Exploring Undergraduate Students’ Motivation-regulation Strategies in Thesis Writing

Abstract

Self-regulation is an ability that helps the students to maintain their effort in achieving their goals. In self-regulation, students can plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning process. Self-regulation encompasses many aspects. One of them is motivation. Motivation is considered as one of the important aspects of the learning process. Concerning the educational context in Indonesia, thesis writing course is a compulsory course. However, students are required to do the task independently. Therefore, students have to be self-regulated learners during the process of thesis writing. This study aims to investigate students’ motivation-regulation strategies in thesis writing. There were 9 participants involved in this study. The participants were students of English Language and Education Study Program of Sanata Dharma University. This study belongs to mixed-method research. Questionnaire and interview were used as instruments to collect the data. The results of this study revealed that the participants used some motivation-regulation strategies, namely, self-consequating, environmental structuring, goal-oriented self-talk, interest enhancement, and attribution control. Additionally, the majority of the participants were apt to procrastinate writing their thesis. The implications are provided for undergraduate students, thesis advisor, and future researchers.

EFL college junior and senior students' self-regulated motivation for improving English speaking: A survey study

“…Students may activate task value by connecting it to their academic goals, interests, or making it more enjoyable ( Efklides et al., 2017 ; Teng et al., 2020 ; Wang et al., 2021 ). In this sense, students with higher levels of task value and interest were found to employ more self-regulatory metacognitive techniques such as concentration, planning, monitoring, evaluating, and regulation ( Bai and Wang, 2021 ; Cho et al., 2020 ; Diasti and Mbato, 2020 ; Gao and Shen, 2020 ; Muwonge et al., 2020 ; Teng et al., 2020 ; Yu et al., 2019 ). Concerning English speaking, EFL students exhibiting higher task value could feel more enthusiastic about participating in oral communication in English when they sense that developing English-speaking competence is valuable ( Uztosun, 2020 ).…”

“…For instance, they may restructure their autonomous learning environment by eliminating distractions to their attention, moving to a quieter environment, or engaging in online learning opportunities. In this respect, self-regulated students were reported to employ contextual monitoring and controlling and deem environment regulation as an essential aspect of their SLR ( Diasti and Mbato, 2020 ; Gao and Shen, 2020 ; Park and Kim, 2021 ; Sun and Wang, 2020 ; Yu et al., 2019 ). Regarding English speaking, EFL students who exert higher environment control could surmount the limitations of their formal input-poor contexts and attempt to find other informal learning milieus to get exposed to a richer EFL input and more opportunities for out-of-class EFL practice ( Uztosun, 2020 ).…”

“…In the same venue, Diasti and Mbato (2020) identified that Indonesian university EFL students used motivation-regulation strategies such as self-talk, self-consequating, interest enhancement, goal-oriented environmental structuring, and attribution control in a thesis writing course. Teng et al.…”

“…College students' motivational regulation strategies in EFL writing could be affected by their proficiency ( Teng et al., 2020 ), self-efficacy ( Sun and Wang, 2020 ), procrastination ( Diasti and Mbato, 2020 ), university location and type ( Yu et al., 2019 ). In this regard, Teng et al.…”

“…This study is the first to delineate Yemeni EFL college students' SRM to ameliorate their EFL speaking competence. Besides, since most of the relevant studies conducted in EFL tertiary education focus on EFL writing (e.g., Diasti and Mbato, 2020 ; Teng and Zhang, 2020 ; Yu et al., 2019 ), it can bridge the gap in the literature by providing insights on how college students might surmount input- and output-poor academic milieu to enhance their EFL speaking competence. It can also render implications on the utilization of SRM in improving EFL speaking in the country and beyond.…”