making underlying questions and possible answers to the questions. Most
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of the students failed in topic analysis. Unable to formulate a question will cause a vague thesis
statement. The thesis statement is the focus that must be supported by clear arguments (Rao, Chanock
& Krishnan, 2007). In addition, it was found that students wrote off-topic. The problem with the thesis
statement will affect the claims.
Argumentation consists of claims supported by data (Bermani, Safnil, & Arono, 2017) coming from
personal experience, illustration, fact, opinion, cause/effect, comparison, and contract. Students were
unskilled and had yet to develop ideas. Therefore, the ideas were unclear and sometimes were
understandable. The essay looked messy in the content. A few students successfully analyzed the
topics; however, they were lost in claims causing out of topics. Aspect of content was the aspect that
became the most difficult part, because 97% students experienced problem in all items in the content.
Therefore, it could be concluded that the content part was very difficult compared to the other aspects.
Aspects of the organization consist of 1) effectiveness of introduction, 2) logical sequence of ideas,
3) conclusion, appropriate length, and 4) consistent focus (Brown Cited in Brown, 2001). An
organization in writing is also called essay structure, such as introduction, body, and conclusion,
paragraph structure, and use of coherence and cohesive devices (Ruegg & Sugiyama, 2013). It was
found that some jumpiness occurred in students’ writing in terms of organizing ideas from
introductory paragraph to conclusion. For example, ‘studying using the internet is more effective than
studying in the library. After this sentence, no explanation or reason for studying with the internet is
more effective than studying in the library. Otherwise, they wrote the comparison between the internet
and library and got lost in their writing. Most students wrote their essay content in the introductory
paragraph or simply began so that they missed the thesis statement that should be stated in the
introduction. 27 (90%) students did not include conclusions in their essays. They closed their writing
the contents without a concluding paragraph. Rao, Chanock & Krishnan (2007) illustrated the human
body to describe the body of the writing. It consists of three parts; the head is the introduction, the body
is the content, and the leg is the conclusion. Therefore, if the students exclude one of the body parts,
then the essay would not be constructed entirely because the conclusion should summarize the essay,
provide an answer to the underlying questions, and discuss the topic further follow up (Eripuddin,
2016; Suseno & Nurharjanti, 2015), it can not be removed from the essay. It was also found that twelve
students (40%) did not follow the instruction to write the essay with only 500-700 words. Of the 12
students, nine students wrote beyond 700 words and the rest under 400 words. From the aspect of the
organization, it can be seen that three aspects were dominant; the effectiveness of introduction 97%,
logical sequence of ideas 97 %, and consistent focus 97%. The organization might be the second aspect
of difficulty the students experienced.
Turning to the discourse aspect, discourse can take the shape of a whole composition, paragraph,
sentence, or words that convey a whole notion Kridalaksana (cited in Merrita, 2020). Brown (cited in
Brown & Lee, 2015; Brown, 2001) proposed seven aspects: 1) topic sentence, 2) paragraphs unity, 3)
transitions, 4) discourse markers, 5) cohesion, 6) rhetorical convention, and 7) reference. Students made
errors in all aspects of the discourse. A topic sentence is a sentence that states the main idea of a
paragraph. It was found that students did not have a topic sentence in their paragraphs. Perhaps, it
happened because students 1) did not know what should be discussed in the essays. They failed to
understand the topic of the essay and were unable to elaborate the basic knowledge about the topic; 2)
did not provide a clear argument; 3) still missed the topic sentence. 90% students made mistake in this
item. The problem with topic sentences was one of the frequent errors in discourse (97%). In terms of
transition, 67% students did not use transition such as ‘however’, ‘therefore,’ etc. when sentences need
such transition to link ideas. Most students use connectors such as ‘and,’ ‘but,’ and ‘or’ to link simple
sentences in stating arguments. In writing academic essays, students are expected to use a range of
linking words and cohesive devices to link the ideas (Khadafi, Riza, & Sesmiyanti, 2021) to avoid
misinterpretation by readers (Ariyanti, 2021) or vague ideas. Most of the students struggled to link
ideas so that the ideas and information were organized adequately. Therefore, students need cognitive
competence in order to process broad knowledge. Ertmer & Newby (2013) stated that constructing
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knowledge is the ability to process information or various knowledge. Students of higher universities
are expected to have this ability. 29 (97%) students could not process the information in their writing,
so the jumpiness occurred in their essays. One student was good at constructing her idea using a range
of linking words, and the paragraphs were well-organized. Three or 10% of students were confused
with references. The term "reference" refers to the use of pronouns and other words to refer to
something in the text (Al-Khalidy, 2018; Putri, Anwar & Ansoriyah, 2020), which is classified as
grammatical cohesion (Salkie cited in Al-Khalidy, 2018). It was found in their writing that problems
with missing anaphora such as “hope, the Internet can increase my study habit.” It should be ‘I hope (that)
internet can increase my study habit’ so ‘my replace subject I as its function as ‘object pronoun’. Discourse
aspect might be the third of students’ complexities as out of 7 items, the most dominant aspect that the
students experienced difficulty is topic sentence 97 %.
The last aspect was the mechanics. Generally, mechanics refers to spelling, punctuation, and
capitalization (Yuliah, Widiastuti, & Meida, 2019). According to James Brown, cited in Brown (2001)
and Brown & Lee (2015), the mechanics consist of 1) spelling, 2) punctuation, and 3) citation of
references. Mechanics is simple yet plays a vital role in writing. What seems simple is always ignored
by a few students. However, in this study, students (6%) misspelled because of a typo. It can be seen
from the similar words that were spelled correctly. Only two students misspelled English words. One
student made only one error in spelling. He wrote 'compre' for 'compare.' There were three errors in
another student's essay. She misspelled 'mi argumentation' for 'my argumentation,' ‘I believe that study
use internet is the effective one.’ To improve the quality of writing, students have to avoid misspellings
(Starkey cited in Anamaryanti, Syarif, & Rozimela, 2015) to make the reader understand the intended
words. In addition to mechanic problems, eight students (27%) made punctuation errors. Perhaps it
happened because students still did not know the rules for correct punctuation or forgot to place the
punctuation in the text. In contrast, punctuation is used in writings to help readers understand what
they are reading (Francis et al., 2019). In fact, besides grammar and spelling, punctuation also become
the main issues in essay writing (Ariyanti & Fitriana, 2017; Klimova, 2012). Punctuation error is more
found rather than an error in spelling and capitalization. Last, the problem with citation of the
references was found and became the dominant problem (97%). Citation is when a writer acknowledges
the efforts of other writers in his or her writing (Rezeki, 2018). Twenty-nine students were difficulty
citing the references using APA style. 27 of 29 students had no citation on their text, while two students
had citations; however, they made errors in-text citation such as 1) mentioning the author's complete
name “(Sigit Ariwibowo, 2009)”; 2) full name with the complete and initial name “(Ariwibowo, S)”; 3)
punctuation in the citation “(Ariwibowo: 2009)”. Also, they used brackets when they started the
sentence with, for instance, “according to (Ariwibowo, 2009)”. While if following the APA guideline
for in-text citation, the writer only writes the author's surname, use a comma for its punctuation, author
name and year is placed in parentheses, if it is mentioned following quotation. Otherwise, if it is before
the quotation, then the date is placed in parentheses (American Psychological Association, 2020).
The results have shown that the students made errors in writing academic essays, and students
made errors in all aspects of essay writing, starting from the content to the mechanics. Of the 30 students
in one class, only one student could write her essay correctly and follow the rules of academic writing,
while there were still 29 students who were utterly unable to write and did not achieve academic
writing standards. It is a serious issue and must be addressed immediately; otherwise, it would impact
students' final grades. They would not achieve a passing score of 60-100. After accumulating in one
semester, the final score of the 29 students ranged from 30 to 57. In short, they failed in academic writing
(C, D, and E), while the student who wrote well achieved 97.8 in her final grade. It is the responsibility
of teachers or lecturers who run the writing course to look back at the obstacles causing why students
are still challenging academic writing. After figuring out the causes, it is necessary to find practical
strategies to help students in writing so that students can easily understand the rules in academic
writing, so that when they are given writing tasks, at least these problems can be minimized.
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This study has shown that English students have difficulty in all aspects of academic writing, as
previous studies have shown. Previous research found that students generally experience content,
organization, mechanics, and language use difficulties. Those studies used the qualitative method to
find out the answers. The contributing factors were that students do not understand the rules in
academic writing and lack knowledge of English, and their attitude to writing. The present study found
that the student's difficulties in the aspect of content, which consists of 4 indicators, namely thesis
statement, related ideas development of ideas through personal experience, illustration, facts, opinion,
and use description/cause-effect, comparison/contrast. The organization consists of 5 indicators:
discourse consisting of topic sentences, paragraph unity, transition, discourse markers, cohesion,
rhetorical conventions, and references, and the last is mechanics, which consists of 3 indicators, namely
spelling, punctuation, and citation references. This study also determined which aspect is the most
dominant. The difficulties were shown by the highest percentage of each indicator in each aspect. This
research shows that the most challenging aspect is content because each indicator reaches 97%. In the
organizational aspect, indicators on effectiveness of introduction, Logical sequence of ideas, and
Consistent focus reached 97%, in the discourse aspect, the topic sentence indicator reached 97%, and in
the mechanics, the citation of references indicator reached 97%. In addition to the dominant aspect, this
study uses a mix-method approach where the quantitative method supports qualitative, namely to find
percentages so that this study can determine the level of difficulty and the most dominant. In collecting
data and research procedures and data interpretation, this study uses qualitative. Thus, this study has
similarities and differences with previous studies.
5. CONCLUSION
This study has proved that academic writing is highly complicated. It was found that the content
aspect was challenging because four indicators in the content reached 97% error. In the challenging
section, the organization was in the second position, and three indicators showed 97%. The difficulty
in concluding was relatively serious (27 students), and the appropriate length was a bit complicated,
yet more than half of the students wrote the conclusion part. The discourse aspect also shows a high
difficulty level, but only one most dominant indicator is the topic sentence. The rhetorical indicator is
considered difficult because 26 students had difficulty with this indicator. In the mechanical aspect,
punctuation and spelling are pretty straightforward. Not more than eight students failed on these
indicators. Citation of references is the most difficult in the mechanics. Therefore, It is necessary to think
about practical ways or strategies to teach academic writing so that students can quickly learn or
understand the rules of academic writing. Also, find out the factors that cause academic writing difficult
for university students should be considered. In addition, it is also possible to create learning that
focuses on students' self-evaluation of their writing. It is not only the teacher or lecturers who evaluate
their essays, but also students can evaluate their essays. Therefore, it is crucial for the teacher or lecturer
who runs an academic writing course to determine the practical strategy for learning academic writing.
It is the recommendation for further research. After knowing students' difficulties in academic writing,
researchers felt that it was time to help students improve their English academic writing. Our
responsibility is to find out problems and provide students with solutions to achieve the expected
learning process.
Acknowledgments: The research team would like to thank Dr. Ir. Ayub Urbanus Imanuel Meko, M.Si., as Rector
of Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana, sponsored the research team in the University Top Research Scheme.
Conflicts of Interest: Declare conflicts of interest or state, “The authors declare no conflict of interest.”
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