Characteristics of Source of Texts

Figure 2.3. Framework of pre-understanding of graduate students’ lived experience in writing academic papers In brief, the pre-figured themes are derived from the theories presented in the previous sections. I provide three pre-figured themes as tentative answers for my research questions, language competence, critical thinking, and writing expectation. Based on the participant characteristics presented previously, writing academic papers requires conscious effort and much practice in composing, developing, and analyzing ideas. In other words, writing skills should be learned through experience and practiced continuously. Not only that, in relation with second language acquisition, students may have struggle with social and cognitive Academic Writing Process Product Graduate students’ Lived Experience in Writing Academic Papers Understanding Feeling Belief Action Intentio n Pre-Figured Themes Critical Thinking Language Competence Writing Expectation challenges. Therefore, language competence is the first pre-figured theme in this study. In addition, language competence refers to knowledge of and ability to use language resources to form well-structured messages Bagaric Djigunovic, 2007. Another aspect to support language competence is critical thinking. Having experiences in writing academic papers, graduate students are expected to write a good quality of academic papers. They have to raise their critical thinking and apply it into their paper. Critical thinking means skills such as: selection, evaluation, analysis, reflection, questioning, inference and judgment. It is one of the constructs which has been proven to be a good predictor of academic performance Giancarlo Facione, 2001. Therefore, it plays an important role in the acquisition of language skills particularly in writing Elder Paul, 2006. Based on this issue, critical thinking is the second pre-figured theme in this study. In relation with the previous explanation, students face challenges in developing functional language skills. Thus, it leads into another challenge in writing academic papers: to integrate critical thinking into their writings. It requires several stages before the students could integrate their critical thinking and language competence appropriately. Integrating critical thinking within academic papers is time consuming. It involves students to be creative: making things up in the academic papers: factual and objective, communicating ideas and arguments clearly, and attempting to enhance the audiences’ knowledge. It is expected that by writing academic papers graduate students could have opportunities in practicing how to compose, develope, and analyze ideas. In other words, it enhances the graduate students in improving their academic writing