Academic Writing

[sabrowi]

Hallo guys, I am sabrowi, an English Teacher but I am still in processing to finish my bachelor.
I am interested in Academic writing and I plan to make a research about the difficulties in academic writing. I want to do my research in the university where I am studying.
I want to ask about it, what are the difficulties you faced or your students faced (if you are a teacher) in academic writing? what are the common difficulties?

from your answers, I hope we can make it as our evaluation for our teaching learning method.
thanks,

 

[eldaryandini]

the word "Academic" must sound very formal in our head. It means that we cannot do everything relates to it randomly. Academic writing must be something relates to education or knowledge. We must be serious in planning it, doing the process to get the best result. As you stated, it must involve the research of a topic we choose to get the real thing with the trusted result. All students of University must do that to get their Bachelor Degree.

 

[Tdol]

Referencing can be difficult- many students come from backgrounds where referencing is not carried out as rigorously as it is in English-speaking universities and struggle with it.

 

[ISTIANATUL KHUSNIYAH]

Hallo guys, I am sabrowi, an English Teacher but I am still in processing to finish my bachelor.
I am interested in Academic writing and I plan to make a research about the difficulties in academic writing. I want to do my research in the university where I am studying.
I want to ask about it, what are the difficulties you faced or your students faced (if you are a teacher) in academic writing? what are the common difficulties?

from your answers, I hope we can make it as our evaluation for our teaching learning method.
thanks,

Well, as my experience in academic writing the first difficulties that I face is choosing the topic sentence. The topic sentence will be good if it is informative & interesting. Besides, I have difficulty in making outline. The outline must provides structures (introduction, body, and conclusion). Moreover, the outline should include main ideas and supporting details.

 

[Louiesaha]

The most difficult task in academic writing, I would say, is the proper citation! Must have proper capital letter, full stop, comma, parentheses, no typo, different in fonts.... As the education levels are higher, the professors' requirements of the proper citations are stricter! I had come across a 8 points deduction over a 30 points assignment, just because of an extra space, a misalignment.... No kidding. I spent huge amount of time in front of th Word just to make sure the citations were correct! Gosh!
Not a teacher

 

[ISTIANATUL KHUSNIYAH]

I do agree with you Louiesaha. The proper citation is the difficulty that often faced by the students. We can say as punctuation problems. In academic writing we have to pay attention more about the punctuation. That's like simple problem but it's very important for us. It can influence the result of our academic writing.

 

[Tdol]

Another problem is trying too hard- learners sometimes add too many words they have studied in writing classes, so that every sentence groans under the weight of the moreover/furthermore/in brief/therefore/in other words and other such terms.

 

[Raymott]

I've found that for many, if not most, students, the most difficult thing is to avoid plagiarism.

 

[sabrowi]

yeah, students usually don't understand well the references, so they do plagiarism

 

[lifbali]

Most common problem is Failure to acknowledge the source of all ideas is a serious matter. Copying directly from another text without acknowledgement is even more serious.

 

[Megan04]

Well, from a student's point of view, I would say getting the grammar and the formats and things like that correct. But along with that, I think wordiness is a hindrance to proper academic writing. Students, in order to impress their teacher, indulge in too much of that and that hampers smooth flow of writing.