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.
Furthermore, all the participants are aware that they need to improve their writing skills especially in writing academic paper. As they stated:
“I’m kind of perfectionist one. So, I could not agree upon something which is “ordinary” or simply “just like that”. No, I could not.” 5-AI2-103-
EPN “During the process itself, well, how to use the appropriate format,
references and of course the theory. How to write appropriately. Like that. “ 7-CO2-195-EXP
“Well, I would say again, when you write and you have to take something for a consideration it should be more precise. Especially the logic that you
have to come up with, and then how to write simply directly to the point. And to mean what you say and to say exactly as you supposed to say. Not
only yourself but also others could understand it. So I give more serious to it.” 9-JA2-29-INT
The extracts above show that the participants were all aware of their own problem in writing academic papers. In conclusion, each participant had different
level of motivation. Gatri was the only participant who had a high motivation in writing her academic papers. Despite the fact that two participants were low-
motivated, they tried their best and finish their academic papers. Thus, they encountered problem and challenges in writing their academic papers. This issue
will be discussed in the following section.
b. Struggle
All the participants in this study shared their experiences in writing academic papers. As stated in the previously, they faced various challenges in writing their
academic papers from the beginning until the end of the process in writing their academic papers. To be positivist, Asti for example, stated that writing an
academic paper was challenging. She referred back to her first experience in writing academic paper for a particular seminar. “As I said before, challenging. I
mean more on the expressing ideas. How to express our idea, and link each paragraph. That’s the most difficult part.” 5-AI2-8-ATT. It can be inferred that
Asti tried to be positivist while having problems in writing academic papers. Thus, Asti challenged herself to improve her writing. She added that honestly, she
was afraid in making mistakes such as stating irrelevant ideas and inappropriate quotations. “well, I was afraid for having irrelevant ideas, and referring to the
theories. Like having inappropriate quotation without paraphrasing it first. Like that.” 5-AI2-10-ATT Being afraid as experienced by Asti is a common problem
faced by the students. Again, having a positive attitude in writing academic papers encouraged her to do the best she could no matter that it was her first time writing
academic paper for seminar. Moreover, she wanted to have such experience by participating in the seminar.
In contrast, Cahyo had different experience compare to Asti. He had a tendency to be lazy when having academic writing, especially finding related theories. He
stated, “Just little bit lazy. I know that I could find many sources related to the topic, but I was too lazy to get there and I have never been in library before. Like
that.” 7-CO2-30-ATT It seems that Cahyo tried to limit himself in writing academic papers. The extract above indicates that Cahyo had a negative attitude in
writing academic papers which affected his writing. Moreover, he added that he just wanted to get scores and pass the course. “Well, whatever the score I got, at
least I passed the course. That’s it. And I got B for that.” In similar, Jaya was honest to tell that he did the writing assignments in English
literacy class because of the deadline. “Well I think I just did the best I could and then try to work it by myself… Then I just did it because of the deadline.” 9-JA2-
13-ATT It can be inferred from the extract that Jaya had similar attitude with Cahyo. He did it because of the deadline. In other words, he had a negative
attitude in writing academic papers. Not only that, Jaya argued that it was just because he did not receive enough feedback, especially from the lecturer. In his
opinion feedback from the lecturer is very important. The discussion of feedback will be partly included in the next section see the writing supervision
“I think we had not enough feedback from the lecturers so we didn’t know what our strengths and weaknesses are. Well, most of the lecturers were so very
busy there, again I still thinking that feedback is very important” 9-JA2-11- ATT.
As a graduate student, they are required to perform their academic writing skills. All of the participants seem aware of this issue well. Most of the
participants tried to limit themselves in writing their academic papers. However, based on the participants’ respond, feedback was the major factor which
influenced their academic paper quality. Moreover, this issue will be discussed in the following section.
c. Satisfaction
In this part, the student-supervisor relationship is the key components affecting the success of students’ academic writing in their programs. Willingness to listen,
seeking to understand, and communication are key components. However, Kiser 2000 states that there are several challenges to develop positive relationships,
such as: age, gender, cultural, background, theoretical orientation, and cognitive and learning style.
