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(Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The first one was triangulation via multiple sources. When multiple sources, that is, “difference sources of the same information” (p. 305) were gathered, the possibility of deriving credible finding will be increased. In the study, the researcher compared students’ perceived difficulties with the problematic parts of their drafts marked by the advisors and the advisors’ viewpoints. Secondly, a peer with experience of conducting qualitative research and writing thesis was invited to go with the process of conducting the research. The researcher shared and discussed her ideas of research design and data analysis with the peer, including developing interview protocol, deciding the number of advisor-advisee pairs, and coding. In addition, she asked for the peer’s help when she had linguistic difficulties, such as the correctness of grammar and sentence patterns. Through peer debriefing, bias and doubts, if any, were identified and clarified. The last technique was member check. In other words, all the information and interpretation were checked by the student participants who created the original data. By doing so, the researcher had the opportunity to correct errors and attain more precise information.
3.7 Roles of the Researcher
During the interview, the researcher played the role as an attentive listener to let the teacher and student interviewees felt respected and avoid interfering their expression of ideas; meanwhile, she was thinking about the missing information from the interviewees’
statements to ask follow-up questions. Also, the researcher showed her empathy to the student interviewees because she had similar experiences about taking the Thesis Writing Course and undergoing the process of thesis writing. By listening attentively while theinterviewees were talking and showing empathy to the student interviewees’
experiences, the researcher attained the interviewees’ trust and built a good relationship with them. Thus, the researcher could analyze the data with an insider’s perspective.
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CHAPTER FOUR FINDINGS 4.0 Introduction
Chapter Three describes the methods implemented to obtain the desired data and address the research questions. The purpose of Chapter Four is to answer the focal inquiries of this study by reporting the results of data analysis. Therefore, information about the difficulties ETMA students encountered in thesis writing, how they utilized available sources to cope with these problems, and what roles their advisors played in their writing process derived from analysis will be presented in the following chapter.
4.1Difficulties in the Process of Thesis Writing
In this study, the ETMA students had difficulties writing up theses and preparing for thesis writing. These difficulties will be discussed section by section because the the ETMA students’ challenges varied across sections. The ETMA student participants expressed Literature Review the most challenged, Discussion the second, Results the third, Introduction the fourth, and Conclusion the least. Within each section, the difficult parts are discussed from two levels: the linguistic and discourse difficulties. Also, both students’ and advisors’ perceptions of the ways to cope with these self-perceived
difficulties in different sections of theses will be shown. Finally, how the students coped with these self-perceived difficulties in different sections of theses will be discussed.
4.1.1 Difficulties in Literature Review 4.1.1.1 Students’ Perspectives
Literature Review was regarded as the hardest section to write by most students (except Fiona). As Ken expressed, “I keep thinking how to convey predecessors’ ideas in my own words and how to organize this chapter, I was stuck in Literature Review for a
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long time.” From the results of analysis, students’ perceived difficulties in composing Literature Review include (a) difficulties at discourse level such as how to organize the literature reviewed and then lead to the gap logically and (b) linguistic difficulty as restating predecessors’ ideas by one’s own views.
All students in the present study brought up their discourse difficulties in writing literature. These problems are of three types: (a) making sure the quantity of literature required to derive the gap, (b) finding relevant literature to the known gap, and (c)
rearranging the literature reviewed. The first one was about the uncertainty of the quantity of literature needed in order to derive the gap worth for exploring. As Helen noted:
You’d wonder, “Do I read enough literature?” In the very beginning (of writing theses),you’d wonder how I could convince others with so little literature reviewed or you may worry if there are other viewpoints to overthrow your conclusion while writing. (S1IN-Helen- P13)
From the above excerpt, Helen showed her concern about the appropriateness of the gap found from the literature at hand. She was wondering whether the studies reviewed were enough to derive the present gap.
Aside from the difficulty in collecting adequate and appropriate literature for the unknown gap, the second problem is to find related literature to bridge the known gap.
Sherry is the only student who began her research from a known gap; that is, she decided to conduct her study by perceiving an existing gap, and then she attempted to find related literature to prove the gap. In the interview, she particularly pointed out that was hard for her to make connection with the gap and the literature. As she said“
The difficulty in the second chapter is how to connect the missing information from the information in the literature because I started searching literature by making sure the
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missing link.” According to Sherry, the reason why she was hindered in relating literature to the gap was that she adopted another way of composing Literature Review, meaning that she started the research from gap already known.
Despite finding satisfactory literature, students encountered the challenge of how to organize the literature at hand. Lynn, Claire, Ken, Helen, and Sherry remarked their difficulty in rearranging the literature reviewed to address the topics of their studies.
Helen, for instance, had problems presenting the literature in a way to lead to the gap reasonably. In other words, she considered it a hard task to construct the literature with specific logic and then lead to the gap in order to convince the readers the necessity of conducting her research. Helen further indicated her difficulty in creating her own style of organization in Literature Review, as shown in the following excerpt:
I think the difference between writing the second chapter and other sections is that you know what to be included in each part in writing other chapters because other chapters have their whole structures. But in writing the second chapter, for example, when you want to add something, it may be a great piece of information, such as more general literature. That’s the only difference between the second chapter and other chapters. That is, I think the whole organization of the second chapter is not clear to me because you have to create it by yourself, but the organization of other chapters is easy to handle. (S1IN- Helen-P14)
From the excerpt, the challenge in composing Literature Review could be due to no definite organization to be followed. That is, students cannot refer to the subtitles of others’ Literature Review but have to develop their own arrangement of the concepts of previous studies according to their focus of inquiry. Another example came from Sherry’s statement. Regarding to the difficulty about organization, she thought ensuring the
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coherence within this section was a challenge for her. “Because the range of the issues I want to discuss is broad, I have to connect these issues or I can’t keep writing this section,”
she said. Namely, how to relate different topics within Literature Review became Sherry’s main concern, for she had to cover many topics in her study.
Although all the student participants felt it was difficult to reorganize literature in order to justify their own thesis projects, Ken was the only student who also mentioned the linguistic difficulty he met in composing Literature Review. For Ken, the hindrance could be paraphrasing. That is, restating others’ ideas with his own words. The following excerpts showed why Literature Review posed difficulties to Ken.
Example1: I feel that the difficulty in writing the second chapter is to turn others’
ideas into yours, and using collocation and paraphrasing are so hard; that is, you don’t know when to use these writing skills, you may not use these skills well, and the presentation, it’s super difficult to restate others’ words by using your own expressions and state them beautifully. (S1IN-Ken- P13)
Example2: I was concerned with plagiarism, yes, I was afraid of it very much. And I was also concerned that my words couldn’t convey the meaning and didn’t express others’ ideas well because the works I read all come from masters. It was hard to restate such masters’ ideas with few words, super hard. (S1IN-Ken- P14)
Every time I read others’ [papers], I felt trapped [because] I felt my writing was more like others’. I picked up one concept from here and there. For me, this way of writing was not good because the writing does not come out naturally. It was like copying the patterns from others’ works and then you rewrite it again, something like that. (S1IN-Ken- P15)
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According to Ken, the problem may arise from one’s limited writing skills and vocabulary repertoire. Lacking the above knowledge, students may face such obstacles as the
inability to make articulate expression of others’ ideas by using their vocabulary and sentence patters. As Ken emphasized, he was afraid he could not use his own words to convey the ideas of predecessors precisely and simultaneously get rid of the writing style of the original authors.
4.1.1.2 Teachers’ Perspectives
Although only professor A also believed that Literature Review was the hardest section as the students did, they all agreed that how to present ideas in this section could pose difficulties for students mainly at the discourse level, as exhibited in the following excerpts:
Professor B: The problem in the second chapter is that students do not know how to discuss the literature; that is…students are used to writing down all the people’
works, and that’s all. This is the most common problem: not knowing that when you write down all the works, you have to make…a summary about which one you believe to be right or wrong, or you have to come up with your own ideas about whether they are appropriate or not, or you have to summarize others’ ideas. These are always the bigger problems in writing. (A1IN-Prof. B-P8)
Professor A: … that is also the biggest problem for Chinese students, what he wrote is a kind of display of knowledge. He thought, “I read this and that article, and I wrote the result of each article.” He doesn’t make efforts to summarize and synthesize, nor does he criticize the previous literature. (A1IN-Prof. A- P10)
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In the excerpts, both professors noted that students simply summarized what they read without critically examining how it was related to their studies. What was
unmentioned by students was, the problems were not synopsizing previous studies and reviewing the literature with critical angles. In particular, Professor A attributed students’
inabilities to criticize previous studies to culture factors. “The problem may relate to our tradition of education, like in the tests of art fields, you have to memorize the contents of tests and write them down during the tests,” she said. In other words, students were used to showing their knowledge by following others’ ideas for they had been trained to do so.
4.1.1.3 Advisor- advisee Pairs
When it comes to the consistence of the views among the advisor-advisee pairs, only Helen and Sherry, the advisees of professor C, had the same ideas with their advisor.
However, no correlation between advisor and advisees was found in the other two pairs.
Helen said she had difficulty in reviewing the literature logically to show the gap and professor C also thought it may be hard for students to organize the literature to convince the readers the rationality of conducting specific study. As to Sherry, she conveyed her trouble in ensuring the coherence among the concepts in Literature Review. Likewise, professor C indicated that how to present the literature fluently and logically could be an obstacle for students. As for the other two pairs, there is no consensus between the advisors and advisees because the advisors only remembered the problems most students have, not focusing on the students in the present study.
4.1.1.4 Coping Strategies 4.1.1.4. 1 Students’ Perspectives
Since students faced linguistic and discourse difficulties while composing Literature
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Review, they came up with self-regulated strategies to overcome these difficulties. In the present study, the self-regulated strategies contained assistance from (a) their advisors, (b) peers and (c) self. All the students benefited from the aid provided by their advisors.
Regardless of the linguistic or discursive problems, advisors were the most common sources of assistance for students. Lynn, Clair, Fiona, Ken, and Sherry accepted their advisors’ suggestions about the arrangements and contents of Literature Review. Ken recalled that his advisor asked him to read specific articles and added the ideas of these articles to his draft. Not accepting the advisor’s suggestions passively, Helen and Sherry were more involved in discussing the advisor’s feedback before accepting it. Helen discussed with her advisor when there were problems in her draft. Before revising the draft, she would check whether she really understood what her advisor said. Until her ideas reached the advisor’s agreement, she would begin to revise the draft again. Sherry said she could not revise her draft directly based on the advisor’s feedback for her advisor did not give her any concrete feedback. Instead, she had to think further about the hint given by her advisor before she started to revise.
The ETMA students not only relied on the feedback provided by their advisors, but also sought peers’ help to deal with the difficulties at the discourse level. Unlike the students who coped with difficulties mainly by consulting advisors, some students also attained useful information from their peers. As illustrated by Sherry, “ I will go to the peers who are willing to share their ideas or conduct similar studies as mine and ask them the suitable organization and contents to be contained in Literature Review.” By
discussing with peers, she attained ideas about how to improve this section.
Aside from seeking help from others, students also tried hard to solve the problems on their own. The students attained the information useful for dealing with their
difficulties by (a) reading the Literature Review section of other theses; (b) reading books about how to compose Literature Review section of a thesis; and (c) reading more
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literature to attain more inspiration of writing.
Claire: Basically, the solution was to examine how the researcher who conducted a similar study like mine made the choice about the concepts to be included in Literature Review. (S1IN-Claire-P11)
Lynn: My first way was to read the predecessors’ papers and then wrote every paragraph, the outline of literature review, observed how he arranged his
presentation of topics. Then the second way was, I searched for the books about how to write literature review. The third way was that I used the tool I said
before, …Endnote to electronically arrange the things I collected, and then arranged it to be an outline I think I can present. Bearing with general organization, I started to write. (S1IN-Lynn-P6))
According to the excerpts, Claire mentioned she had difficulties not finding enough literature relevant to her study so she coped with this problem by seeing how other researchers selected the concepts to be discussed in Literature Review. Lynn provided more detailed information about how she dealt with the difficulty encountered in composing Literature Review. The evidence showed there was a sequence of the strategies she may adopt. At first, she would refer to the Literature Review sections of previous studies and tried to infer the rules of composing this section from these works.
After reading some examples, she read books to get knowledge about conventions of thesis writing directly. When she knew how to compose Literature Review, she utilized particular instrument to facilitate her edition.
The third way of acquiring the required information was reading more literature.
Sherry and Helen were the two students adopted such a strategy to cope with the trouble at the discourse level. By doing so, Sherry thought she would attain more knowledge
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about the ideas to be written and then she was capable to compose the literature her own study. For Helen, reading more literature would be helpful for solving the problem in writing Literature Review. Every time when she read the literature related to her research, she could expand or synthesize her Literature Review section right away.
4.1.1.4.2 Teachers’ Perspectives
Like their students, the teacher participants also considered the strategies could be self-regulated. The strategies regulated by self could be physical kind of mediation to solve the discourse difficulties, namely, material resources as articles, theses and books.
For example, all the professors thought students should read more papers to familiarize the conventions in how to organize Literature Review, which in turn may facilitate their writing of this section. As Professor B expressed, “Students have to pay attention to how others compose their Literature Review when they read papers. Then students would know the writing rules gradually and they were able to write their own theses.
“Furthermore, reading more texts could enrich students’ academic knowledge. For instance, professor B considered if students equipped with more knowledge about the concepts or theories of their studies, the chance to be blocked in deciding the organization or contents of Literature Review would decrease. He noted: “I will list some books and ask students to read these books and add the ideas in these books to their drafts and then they can come to me again.” Therefore, he would recommend some books relevant to students’ research when he found the students did not really know what specific idea was required to be included in the section.
Other self-regulated strategies were provided by advisors and peers as well. All the teacher participants felt that most students still needed their feedback for synthesizing and criticizing the literature gathered and deciding the concepts to be subsumed in this section.
They thought that these problems originated from the negative influence of the Chinese
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education that students got used to presenting knowledge in exams. As Professor A noted,
“Students usually don’t evaluate previous studies when they hand in the drafts to me. I
“Students usually don’t evaluate previous studies when they hand in the drafts to me. I