Strategies employed by EFL doctoral candidates in dissertation writing completion

Abstract

This research study aimed at revealing the strategies employed by successful English as a Foreign Language (EFL) doctoral candidates in accomplishing their dissertation writing and their perspectives in association with the stages of research report writing. This is a narrative qualitative inquiry, and the data were collected through an in-depth interview with ten successful EFL fresh graduates who had completed their dissertation writing within six and seven semesters. Using a retrospective technique, the respondents were asked to recall their experiences and activities during the process of writing their dissertation. The results reveal that the successful doctoral candidates used four main strategies of dissertation writing: cognitive, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies. In completing each of the dissertation stages, the doctoral candidates spent much time reading a huge collection of research articles, writing their dissertation on a daily basis, and having intensive consultation with their advisors. This study would be useful for EFL doctoral students to avoid delay in completing their studies and to meet their academic timeline so that they can face their challenging dissertation writing to complete their study on time.

Students’ Learning Strategies in Oral Productions Across Speaking Proficiencies

“…Cognitive strategy is the best or highest category for unsuccessful students. Marhaban et al (2021) found that within EFL learning context, the unsuccessful learners used compensation strategies significantly more often than their successful counterparts.…”

Challenges, Strategies, and Digital Media Use in Writing Research Articles: A Study of EFL Postgraduate Students

“…The findings were classified into three stages of writing research articles which include challenges, strategies and digital media use in each stage. The stages are determining research topic and finding the relevant references, collecting and analyzing data, and writing each section of the article (Marhaban et al, 2021). The findings show the challenges faced by EFL postgraduate students while conducting research article writing are the lack of language proficiency, the difficulty in discovering the relevant respondents and references, time management, and creating the instruments of data collecting.…”

“…Affective strategy is not academic in nature, but it is a critical aspect in writing papers in English because it is related to motivation and emotion management, which help students write successfully. Social strategy refers to a style of social communication in which other people who play a significant part in the completion of research article writing are involved (Marhaban, Mukminatien, Widiati, Sulistyo, Suhastyanang, Puspitasari, & Muslem, 2021).…”

“…The existing research (Marhaban et al, 2021) has revealed that some doctoral students in Indonesia used cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective strategies and social cognitive strategies in process of writing their dissertation. On the other hand, another research (Stander, 2020) has shown the strategy to avoid plagiarism in research article, with explanation that translation from the original English source text to the home language and back to English is the intervention strategy to avoid plagiarism in research article.…”

Metacognitive Skills Assessment in Research-Proposal Writing (MSARPW) in the Indonesian University Context: Scale Development and Validation Using Multidimensional Item Response Models

“…Metacognitive skills have also been found to help students complete their final projects (e.g. theses or dissertations), playing a role from the proposal-writing stage to completion (Marhaban et al, 2021). In particular, previous studies have found that the two previously mentioned aspects of metacognition, knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition, have positive impacts on improving students' writing skills (Cer, 2019).…”