Grammatical Errors on Descriptive Academic Writing

Since the outbreak of Covid 19 in Indonesia, all universities, including Universitas Muhammadiyah Makassar, had made a decision for lecturers and students to learn from home (LFH) since March 16, 2020. This decision certainly has an impact on the change of the learning process which is used to face-to-face in the classroom then drastically changed and become online learning. This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of online learning on the Academic Writing course in the English Education Study Program. Pre-experimental design is the method where the sample is purposively chosen. The data is collected by giving pre-test and post-test and questionnaire. The study reveals that students get better writing skills after learning online. It can be seen that the pretest is 50.6 becomes 75.8 in the posttest. Meanwhile, after calculating the t-test it is also found that the effectiveness of online learning on Academic Writing Course through Google Meet is 55%. It is then concluded that online learning using Google Meet on Academic Writing Course has a positive effect on students' writing skills.

Project-based learning (PBL) is one of the teaching strategies that has become significant in the twenty-first century. English has also become an important language that needs to be mastered nowadays. Therefore, this research was done to find out how the students felt about the use of project-based learning in academic writing course in developing their English language skills and 21st century skills. The issues experienced by students in project-based learning implementation are also revealed in this study. By employing a qualitative research approach, this study invited 40 English-major undergraduate students from a state university in Central Java, Indonesia, who are currently taking their academic writing course. Students in this course must work collaboratively to complete their research projects and produce scientific papers that will eventually be published. This study's findings successfully demonstrated the students' voices that they believe project-based learning has improved their English and 21st century skills. Writing, problem-solving, and critical thinking are the three skills with the highest proportion in this study. Additionally, the issues with the implementation of project-based learning in academic writing course include student motivation, time management, teaching-learning process, and students' teamwork.

This paper intends to explore the policy of EFL departments in developing academic writing courses in public universities in the Iraqi Kurdistan region. The qualitative research approach was carried out in the research. The data was collected through a semi-structured interview. The heads of the scientific committee of four EFL departments in a governmental university in Kurdistan were selected as the participants of the study. Afterwards, the obtained data were analyzed via thematic descriptive analysis. However, the results showed that the EFL departments have straightforward policies in developing and offering academic writing courses, but they need to be improved and adjusted.

Critical thinking skills have been identified as learning outcomes expected of students for most courses of tertiary education in many countries including Malaysia. One of the courses where critical thinking is required is academic writing. Producing academic writing which is well argued, insightful, thought-provoking, characterised by evidence and wide reading is a challenge for undergraduate students. Not only do the students need to have a good command of the language, they also need to be critical as they examine viewpoints, facts and arguments and synthesise them. This thesis explores several approaches to developing critical thinking skills in an academic writing course for undergraduate students. The use of a rubric or a checklist and discussion with peers were identified in the study to support the development of critical thinking. Their potency was explored in a quasi- experimental study involving undergraduate students taking English for Academic Writing course. The three treatments groups were: peer review where students used a checklist and discussed their ideas; peer evaluation where students used the rubric and discussed their ideas and evaluations; self-evaluation where students used the rubric but did not discuss their ideas. The level of critical thinking for each groups and a control group who received no treatment, was measured before and after learning interventions using two instruments: the Cornell Critical Thinking Test Level X (CCTT-X) and the English for Academic Writing term paper. In addition, students’ and instructors’ perspectives on the learning activities were elicited by means of questionnaires and interviews. Classroom observations were also carried out. The rubric which was used in the peer evaluation and self-evaluation activities is called the Critical Thinking for Academic Writing Analytical Rubric (CAWAR). It contains 12 criteria with descriptions of the two ends of performance domains i.e. the best and the weakest points and a commentary space. The checklist used in the peer review activity, on the other hand, replicates the CAWAR except that it does not have the grading element. The study found that all treatments showed some potential for fostering the development of critical thinking skills. Theoretically, it is argued that peer evaluation has the greatest potential of the three treatments provided that both teachers and students understand the value of collaborative learning and the importance of giving sufficient time for discussion. The introduction of either the rubric or checklist or promoting peer discussion has promoted critical thinking in an academic writing course.

Writing is one of the most difficult skills in learning English as a Second Language (ESL) or English Foreign Language (EFL). Many language learners encountered difficulties from the writing process. At the tertiary level, students are required to produce academic essays, which are difficult and may frustrate students. The purpose of this study was to analyze factors contributing to students’ difficulties in an Academic Writing course based on the students’ perceptions. This study used a qualitative method. The instruments used were open-ended questionnaires and interview protocol. In this study, all the participants’ answers were coded and analyzed descriptively. The participants were 22 students who were taking Academic Writing class for repeaters in Semester I, 2018/2019 academic year, in an English Language Education Program, in a university in Central Java, Indonesia. Questionnaire data were coded and classified by the researcher. In conducting the interview, data were audio-recorded and transcribed. Those data were analyzed to answer the research questions in this study. Based on the findings, there were two factors that caused students’ difficulties in writing academically. The two factors were internal and external. Internal factors consisted of self-motivation, self-confidence, lack of knowledge and feeling of under pressure. External factors consisted of the teacher’s teaching style, classroom atmosphere, materials, and writing aspects. This research hopefully can help teachers and instructors in developing appropriate teaching techniques in Academic Writing and minimize students' difficulties in Academic Writing.

Simple present tense is part of the basic tense that must be mastered by students in learning English if students do not fully understand the simple present tense material, it can result in the achievement of learning outcomes. present tense and the most dominant difficulties experienced by students in understanding the simple present tense. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method which aims to determine the difficulties of students in understanding the simple present tense and to find out the most dominant difficulties experienced by students of class X marketing at SMKN 2 Kotabumi. The data collection in this study was a questionnaire as the main data and follow-up interviews as supporting data. There are 8 students who are the object of research in data collection for marketing students in class X. The results showed that there were 4 aspects of students' difficulties in understanding the simple present tense, including concepts, functions, patterns, and time signals of the simple present tense. The most dominant difficulty experienced by students in understanding the simple present tense is the pattern, many students sometimes make mistakes in making sentences, compiling simple present tense sentences and sometimes greeting students using tobe, verbs in sentence patterns.

Writing is a crucial skill and tertiary education students face difficulties in academic writing. This paper aimed to identify the setbacks or difficulties and the solutions to the setbacks experienced by the Indonesian tertiary education students in academic writing. A survey was used as the method of this study. The data were collected through a questionnaire using a Google form distributed to 26 fifth-semester students taking the Academic Writing course in the English Language Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, for the academic year 2019/2020. The survey results showed that, in general, the students faced setbacks in, for example, parts of speech, tenses, spelling, prepositions, vocabulary, punctuation, cohesion, discourse markers, writing paragraphs with a clear focus, constructing clear and coherent academic essays, paraphrasing, in-text referencing, and compiling a correct reference list. Concerning academic writing solutions, the results showed that lecturers should be trained and equipped with various writing strategies, feedback on the strengths and weaknesses was vital, and the students needed to improve their organization of ideas, for example. Other solutions were better language skills, language elements, critical thinking skills, paraphrasing, and referencing. Implications of the findings are that students and lecturers would understand and identify common setbacks in academic writing and have opportunities to adopt the suggested solutions to academic writing difficulties.

Abstract: English Grammar is the rules how to make a sentence in learning English. English Grammar is the important part in English, but learning Grammar is not easy especially for student Senior High School. It is because grammar has many formulas to be memorized. There are various ways in learning English that can help the students in learning English Grammar. One of the most popular and effective ways is by using games. There are many types of games that can be used as learning method and media, either electronic or conventional. One of the games is Ludo Word Game. In this study, the research question was “Is there a Ludo Word Game to learn grammar for senior high school students?. The objective of this study was to make a Ludo Word to learn grammar for senior high school students. The method of the study used was descriptive research. The result of this study was a set of Ludo Word Game that was modified with question cards. In addition, this game can help the students in learning English and can be a medium for the teacher in teaching English especially grammar. Keywords: Grammar, Game, Ludo Word Game

Over the past decade, there has been an upsurge in studies on the quality of EFL students' English academic writing. However, research on grammatical metaphors in academic writing by EFL students is limited. As such, the purpose of this research is to identify the occurrences of ideational metaphors in students' academic writing essays. In this research, the qualitative descriptive approach was applied. This study included 20 undergraduate students from the English Language and Literature Department at the College of Science and Humanities in Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia, Essay Writing course in the fourth level. Students were to write 350-word essay on the subject of "Learning Difficulties During the Coronavirus Pandemic". The data corpus for the study totals 8,482 words. According to the findings, the students' essays include 408 sentences that comprise the ideational metaphor. It is considered insignificant in contrast to the corpus's full data set of 8,482 words. The occurrence of ideational metaphors is dominated by material processes, followed by mental processes, relational processes, behavioral processes, and existential processes. This conclusion shows that EFL students' essay structures are unlikely to have a high number of good grammatical metaphor clauses. For EFL students, lecturers, teachers, and other educational professionals involved in instructing English academic writing, this study has pedagogical implications; it sheds light on how grammatical metaphors in writing texts can serve as a stand-in for the caliber of writing used in academic and scientific literature.

Collaboration is an aspect of engagement that focuseson learningthrough group work and having discussions with other learners. Activelearning approaches are a way to foster collaborative engagement becausethey provide more opportunities for interaction among learners. ProcessOriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), a socially mediated activelearning approach, uses verbalizing and discussing ideas with peersin small groups to reach a shared understanding. Due to the growingnumber of immigrants in the United States, the number of English Learners(ELs) in American classrooms has been increasing rapidly. ELs encounterchallenges such as unfamiliarity with American science class normsand expectations, feelings of not being valued and socially accepted,and instructors’ lower expectations of them. These challengescan impact this group of students’ learning and achievements.Previous studies have discussed that learning chemistry can be morechallenging for EL students due to the critical role of language inlearning. We argue that ELs use discourse moves differently comparedto non-ELs in a POGIL-based class in terms of engaging in conversationsthat can lead to a shared understanding at the group level througha joint knowledge construction process. Our findings indicated that,in our sample, ELs were less likely to engage in discursive movesthan non-ELs. This difference may result in missed opportunities fora shared understanding and joint knowledge construction. In additionto differences between EL and non-EL students in our samples, we alsofound differences between EL students who attended K–12 schoolsin the United States compared to international EL students. Implicationsfor future studies of these possibly distinct EL populations are considered.

The rapid development and availability of Generative AI (GenAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, offer new possibilities for academia, yet they also raise concerns for academic integrity. Chapelle's (2024) seminal work on GenAI’s implications serves as an impetus for this study, which explores teaching academic integrity in the context of AI use. Chapelle frames GenAI as an ‘inflection point’, calling for a re-evaluation of pedagogical strategies to support students in understanding its technological and ethical implications. This article presents findings from a mixed-methods study at a university in Cyprus, where ESL undergraduates in academic writing classes engaged with ChatGPT. Participants with B2/C1 English proficiency from diverse cultural backgrounds were assessed through pre- and post-intervention evaluations and qualitative interviews. A semester-long intervention incorporated activities to enhance academic writing skills and comprehension of ethical AI use, focusing on critical thinking, proper citation, and policy adherence. Findings indicate that students demonstrated increased AI knowledge and awareness of academic integrity. This study contributes to the discourse on integrating GenAI in academia, providing insights into effective instructional practices and addressing ethical considerations in academic writing. It offers guidance for educators and institutions aiming to integrate GenAI responsibly, ensuring academic integrity remains central in second language education.

Simple present tense is one of the most complex tense in English. Because of the different pattern between the students’ mother tongue and English as the target language, students often make errors in producing sentences. The objective of the research is to find out what type of error which mostly appears when students use Simple Present Tense in descriptive writing. This research is a descriptive qualitative research combined with error analysis methodology using Surface Strategy Taxonomy. The research participants were 50 students of Bina Sarana Informatika University majoring Management. The result of the research showed that the most common errors made by students were misformation errors which happened as much as 54%. The second most common errors which appear in students’ descriptive writing were omission errors as much as 24% which number was not much different with addition errors as much as 20%. The least type of error found in students’ descriptive writing was misordering error as much as 2%.

Higher education in Ukraine is facing new challenges brought about by the reform processes that affect its content and structure. The reduction of contact hours has increased both the volume of students’ independent work and their responsibility for academic success. Under these conditions, the portfolio becomes one of the most efficient means of teaching and assessing students’ academic performance as it consists of a collection of syllabus-based writing tasks demonstrating the learner’s gradual achievements during the course. Portfolios are profitable both for teachers and learners. Thanks to the portfolio, all the students are equally involved into the learning process; they receive more individual attention on the part of the teacher, and to the end of the course, get patterns of several academic papers, such as an essay, abstract, annotative bibliography, and presentation. The portfolios enable the teacher to follow the students’ achievements and the process of forming academic writing competences, and if it is necessary, to reinforce their development. Moreover, portfolios provide a perfect tool for valid, multifaceted, and sustainable students’ assessment. The system of syllabus-based learning tasks aligned to six categories of Bloom’s taxonomy forms the content of the competence-based portfolio. The proposed arrangement of academic writing assignments accounts for successful solving of the course objectives. The introduction of portfolios into the learning process is rather advantageous for other academic courses because most generic and subject-specific competences, formed within the Academic Writing course, are transferable and can be applied to other disciplines. The learners can successfully use the absorbed knowledge of scientific writing for creating academic papers in other courses.

This study identifies the effect of using discourse for teaching English grammar for EFL students of eight grade students in bilingual classes of State Islamic Junior High School Kudus. Grammar is the main competence to improve the general language skill in English. However, the students often face many difficulties in studying many rules of English grammar. The research was conducted to measure if discourse approach could enhance student’s English grammar competence. The design employed in this research was Experimental Research. The study was conducted at the eighth grade students in bilingual classes of State Islamic Junior High School Kudus. There are 2 Bilingual Classes. They were divided into two groups. The first group is control group consisting of 29 students, and the second was experimental group consisting of 28 students. Observation, questionnaire, evaluation sheet and students’ grammar test were implemented as instrument to collect the data. The finding of the study shows that teaching and learning English through discourse improved the students’ grammar competence.

This study analyzed the effect of AI feedback on students' writing skills, providing reliable and impartial assessments. The study assessed the capability of artificial intelligence to provide feedback and conducted a comparative analysis with conventional methods employed for enhancing student writing skills. Sixty-three students in the Academic Writing course at the Modern College of Business Science were selected as the sample, of which 14 actively participated in focused discussions. A combination of pre-tests, post-tests, and rubrics aligned with course objectives served as the primary research tools, ensuring the feedback remained relevant. One group received feedback based on AI, while another received traditional feedback. Additionally, qualitative data was collected through focused discussions to gain deeper insights. The results suggest combining adaptive rubrics with AI-based feedback can enhance assessment methods and retention. These findings are expected to significantly contribute to the future use of AI in education, as there is substantial potential to transform feedback and assessment across various educational contexts.