IS ENGLISH ACADEMIC WRITING AS SIMPLE AS USING A TRANSLATION TOOL? ERROR ANALYSIS ON STUDENTS’ ABSTRACT

Writing is not a spontaneous ability in language learning because it requires both editing and revising, and thus making this skill perceived as an easy task. Students could use a dictionary to help them use a foreign language on any occasion. Nonetheless, these activities may result in several errors in students' writing assignments. Relating to this situation, this study aims at identifying the students’ problems and their grammatical errors during the process of academic writing. In this study, mix-methods were applied in which vocational college students’ writings were documented and interview with the students was conducted. The data on students’ grammatical errors were collected, transcribed, analyzed, and interpreted. The findings show that the students’ errors laid on tense (38.0%), preposition (11.7%), article (11.4%), conjunction (11.4%), omission (8.9%), subject-verb agreement (6.3%) and adverb (2.5%). Meanwhile, based on the interview, to facilitate language competence, a translation tool such as Google translate was routinely used by most of the students (81.8%) during the writing completion. Although applying a translation tool in writing, the majority of the students (73%) thought it is a hard skill, and 18% of them believed that the writing process is the most difficult in language activities.


INTRODUCTION
Having English proficiency, undergraduate students need to boost their strategies during their hectic activities. Not only students' language inputs are comprehended, but also the outputs have to be excellent. One of the language products which are Fitriani, Sabarniati & Safuni, Is English Academic Writing As Simple As Using Translation Tool? Error 56 56 likely easy, yet it often indicates errors is writing ability. Setyowati and Sukmawan (2017) mentioned writing made Indonesian students worried. and they did not enjoy making their writing assignment. During the producing a composition, students are required to express their mind to be a good language structure. Words by words they keep arranging become complete sentences and paragraphs. For writing a foreign language, some learning tools such as a dictionary and grammar book should be applied. However, today, most students use web-based of English learning application since it is fast, practical, and correct. Ariyanti and Fitriana (2017) found Indonesian university students learning English as their foreign language had problems in writing an essay; the errors include grammatical errors, cohesion, coherence, sentence structure, diction, and spelling errors.
Though it seems easy as the facility (translation tool such as google translate) keeps being developed, a writer should present proper information which is undeniably understood by a reader. Most beginner writers tend to express L1 then translate it to the L2. Sometimes it indicates that L1 interferes with English. On the other hand, the student's English writing process is still influenced by their mother tongue. Mostly, the structures of the target language are obstructed through writing tasks. Therefore, the students' habit of writing accurately should be managed. Rahmatunisa (2014) stated students faced two main problems in writing argumentative essays i.e. formatting words and grammatical structure.
As writing is done without achieving complicated pronunciation, every student assuredly can show his or her skill. In addition, there are countless dictionaries or translation tools on online media. Simply, whoever, whenever, and wherever a student needs to write the language, he uses the translator directly. With confidence, the student believes in his/her ability in producing sentences.
It is undoubtedly for EFL students that during the composing, they need a learning help such as dictionary or translator which facilitate them in constructing sentences from words by words, choosing appropriate diction and opposite. It leads students to use an online translation tool such as google translate that can be accessed online. In the process of learning English, google translate plays an important role since the students could fast check the meaning of certain words. Moreover, they can enrich and develop vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar effectively (Krisnawati, 2017). On the other hand, Yanti (2019) found that although this media might assist the writing skill, the students were doubtful of the meaning accuracy. Most of the students rechecked the translation results while they gradually improved their grammar and translation skill. Similarly, Hilma (2011) agreed that google translate brings weakness during the language interpretation. Additionally, Maulidiyah (2018) questioned the google translate role in language learning. Her study found that although the use of google translate might cause several problems, most students kept using this translator.
In the process of language transferring, it surely emerged several difficulties. In 2017, Habibi, Wachyuni, and Husni researched students' writing problems in Jambi. The research focused on university students' perception of the problems in writing, and the results reveal that 7 types of problems arise according to the perceptions. These types consist of poor organization/ illogical sequence, problem of word choice, grammatical error, spelling problem, supporting ideas, punctuation problem, and capitalization. The result further showed that the problem of female students was more on word choices while the male students' problems were grammatical errors.
Generally, the majority of the students' problems rely on word choice and poor organization. Meanwhile, Younes and Albawi (2015) stated that five factors are affecting language performance including language content, vocabulary words, composing, developing, and analyzing ideas. Their study found three main language problems faced by the students: sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling. In this study, the students perceive that the problem is caused by the students' strategies of learning grammar, punctuation, and spelling was discussed.
In 2010, an Egypt researcher, Ahmed (2010: 213) analyzed EFL students' problems with English writing. He focused on students' cohesion and coherence of essay writing. The result of the study indicated that lack of motivation, selfconfidence and writing anxiety influenced the skill. Moreover, conventional teaching techniques affected the students' language performance. Meanwhile, Alfaki (2015) found out five reasons of students' problems in writing. Those involved the nature of the writing process, lack of learners' motivation, inadequate time, lack of practice, and teachers' feedback. In addition, the main writing problems lays in mechanical, linguistic, cognitive, and psychomotor difficulties. In another setting, in Bangladesh, Arifin (2016) researched to investigate the writing problems of non-English major university students. The data collected from writing samples, questionnaire, and interview showed that the students had writing problems on spelling, tense, subjectverb agreement, punctuation and fragments, preposition, number, pronoun, words and word choice, articles, and capitalization.
In the process of writing, since the writer needs to show the work(s) as a readable composition, he/she should use proper language use. However, errors could happen even in the best writing product created. As Ferris (2014: 3) concisely explained that errors exist in both oral and written sentences such as words, spelling, pronunciation, or sound. In other words, errors involve all of the language faults in morphology, syntax, and lexical forms. Vidhayasai, Keyuravong, and Bunsom (2015) found that the error of the target language was shown at three levels. There are lexical including Non-equivalence between the source (English) and target language (Thai), context digression, omission, and other lexical-related errors, syntactical including single word-based translation and passive-active structures, and discursive. In other cases, as students learn English as a foreign language, writing is truly a difficult skill to perform since it needs to follow some essential language rules. In King Saud University, Fadda (2012) found students' main difficulty during learning writing. She proved that the university students were hard to distinguish between spoken and written language; they wrote as if they spoke English. Meanwhile, Safa (2018) briefly described at least four reasons for students in producing poor writing including reductionist approach, writing apprehension, unproductive lecture method and attributable to the large size of writing class and disintegration of a culture. Although a learner might speak English fluently, it is unsure that he/she must be good at writing ability. A writer needs to organize the ideas into interesting sentences so that the writing product could be easily read and understood. Phuket and Othman (2015) proved that Thai university students were used to translate English during the writing process. In their study, students' errors were investigated, and sources of errors were examined. The results showed that the students had grammatical difficulties during producing English text. The errors included word choice, verb tense, preposition, and comma which were a part of Fitriani, Sabarniati & Safuni, Is English Academic Writing As Simple As Using Translation Tool? Error 58 interlingual and intralingual. Meanwhile, Hamzah (2012) analyzed grammatical errors on 20 texts written by students in English writing class. Students' writing assignments were collected and analyzed to find the errors. From the total language corpus of approximately 10.000 words, it was found 691 errors made by the students. His study showed that the majority of students' errors derived from word choice, verb group, article, preposition, plurality, and spelling.
Academic writing performance has become a problem for most university students on final year in Indonesia since it is required for submitting a final report. Although most of their studies are written in Indonesian, it is undoubtedly that the process of writing encounters some difficulties and problems. Furthermore, it is convinced that each student has his or her problems during the writing process. At least, students need to write their work in English in the abstract part. The abstract of the final report must consist of Indonesian and English versions. In this stage, most students are inclined to translate their works into English without considering any English structures. Therefore, the errors in the abstract were investigated in this study.
In this case study, it is obligated for the students in Aceh Polytechnic in their final year of diploma studies to finish their final project in a certain time with a valid writing report. Previously, they have been learning English for three semesters for every 2 credits in the college, by then it can be predicted they obtain high English competence. On their final project report, the students need to write an abstract not only in Indonesian but also in English for fulfilling the graduation requirement. During the process, they tend to translate the English draft through a translator machine. Although the action is not wrong at all, it often generates the students' confusion owing to some reasons, i.e. the mother tongue impact.
Halimah (2018) proved in her study that the types of google translation of Indonesian-English errors mostly laid on semantic category, and followed by syntax and morphology. On the other hand, Chandra and Yuyun (2018) analyzed the use of google translate in essay writing on undergraduate students of the English department. Their findings indicated that most students used google translate for vocabulary searching while they hesitated for the grammar. The use of grammar through google translate was the least as they believe that the tool can not define well agreement rules.
To clarify the issue, this study is concerned with students' works and their thoughts during the learning experience. The research questions that guided this study are (1) what grammatical errors emerged on students', and (2) what are the students' writing problems during the target language acquisition? The students' habit of using learning media tools such as translation machines was also questioned. In this case, the grammatical errors were documented from students' works, and students' writing problems were obtained from the interview.

METHODOLOGY Subjects
The subject of this study were students studying in the last year of vocational college namely Politeknik Aceh in Banda Aceh. They are 22 non-English major college students who are mostly 20-21 years old. They consist of ten females and 12 males. The heterogeneous sample was chosen from all majors available in the college such as Accounting, Information Technology, Industrial Electronics Technology, and Mechatronics Engineering. As the students have finished their foreign language courses in the college containing English I, English II, and English III for 2 credits for each learning program, it was assumed that the process of writing was completed. Moreover, the writing of the students' abstract of their final project was written in both Indonesian and English. After the Indonesian abstracts were having checked by the final project advisers, the students were directed to check their English abstracts to their English lecturers. At this point, each student might meet the English lecturer at least twice.

Design and Procedures
The mix-method approach was designed in this study in which data were qualitatively and quantitatively collected (Creswell, 2014). Students' English writings (abstract) were collected to identify the grammatical errors that emerged in their writing. Ten students were interviewed to investigate the data of their problems during the writing process. The conversation was recorded as it eased to obtain the whole information. Finally, the audio-recording result was transcribed and analyzed descriptively.

Data Collection and Data Analysis
The documents from the students' writing were analyzed its grammatical errors. Firstly, the drafts were read and analyzed by investigating the common errors that appeared on their language outputs. The grammatical errors were classified and presented on the percentage. Finally, the errors emerged in the students' writing tasks were discussed.
After doing the interview, the qualitative data were transcribed. Although the data records are various and detailed, yet it keeps being neat (Richards, 2015). The transcription, then, was coded by giving segment and label to the excessive information. By using thematic analysis, the data were categorized into themes. Data transcripts that were overlapped were reduced on the data condensation process directed to the display. Data display subsequently indicated the findings of the problem. The importance of data description is to develop the case deeply by qualitatively analyzed data from all the sources (Cresswell, 2011). To ease the data presentation, percentage analysis was used in this study.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Grammatical Errors in Academic Writing
From the data gathered, it could be analyzed that the most frequent error in students' academic writing was grammar. Students experienced errors in choosing the appropriate articles, preposition, adverbs, the correct use of tense, subject-verb agreement, word order, conjunctions, and omission (incomplete sentences). Table 1 below describes briefly about students' errors in grammar use in academic writing.  Table 1 shows that most of students made errors in using the corrects tense and 17.7% of the students wrongly used preposition in their writings. Then, errors in conjunction and article got the same percentage in students's drafts. Furthermore, errors in the English omission were obtained four times. While word order and adverb indicated minimal errors in students' academic writing, the subject-verb agreement were detected five times in student's work.

Tense
In English, mostly verbs indicated the time. From the gained data, students resulted on incorrect use of English tense. In details, frequent errors were produced in nominal and verbal sentences in past tense, modals and gerund. For the further explanation, see the following examples. The sample sentences above indicated that students still had problems with verb form. Students made some generalizations of adding -ing after the verbs as such in the words "process" and "monitor". It assumed that students might have no knowledge about modal auxiliaries appeared in the sentences. In other cases, E3 to E5 also supported the previous findings. Most of the students made errors in verb form in past tense. The students inclined the basic form of English verb without noticing the time they were discussing. In addition, the sample below showed error on verb form of the students' nominal sentences. E6 To briefly explain, the students' understanding of gerunds might be still low. The sample sentences in E9 and E10 provided the evidence how the students dealth with gerunds in a sentence. See the following examples for clear evidence. The agreement of subject and verb in the target language are undoubtedly considered serious due to language interference. It is obviously showed that the nonnative English students are still affected by their mother tongue which has no rules in concord. On the other hand, the errors on the English structure were emerged on word order as the data presented below.

Preposition
Even though 17.7% of the students made errors in prepositions, this issue resulted on the serious problem since it was an effortless lesson. Meanwhile, the correct preposition selection was inaccurate, the results found some absence of prepositions. The data in E13 and E14 analysed that the student had no consciousness at the missing word.

Articles
Generally, the misuses of English articles such as 'a', 'an', and 'the' were held by "the". All data analysed showed that the students produced errors on "the" without adding the articles on their composition.

Conjunction
Not only the articles, but also conjunction was laid on the same number which was 11.4%. Unlike the articles, conjunction exists in Indonesian language on which this type of error was also detected. For example, E18 proved that the student wrote "therefore" in the middle of paragraph. Furthermore, E19 shows the students' fault in conjunction determination across the sentences.

Omission
Some missing words or also known as omission were also detected in this study. E20 to E22 showed incomplete sentences owing to the words missed. Even though E21 and E22 were performed the wrong English structure, E20 was neglected an essential substance in a good sentence. It is clearly showed that E21 wrote no predicate in the statement. Although the errors on word order encountered at insufficient number (3.7%), the results still found the students' confusion during EFL proficiency.

Adverb
The findings reported that 2,5% of the students made English grammatical errors in adverb use.. It is not parallelization adverb between "effectively" and "efficient" which was obviously shown at E27. Furthermore, E26 signified adverb omission due to the imprecise sentence without adverb addition. From the results explained previously, it can be affirmed that during language instruction, most students were influenced with the students' L1 as they tend to translate their Indonesian. It was demonstrated that the students' L1 has an important role in writing English. Besides, there are incomplete sentences on the students writing products, still there are some sentences in the composition that are too long where the sentence should be divided into several sentences.

Students' Problems in Academic Writing
To identify the students' problems in their writing activities, a 6-semi-structured interview adopted from Klimova (2014) and Arifin (2016) was conducted. The gained data was then transcribed, analysed and interpreted in order to know the students' opinions and problems in their writing activities.
Question 1 focused on the students' thoughts on the significance of learning English. None of them argued that English was truly essential especially for their work experience in the future. On the other hand, the students were questioned about the hardest skill to achieve. Although the answers varied, 37% of them believed that speaking is the hardest language skill to master. Meanwhile, 27% stated that listening was the hardest skill, the others expressed that writing (18%) and reading (18%) are the two other hard skills to master in English. the most difficult ability during the target language process.
Even though, few students (18%) informed that writing involves a demanding skill among the other skills, 73% of all students were pretty sure that this skill was difficult when they were whether it was hard or not. Based on their experiences, the reasons they conveyed are countless. At least four students stated that this ability was hard due to the mastery of English grammar. The students also agreed that English writing needs to use verb form correctly. One of students voiced that to produce a 63 The Journal of English Literacy Education, Vol. 8, No. 1, May 2021, pp.55-67 P-ISSN 2355-7486, E-ISSN 2621 good writing, an author needs the strong mastery of basic English even though six students said that writing in English is not as hard as learners' thought. 27% of these students revealed that taking more practices is a key to achieve the lesson.
It is essential to recognize the writing process of each student when they were asked to write an abstract, for example. The results of the study reported that all students utilized the technology tools to ease or improve their writings quality. Most of the students frequently conducted Google Translate, Microsoft Office and any other appropriate applications. Owing to the habit of using internet, 82% of the students were comfortable and confident in finishing their writing by using Google Translate even though they still conducted printed English dictionary to find the definition of certain words. The students' preferences were various on the basis of their needs and their habits. More than half of respondents strongly believed that Google Translate was a good choice to assist them while the rests preferred using dictionary and asking some help from others.
The students were accustomed to using Google Translate to work on their English written assignments. At most, they commented that they found it beneficial to use Google Translate. To support, Zafitri & Harida (2017) mentioned that their mathematics students brought positive attitude toward Google Translate. It was positively proved that this tool helped the students in achieving the target language effectively, even though this tool did not support to all translation profession and industry (Doherty, 2016). Also, the result of the study found some errors on language output when the student conducted the Google Translate. The results verified some mistakes in the language accuracy due to the probability of the translation tool. Indeed, the use of technology in English practice could not be wrong as if the user understands the language rules. It was suggested that the students double check the language accuracy.
During the learning process, the students had some problems to master the target language. Any constraints and difficulties might be experienced by them in the writing activities. In students' perspectives, they might have problems with their the vocabulary, word choice, spelling, grammar, word order, and conjunction. Half of the students expressed that the target language rules became their problem in the writing. Furthermore, some of them stated that writing im English differs from writing in Indonesian language. It is truly difficult to identify parts of speech and how to put the words in correct form. Even though 5% told that he/she had no difficulties during the writing activities, the other one said that it was hard when he/she had no one to ask about their English tasks.
Students' encouragement to some extent relates to the students' success in learning a language. To clarify this issue, a question of negative attitude towards the language learning was appeared. The results found that more than half of students brought the positive behaviour to the classroom. Mostly, the students mentioned that they were optimistic in learning English. One of the students explained that he/she needs to develop their ability. However, the other students (27%) were pretty sure to tell that they had no motivation in learning language. Then, two of them conveyed that they had lack of vocabulary and grammar mastery. Although most of them agreed that English is necessary, another stated at the reverse due to the fact that English is hard to master.
This study reported that EFL students produced several types of grammatical errors; they were article, preposition, adverb, tense, subject verb agreement, word order, conjunction and omission. Among all the errors, the students exposed to tense as the most common errors appeared, especially in using Simple Past Tense (38%). Additionally, the students confessed that English grammar is a kind of complex lesson to complete. Abdullah (2013) identified that the most frequent error made by students were the use of Simple Present tense and Past Tense. His study found that the errors on simple present tense were higher than simple past. Meanwhile, Muhsin (2016) conducted a study on students' errors in using simple present; they were omission, addition, word form and sentence order. Moreover, Wu and Garza (2014) found that subject-verb agreement was the highest errors produced by students in China. Moreover, the factors caused the errors are interlingua.
In Second Language Acquisition studies, the term overgeneralization has been well-known. It is meant that a student generalizes the target language structure without considering certain changed forms in the language. Bingbo (2017) reported that overgeneralization was the main cause of the grammatical errors found in the English writing of the second-year undergraduate students in China. He also found that verb phrase related errors (21.69%) were the greatest problems faced by the students. On the other case, Fengjie and Yingying (2015) analysed specific problems particularly errors on the writing assessment. They concerned on Chinglish errors to find the solution for college students. Their research analysing Chinglish patterns on sentences structure indicated each of features of English and Chinese. Those are grammatical features, sentence structures, loose sentences and overuse of verbs.
Dealing with the students' errors in their written language, the interview results indicated that more than a half of students believed that this language ability is not easy. The students were quite sure to state that writing is a hard language task. Although errors and mistakes were still found on their compositions, they insisted learning English enthusiastically. The students positively had high motivation in learning English as their foreign language.
Then, even though, the students' writing tasks must be in English, few students expressed their ideas in Indonesian language. In other words, the students unconsciously used their mother tongue in their abstract writing. This condition generally revealed since student tended to translate his/her L1. Interlanguage existed on students learning process. Crampton (2011) ascertained errors caused by mother tongue transfer. Th first language transfer, specifically Arabic, had a great influence on the number of errors made by students. Meanwhile, it was designated that the students were accustomed to translating their L1 (French and Arabic) even though the students significantly denied the language interference (Bacha, 2018).

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
The findings of the study indicated that tense had the highest rank of errors. Additionally, most of the students believed that this skill was hard to master even though the technology tools provide translator machine. Based on the findings, it is recommended that teacher present effective teaching approach in tense. Both teacher and students identify the errors and let students attempt to understand their common errors particularly during the writing. Therefore, in academic writing, the errors can be reduced gradually.
This study was limited to the students' composition on their English abstracts as their final project reports. Furthermore, during the data collection, the total of the students were uncounted as they were able to finish their study in different time.