Introduction Academic writing is one important issue that are raising in academic environment, especially among international students.

When students are asked to compose academic papers, it usually means they have to present their own opinion about, at least, a scientific topic. In doing so, students have to read a lot of literatures and cite appropriate ones in order to provide robust evidences to support their ideas. As academic writing has many requirements including providing important evidences and reading academic sources, in this essay, I explain key features, frequent problems and the process approach of academic writing. At the end of this essay, I describe a plan to effectively do academic writing for over 6 weeks. Key Features Good writing essays have some critical features in order to help academic scholars to communicate their ideas appropriately and effectively. According to Gillet (2013), features are including complexity, formality, precision, objectivity, explicitness, accuracy, hedging and responsibility. Indeed, writing academic features are important in order to present academic essays in factual, objective and formal ways. Complexity is an important feature of academic writing. It means that academic essays should use complex structure, grammar and vocabulary. As academic essays may contrast and categorize a lot of factual information, it is needed to use some sentences that more complex than that in informal or spoken languages. For example, in order to combine two similar opinions and to explain ideas objectively, writers may use subordinate clauses and passive sentences simultaneously. A next feature of scientific writing is formality. Formality means that academic scholars have to describe their ideas in formal languages instead of informal or spoken languages. For instance, Dad may be used in spoken language but it should be replaced by Father in scientific papers. If, as another example, any academic scholar tends to use his own informal languages, other academic scholars who read his scientific essay may confuse owing to his unknownly informal languages. In order to provide information as exact as possible, academic writing should contain a precision feature. A precision feature asks scientific authors to give information as precise as possible to readers. Due to this, academic scholars should support their academic essays with figure, table or graphto give clear information. Moreover,

academic authors shall describe a concise magnitude of scientific matters in order to give other academic scholars exact information. For instance, instead of saying the earthquake is very big, a writer should write the earthquake is measured 7.3 on Richter scale. This is more concise and precise so that readers could get clear picture about the earthquake or scientific issues that any academic writer mentions. A primary objective of academic essays is to discuss a scientific idea so that those emphasis on academic debates. This characteristics is widely called objectivity, in which academic writers have to discuss intended academic issues instead of their own personal matters. Since academic authors intend to discuss academic issues, they tend to use signposting words to combine or contrast some facts or ideas. These signalling words are directly embedded in academic essays to help readers easily understand academic ideas mentioned in academic literacy. Signalling word such as however, alternatively, owing to and due to this, are few examples of these words. This feature of academic writing is called explicitness. To present clear academic opinions, academic authors must have robust English literacy ability. This feature is known as an accuracy feature of academic literacy. Academic writers have to understand what specific words to use, in their particular fields, in order to clearly present their ideas. For instance, academic writers whose economics background should understand differences among money, currency, fund and capital. If, for example, they do not understand specific differences among those, they may confuse readers who read their scientific essays. Another interesting feature of academic writing is hedging. It is also called using cautious language. In scientific or academic environment, some facts or factual information may be true for specific condition but not true for the other condition. In turn, academic scholars should provide clear their stance about their claims. For instance, instead of saying Big cities have terrible traffic jam, academic scholars should say Most big cities in Asia have terrible traffic jam. In this case, there is a possibility that a few big cities may not have terrible traffic jam, so that, the last saying is a cautious stance as it states that most big cities in Asia have terrible traffic jam.

When academic scholars explain their academic ideas, they have to provide strong arguments or evidence to support their claim. In other words, academic essays have to reflect authors responsibility to support their academic opinion. This feature of academic literacy is known as responsibility. Academic authors must support their claims with some evidences or factual information so that they can persuade and argue readers that their claims are a robust opinion. Frequent Problems According to Sowden (2005) some international students have problems in doing academic writing as they have differently cultural backgrounds. Chinese students, for instance, do not cite other works that they mention in their work. The bilingual students may not cite other research as other knowledge, in their own culture, can be supposed as public opinion (Sowden, 2005). Another example is Asian students are likely to compose descriptive papers instead of critical papers as their cultural background are not encouraged students to criticize other opinions (Sowden, 2005). In addition, different styles among students first languages and English may cause some difficulties when foreign students write academic papers (Al-Khasawneh, 2010). For instance, some Arabic may have longer sentences than English that may influence students when they write academic papers (Al-Khasawneh, 2010). In turn, language background may hinder students academic writing progress. The Process Approach A main objective of the process approach is to give students a chance to exprience the nature of writing such as pre-writing, drafting, evaluating and revision (Hyland, 2002 as cited in Demirel, 2011). It is likely that students, who have experienced the process approach, can follow the stages of the process approach in their daily academic life. In turn, students can effectively write their academic essays as they may get useful feedbacks from their peers and tutors. In addition, another objective of the process approach is to reduce anxiety among students, especially international students (Demirel, 2011). As there is interaction among students, students may share their difficulties, so that scholars could write in a less stressful way. In order to increase efficacy of the process approach, students are usually asked to proceed some stages. Some stages are including prewriting, planning, drafting, peer

reviews, revision and proofreading (Demirel, 2011). Prewriting is a stage in which each students will write their outlines, especially about what their main ideas will be explored further. In the planning stage, students may compose a timetable of their writing progress. Following this, student can start to write their ideas in the drafting stage. After finishing peer reviews, students should revise their essays and proofread their writing before collecting theirs to their tutor. The Plan for over 6 Weeks According to Demirel (2011), a possible plan to write academic essays as follows: subject selection, proposal writing, annotated bibliography, introduction section, literature review, data collection, writing the results and handing the final paper to the tutor. In addition, Whitaker (2009) points out another possible plan to conduct academic writing as follows: choosing a topic, thinking (brainstorming), doing research, discovering your thesis, planning (outline), writing, revising, editing and proofreading. Although both authors seems to have different stages for a writing plan, their ideas can be grouped into following stages: choosing a topic, proposal writing (an outline), research to find appropriate bibliography, building a thesis, writing and finding feedbacks, revising and proofreading. These stages can be done within 6 weeks or more as seen in the table 1. Time The first week The second week The third week The fourth week The fifth week The sixth week The seventh week Activities Choosing a topic Proposal writing (an outline) Research to find appropriate bibliography Building a thesis Writing and finding feedbacks Revising Proofreading Notes

SUBTITLE BERJUMLA 8 KATA

DRAFT OF ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Al Fadda, H. (2012). Difficulties in academic writing: From the perspective of King Saud University of postgraduate students. English Language Training, 5(3), pp. 123130. This source is credible as it was published in a peer-reviewed journal, English Language Training. Lack of academic literacy may be influenced by some internal and external factors. Internal factors, for example, are including first language background, motivation and lack of English skills. In addition, external factors are including different styles between Arabic and English such as writing styles and alphabets. Lastly, the author suggests that teachers and native English students may help Arabic students to increase their English writing.

Al-Khasawneh, F, M, S. (2010). Writing for academic purposes: Problems faced by Arab postgraduate students of the college of business, UUM. ESP World, 2 (28), pp. 123. This publication was published in a scholarly reviewed journal and it has been cited nine other scholars. The writer argues that Arabic students have some problems when they start to write their academic papers. Problem sources among Arabic students are including weak English foundation, environment issues and methods of English teaching. Environmental issues includes limited opportunity to practice English, first language styles and isolated environment. Moreover, problem sources in terms of methods of English teaching are including teachers low proficiency in English, lack of writing in academic world and using Arabic in English classes. Moreover, weak English foundation are including grammar, spelling and referencing. Badger, R & White, G. (2000). A process genre approach to teaching academic writing. ELT Journal, 54 (2), pp. 153-160. This essay is really credible as it was published in a peer-reviewed journal and has been cited by more than 500 other scholars. There are three approaches in teaching writing, namely, product approach, process approach and genre approach. As each approach has weaknesses and strengths, adaptation should take in order to cover its weaknesses. For instance, when a English teacher implements the process approach, he or she may provide some inputs such as appropriate articles and previous students works for her or his students so that the process approcahs weak point of lack input can be covered. Coffin, C., Curry, M,J., Goodman, S., Hewings, A., Lillis, T,M., & Swann, J.(2004). Teaching academic writing: A toolkit for higher education. London: Routledge. This book could be viewed a complete guide in teaching academic writing. For students, this book can give students insights about writing assessment so that they can

create well academic essays. Moreover, this book also describes different types and samples of academic essays from different subjects. Demirel, E. (2011). Take it step by step : Following a process approach to academic writing to overcome student anxiety. Journal of Academic Writing, 1 (1), pp. 222-227. This academic research was published online in a peer-reviewed journal. This author claims that the process approach could reduce Turkish students when they write their academic essays. Some issues that the most stressfull for students are the complexity of writing rules or conventions, difficulties to find appropriate sources for their papers and unfamiliarity with academic writing. The process approach could help students in reducing anxiety since the process method gives students chances to interact with other students and to practice academic writing frequently. Gillet, A. (2013). Using english for academic purposesa guide for students in higher education: academic writing. Retrieved on July 20, 2013 from http://www.uefap.com/ writing/feature/ featfram.htm. This bibliography is important and credible as it is published in 2013 as a book and it contains a lot of useful information about academic writing. Gillet (2013) points out some features of academic writing such as complexity, formality, precision, objectivity, explicitness, accuracy, hedging and responsibility.Indeed, writing academic features are important in order to present academic essays in factual, objective and formal ways. Sowden, C. (2005). Plagiarism and the culture ofmultilingual students in highereducation abroad. ELT Journal Volume, 59(3), pp. 226233.doi:10.1093/elt/cci042. The paper version of this article was published by Oxford University Press. Sowden (2005) argues that international students may face some difficulties in Western academic environment, especially in academic essays, owing to different culture. For instance, a group of Japanese students refused to cite other works in their papers since they think that knowledge they mentioned is public knowledge. Another example is as most foreign students from Asia are seldom asked to criticize other scholars opinion, they may face difficulty when they compose their academic essays, especially when they are asked to do literature review or criticize other scholars papers. University of Technology Sydney Library. (2013). Academic writing. Retrieved on July 20, 2013 fromhttp://www.lib.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/attachments/ page/Academic%20Writing%20Guide%20Part%201%20-20Academic%20Writing.pdf This publication has been used a handbook of academic writing in the university. This tutorial book contains a lot of information regarding with academic writing. In the first section, the writer explains about important features of academic writing, then, the next section tells about guidelines to prevent from basic English mistakes in writing such as grammar, referencing, vocabulary, structure and writing styles. Moreover, this citation also explains about some important characteristics of academic writing such as summarizing, paraphrasing, reporting verbs, passive sentences, and formal languages.

Whitaker, A. (2009). Academic writing guide 2010. City University of Seattle. Retrieved on July 20, 2013 from http://www.vsm.sk/Curriculum/academicsupport/academicwritingguide.pdf. This publication has been used a handbook of academic writing in the university. This handbook provides information on a complete plan to compose qualified academic writing. According to Whitaker (2009), some plans in writing academic essays are including choosing a topic, thinking (brainstorming), doing research, discovering your thesis, planning (outline), writing, revising, editing and proofreading. Furthermore, what students should do in each stage is clearly explained with simple guidelines and examples. Some features of academic writing can be categorized as basic features and additional features. The basic features are including complexity, formality, precision, objectivity, explicitness, accuracy, hedging and responsibility. The additional features