Students ' Strategies in Academic Writing at Fifth Semester of STKIP PGRI Pasuruan

Writing strategy is an important process to lead a writer to be easier in developing ideas, particularly in academic writing. This qualitative research aims to explore the students’ strategies in English academic writing. This research involves 24 students who join the academic writing class in the fifth semester of English Teacher Department of STKIP Pasuruan. The data were collected from questionnaire distributed to the findings show that all of the students used strategy to write academic writing. The findings of this result highlight 72% of students that apparently used strategy in writing an essay and 28% did not use any strategies. Strategies used by the students are writing an outline, making a list, doing preliminary research, doing free write, brainstorming, making a map, reviewing, planning research, setting up and following research schedule, immediately recording source information, checking and reviewing, revising structure and content, connecting the last sentence of the previous paragraph, summarizing the findings, showing the significance, ending the academic writing with a strong statement, starting the academic writing paper at least a week before the paper due, reading paper out loud slowly or asking someone to read, using the spell check function in Microsoft Word. The data inform the strategy that frequently used by most of the students are writing an outline. In sum, the finding of this research about what are the strategies used by the students are writing an outline, brainstorming, revising structure and content, reviewing, and ending the academic writing with a strong statement. Here, the findings indicate that students usually work individually.