On April 1-5, 2019, five lecturers from Polstat STIS (Dr. Nasrudin; Dr. Azka Ubaidillah; Budyanra, M.Stat; Siti Mariyah, M.T; and Siskarossa Ika Oktora, M.Stat) attended the International Workshop on Academic English Writing at the Department of Statistics, Universitas Padjadjaran , Jatinangor, West Java. The speaker at the workshop, which was attended by 30 participants from Polstat STIS, University Padjadjaran (Unpad), and Universitas Bengkulu (Unib), was Prof. Dr. Eric Caers from the Center of Applied Linguistics, University of Hasselt (Uhasselt), Belgium. The material presented focused on the techniques of writing scientific articles in English format. Several types of corrections from journal reviewers were also presented, namely regarding grammatical mistakes; errors in the use of articles (the/a/an), prepositions, punctuation marks, and vocabulary; Sentence structure errors; and so on. Researchers should be aware of these errors, as they can be a reason an article fails to be published.

Furthermore, Eric explained the proper use of tenses in paper components (abstract, introduction, literature reviews, methods, results, and discussions), as well as paraphrasing techniques to avoid plagiarism in the resulting article. The highly theoretical material was presented in an engaging manner, with two-way interaction between participants and the speaker. Participants were also required to present one of their research papers in English, which was then responded to (commented on) not only by the speaker but also by another participant. At the end of the session, Eric also outlined ten rules that researchers should follow to secure research grants.

The workshop was part of a collaborative effort between Polstat STIS, Unpad, and Unib, along with Uhasselt, as part of the 2019-2020 Belgium-Indonesia South Initiative Program. Yudhie Andriyana, Ph.D from Unpad, as the coordinator of the activity, revealed that there are several follow-up agendas from the collaboration between the four universities, namely workshops related to Longitudinal Data Analysis, Data Mining, Spatial Data Analysis, and Statistics for Non-Statisticians. It is hoped that through this international collaboration, many benefits will be obtained for lecturers and researchers from Polstat STIS.