Critical Thinking Pre-Figured Themes

should understand for their writing to be well accepted by the discourse community. In brief, the students gain a sense of control in their writing and feel an ownership of the language. This ultimately leads to a true sense of enjoying the art of writing. Medina 2009 claims that confidence breeds the likelihood of experimenting and risk-taking. Moreover, the confidence students’ gain in the writing classroom will motivate them in exploring the language, take risks, and play with the language. Furthermore, once they have control of any skills, he or she begins to truly understand its purpose and have fun with it Eagleman, 2011. Based on his experiences in writing academic papers, two participants, Cahyo and Jaya told me a similar experience. At first, Cahyo told me what happened in the 2 nd semester. In that time, he had a problem with the sentence structure which made him confused. He stated that his lecturers asked him to improve his writing, especially using complex sentence and technical terms in the context. “Next, in the 2 nd semester the students were required to use the more academic terms.” 7- CO2-161-EDI-PCS It can be inferred from his statement that in the previous semester he only used a simple sentence and common terms to express his ideas. Cahyo realized the importance of using such technical terms in improving his writing. Therefore, he used dictionary to check a particular academic term in his paper. “I used dictionary which installed in my laptop. I found several new terms that I did not know before.” Similarly, Jaya had to push himself in adjusting the style. “It was strange to me because, you know, I mostly taught in the non-formal sector of English Teaching. That was challenging. I had to adjust my English style from social English and moved them to academic English.” 9-JA2-11-EXP Thus, in this point I inferred that Cahyo and Jaya challenged themselves for PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI improving his writing, especially in using technical or academic terms. The lecturer’s feedback previously required him in exploring the language, take risks, and play with the language. In other words, they had pushed him further from his comfort zone: using simple sentences and general terms in writing academic papers. Another participant, Asti, experienced similar thing as Cahyo. She had an interesting topic to be presented in her linguistics class. Then, Asti picked a comic strip to be analyzed using the topic given. “It was my turn. I felt that I got an interesting topic so I could prepare well for everything that I needed. Then I had to present it and plan what the next progress.”5-AI2-61-DRA-PCS Furthermore, she could expose her ideas and argument in analyzing the comic strip well. Thus, from Asti’s statement I inferred that having a clear and flexible thinking and a better understanding of the topic enabled her to pick an interesting source or material to be analyzed. In sum, experiencing struggles in writing academic papers enabled them to integrate between critical thinking and language competence that they had during the process. Not only that, those struggles led them to experience transferring ideas, thoughts, and meaning involving many aspects to consider. Furthermore, the participants tended to push themselves further from his comfort zone. As a result, the students gained a sense of control in their writing and feel an ownership of the language which ultimately will lead to a true sense of enjoying the art of writing.

2. Emergent Themes

This section provides the categories which are embedded in the lived experiences of the participants when telling stories. Not only that, it includes the feeling expression, expectation of the participants. Therefore, the emergent themes are divided into four: motivation, struggle, satisfaction, and learner autonomy.

a. Motivation

Motivation is considered as an integral part in the achievement of any goal. It is an important factor that has a positive influence in any educational learning process. According to Gardner 2001, motivation is as an internal process that activates guides and maintains behavior over time. It means that students have their own needs which lead into different action toward something. In line with Gardner, Dornyei 2001 supports that motivation is thought to be responsible for doing something, how long and how hard people are going to achieve it. Likewise, Cahyo stated previously that in order to pass the course he had to submit his writing, no matter the score that he would get. “well, just submitted to fulfill the course requirement. Getting a score.” 7-CO2-99-ATT In other words, passing the course was Cahyo’s motivation in writing academic paper as fulfill the requirements. Jaya had a similar issue with Cahyo. Jaya did his paper because of the deadline. It motivated him to write the paper as close as possible with the expectation. “Let me tell you the very very truth. I didn’t have time to re-edit them. Then I just did it because of the deadline. For example, ignoring with the idea that a paragraph should consist of 3 sentences like that” 9-JA2-13- MOT The extract above, Cahyo’s and Jaya’s, indicated that they had a low motivation in writing academic papers. Therefore they limited themselves while writing academic papers. In contrast, Asti had another perspective compare to Jaya and Cahyo. According to her, she wanted to gain more experience in writing academic papers. Therefore, Asti was motivated to write academic papers for seminar, as shown in the extract below. “Meet new people. I mean, I could have new knowledge from them. Especially the most recent issues related to linguistics as my interest. I don’t know much about Education. But, in linguistics, I could see what are the issues or things which could be explored more.” 5-AI2-204-MOT Meeting with new people, sharing knowledge to each other are the reasons which motivated Asti to write academic papers for seminars. This indicates that Asti had a high motivation in writing academic papers. Thus, by joining seminars, she could achieve the expectations presented previously. Another issue which rises after motivation is intention. The participants’ intentions toward writing academic papers might be vary one another. Asti realized that her performance in writing academic paper is not optimal yet and she wanted to gain her experience in that. Thus, she expects to participate in other seminars. “I would like to. Actually, there are several seminars in this year. But I think I need to travel overland and requires a lot of expenses.” 5-AI2-201-EPN In contrast, Cahyo and Jaya had similar low intentions in writing academic papers. Again, lack of feedbacks caused them to just write and submit their papers in order to fulfill the requirements and get the score 9-JA2-13-MOT 7-CO2-99- ATT.