Sebuah Kajian Pustaka: ELTIN JOURNAL: p-ISSN 2339-1561 Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia e–ISSN 2580-7684 113 MOTIVATION AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH ESSAY WRITING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION LEVEL Jeane Theresia Limeranto1*, Concilianus Laos Mbato2 Jeanelimeranto99@gmail.com, cons@usd.ac.id SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY ABSTRACT Writing is usually considered the most challenging skill to be mastered for Indonesian EFL students. Consequently, they may experience a lack of motivation in the writing process, which might influence their writing achievement. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the level of students’ writing motivation, the relationship between their motivation, factors affecting students’ motivation in essay writing and achievement in writing, and the effective strategies they use to improve their writing motivation. This study utilized a mixed-method research design which involved 25 students who took essay writing class. The instruments employed were questionnaire and interviews. The result of quantitative data analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between students’ motivation and their achievement in essay writing (r (23) = .304 p <.05). It indicated that the students who had higher motivation in writing displayed a higher level of writing performance. While qualitative study revealed some factors that impeded students’ writing motivation and writing achievement, namely the lack of teachers’ effective teaching methods and attitudes and the lack of students’ linguistic competence. This study offers useful implications toward teaching and further research. Keywords: Motivation, Essay Writing Achievement, Correlation A. INTRODUCTION Writing skill plays an important role in business and education in the globalization era (Klimova, 2013). It may be extensively used in the workplace and higher education, especially in English language teaching. Graham and Perin (2007) stated that writing is a useful skill that enables students to share their thought, feelings, and experiences. Wijaya and Mbato (2020) argue that students who cannot share their thoughts through writing may encounter difficulty in constructing their critical thinking. English Foreign Language (EFL) learners acknowledged that writing is one of the hardest skills for students and English teachers (Anh, 2019). Klimova (2013) stated that EFL students had practiced their skill of writing since elementary school. They were taught writing skills through mastering linguistic skills such as grammar, sentence structure, and spelling (Klimova, 2013). However, when the EFL learners are at the university level, they are required to master a more complex writing skill (Fareed, Ashraf, & Bilal, 2016). They have to acquire the complex-linguistic skill to help them develop their academic writing skill. This statement is supported by Madjid, Emzir, and Akhadiah (2017), who stated that the student's writing skills would Limeranto & Mbato: Motivation and Its Relaionship with … 114 improve if they were engaged in continual training. In Indonesia, many EFL students experience some difficulties in writing, especially English Education students who take essay writing classes (Ariyanti & Fitriana, 2017; Hafrison, 2020; Kakandee, 2017). Experiencing writing problems can influence students’ motivation in writing. There are several studies attempting to investigate and identify EFL students’ writing problems encountered during the process of essay writing (Alisha, Safitri, & Santoso, 2019; Ariyanti & Fitriana, 2017; Fareed et al., 2016). A study conducted by Ariyanti and Fitriana (2017) found that Indonesian EFL students felt difficulty in forming thesis statements and topic sentences effectively. They regarded that thesis statement and topic sentence were the main important parts in essay writing. Their inability to express their major ideas in the thesis statement and the topic sentence would affect the content and the quality of the whole essay. Besides having those problems, there were three minor problems encountered by the students, i.e., paragraph organization, summarizing, and word misspelling. Facing these minor difficulties could lead them to poor progress in writing. Once students produced a poor piece of writing, they would have low motivation to develop their essay critically. The result of Ariyanti and Fitriana's (2017) study is in parallel with the finding by Alisha et al. (2019), which found there were other problems that Indonesian EFL learners encountered such as lack of organizing paragraphs vocabulary knowledge, and self-confidence. In order to help the readers understand the essay, it was important to organize ideas and paragraphs well. However, the EFL students experienced difficulty in arranging and organizing their paragraphs to address their ideas well. This problem led them to having a poor quality of writing. Moreover, the lack of vocabulary knowledge becomes the students’ main problem during the process of doing essay writing tasks. This made students feel hesitant and confused to share their thought or ideas in the essay written form. On the other side, it also influenced the students’ self-confidence in writing, especially when they felt less confident about what they were writing. Students who experienced a lack of self-confidence tended to be demotivated (Alisha et al., 2019). They suggested that teachers teach many vocabularies to help students write their essays confidently and effectively. Likewise, Fareed et al. (2016) further identified students’ writing problems from two factors: the teachers' side and the learners' side. The result of the analysis showed that teachers' insufficient competence and ability could impede the students' skill of writing and their motivation in writing. Teachers' level of ability and teachers' positive feelings were also considered crucial in increasing students' motivation (Johnson, 2017). Nurdianingsih (2018) further stated that the primary role of language teachers was to help students to master the standard grammar rule to achieve the target language. On the other hand, students faced some serious problems in writing. They did not have any problems in relation to the criteria of essay writing paragraph rules such as organizing paragraphs, thesis statements, and topic sentences. However, they had some problems related to linguistic competence and motivation (Refnita, 2014). They made some mistakes related to the use of grammatical features, spelling, prepositions, vocabulary, and syntax knowledge. Fareed et al. (2016) claimed that to increase students’ ability of writing, it was important to foster their motivation and linguistic skill to help them keep their interest during the writing process. For this reason, this study suggested providing the teachers training to increase their writing skills. In addition, to increase students’ critical writing, integrating reading and writing skills was necessary. ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 2, October 2022 115 Regarding the problems explained above, motivation becomes essential to help students develop their motivation to solve some difficulties in any complex writing task. Wigfield and Cambria (2010) claimed that motivation and achievement were emphatically associated with students’ performance on the writing task. The statement from Al-Hoorie and Macintyre (2020) underscore the connection between that achievement in second language learning and motivational factors. They indicated students who had good motivation in writing tended to have a good performance in the writing assignments. This statement was supported by Cahyono and Rahayu (2020) who conducted a case study on 55 English Foreign Language (EFL) students who were involved in their study. The result showed that the correlation between students' motivation and their achievement in writing was positive. It further indicated that 33 EFL female students had higher motivation than the EFL male students. The study also found that EFL students were likely to be more comprehensive and successful in writing when they still kept growing and maintaining their motivation. Students who had good ability in writing could achieve high proficiency in writing (Alqadi & Alqadi, 2013; Habibi, Salleh, & Singh, 2015; Melekoǧlu & Wilkerson, 2013). Furthermore, Nasihah and Cahyono's (2017) study also revealed that there was a positive significant correlation between students' motivation and writing achievement. It indicated that the more students felt motivated, the higher their writing achievement tended to be. In addition, Pajares and Valiante (2001) further found that the correlation between American students' motivation and their writing performance in gender differences was positive. They revealed that when the girls and the boys had high motivation, they tended to be more proficient in writing. Upa and Mbato (2020) pointed out that students who had high motivation tended to have a better academic performance than those who were demotivated. This means that highly motivated students are actively involved in gaining success in learning. Without having sufficient motivation, Subekti (2018) emphasized, learners had some difficulties accomplishing their long-term goals in writing. Specifically, it has been discovered that motivation determines students' achievement in essay writing (Aryanika, 2016; Fareed et al., 2016; Julian, Simaibang, & Mulyadi, 2021; Lam & Law, 2007). These studies show that informative and effective teachers can enhance students' motivation in writing. Students will be motivated when the teachers can motivate students' literacy behavior. When students are motivated, they will have a better writing performance. Moreover, the use of writing strategies can enhance students’ motivation and their writing ability. Hence, motivation is seen as having an essential role in learning, and it can determine students' writing achievement. To enhance students’ motivation and to produce a good piece of writing, EFL students need to choose the best writing strategies (Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000; Wigati, 2016). Besides that, Yilmaz, Şahin, and Turgut (2017) and Dang, Le, and Ha (2021) also emphasize the need for teachers to develop various teaching writing strategies to enhance students' motivation and optimize students' ability in writing. There are two writing strategies suggested. Firstly, the implementation of the metacognitive writing strategy can solve students’ problems in writing. Ambarita, Kristiana, and Dewi (2022) claimed that metacognitive strategies were the main part of students’ learning process which required critical thinking and problem-solving activities. Secondly, students should have a great opportunity to practice their critical thinking, academic writing, and English language competency in collaborative learning (Latifah & Ulfa, 2020; Refnita, 2014; Rizki, Nouvaldi, & Apsari, 2020; Soraya, 2016; Veramuthu & Shah, 2020; Viera, 2017). These authors Limeranto & Mbato: Motivation and Its Relaionship with … 116 indicate collaborative strategy as an effective strategy to use for teachers to teach writing. It is supported by Ghufron and Hawa (2015), who stressed that through using a collaborative writing strategy, teachers could help students to learn how to brainstorm an idea, organize information, and revise the writing. The literature reviews above show that students’ essay writing problems have influences on their performance in writing. The majority of studies have demonstrated the relationship between EFL learners’ motivation and their achievement in essay writing. However, these studies had not explicitly investigated the factors contributing to learners’ motivation in essay writing and the effective strategies they used to improve their motivation in writing. To address the gap of the previous studies this study was undertaken aiming to investigate the students’ level of motivation in writing, the relationship between students’ motivation and their achievement in writing, and the factors affecting students’ writing motivation, and to propose effective strategies used by students to improve their motivation in writing. This study was worth investigating because of two reasons. First, correlational research investigating motivation and writing achievement at the tertiary education level is still sparse. Second, an in-depth- investigation of the factors affecting students’ writing achievement is still rare. Hence, the researchers decided to investigate the level of students’ motivation and its correlation with their achievement in essay writing. To achieve these objectives, this study focused on findings the answers to four research questions as follows: (1) to what extent do L2 students feel motivated in doing their essay writing? (2) what is the relationship between L2 students’ motivation and L2 essay writing achievement? (3) what factors affect students’ motivation in writing? (4) what effective strategies do students use to improve their writing motivation? B. METHOD Numerous studies investigating the relationship between students’ motivation and achievement in writing used either quantitative methods or mixed methods. Those utilizing quantitative methods generally conducted written questionnaires (Aryanika, 2016b; Cahyono & Rahayu, 2020; Hashemian & Heidari, 2013; Julian et al., 2021; Nasihah & Cahyono, 2017; Wilson & Trainin, 2007). This study used mixed-method study research to investigate EFL students’ motivation and their writing achievement in essay writing class. It employed an explanatory design which allowed the researchers to investigate the problems more accurately and to provide data in-depth (Akhtar, 2017). According to Bowen et al. (2017), there are two distinct phases in conducting explanatory research design: conducting quantitative method and then qualitative data. This study conducted a quantitative study as a primary instrument to obtain comprehensive data about the students’ level of motivation and its relationship with their writing achievement. It was then followed by a qualitative study to explain how or why the phenomena happened (Bowen et al., 2017). This study involved twenty-five Indonesian EFL undergraduate students of Duta Wacana Christian University. The main criterion of choosing the participants was their willingness to participate, thus convenient and purposive sampling (see, cite an author about convenient sampling). The participants were sent the questionnaires utilizing google form. If they agreed to participate, then they could be filled in the questionnaires. Moreover, the participants were chosen because of some reasons. First, the participants had previous exposure to learning writing skills when they were in senior high school. Second, the participants were English education students which required them to master writing skills. ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 2, October 2022 117 In gathering quantitative data, the twenty-five students filled out the questionnaires of writing motivation which consists of 11 statements. The questionnaires were developed by Ilahiyah et al. (2019) and Cahyono and Rahayu (2020). In order to answer the questionnaire, the participants were instructed to respond to the 4-point Likert scale. The item of “Strongly Agree” represented 4, “Agree” represented 3, “Disagree” represented 2, and “Strongly Disagree” represented 1. The questionnaire was written in English because the participants were English Education students. The participants’ responses on the questionnaire were entered and processed in SPSS 25. In order to answer the level of students’ motivation, this study used descriptive statistics. The result of descriptive statistical analysis showed the general picture of students’ level of motivation in writing. In addition, this study utilized Pearson product-moment correlation to find the correlation between students’ level of motivation and their writing achievement. In the second phase of the data gathering technique, the researchers conducted qualitative methods using interviews with three selected interviewees in ‘one on one interview. One of the criteria of the selection of participants was done based on the result of the questionnaire that showed their motivation in the process of writing. The researchers chose two participants which had a high level of motivation in writing and the other two participants motivation was at the medium level. Then, the participants were interviewed for approximately 20 to 30 minutes to focus on finding the main factors and themes in relation to 1) the factors that may contribute to the students’ writing motivation; 2) the effective strategies that students may use in writing. The whole interviews were conducted in Indonesian using the zoom room and recorded. Then, the interview results were transcribed in Microsoft word and translated into English. Moreover, coding analysis was used by the researchers to analyze the interview data results. It helped the researchers to identify themes and categories. In addition, all the participants’ names and information were made pseudonyms to protect their identities (Akaranga & Makau, 2016). C. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION In this section, the researchers discuss and describe the findings of this study to answers to the four research questions: 1) students’ level of motivation in writing; 2) the relationship between students’ motivation and their achievement in essay writing; 3) factors affecting students’ motivation in essay writing; 4) Effective strategies to improve students’ motivation in writing. The discussion part is discussed together with the description of the findings. In order to find out the level of students' motivation in Essay writing, the data obtained from questionnaires were entered and processed to SPSS 25. There were twenty-five essay writing students who participated by filling in the questionnaire and signing the informed consent form. The participants' minimum age was 18, whilst the maximum age was 24. The mean score was 19.53 (SD= ,743). Moreover, the modified writing survey questionnaire had.91 Cronbach's Alpha coefficient, indicating that the questionnaire possesses high internal reliability because the alpha coefficient was close to one (1). The complete and detailed results are presented in table 1. Limeranto & Mbato: Motivation and Its Relaionship with … 118 Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the participants’ age N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation Age 25 18 24 19,92 1.187 Valid N 25 Table 2 showed the participant’s gender frequency. There were 10 male participants (40%) and 15 students were female (60%). Table 2. Gender frequency of the participants Frequency Percent Valid Percent Valid Male 10 40.0 40.0 Female 15 60.0 60.0 Total 25 100,0 100,0 1. The level of students’ motivation in essay writing Descriptive statistics data about the level of students’ motivation in essay writing class are presented in table 3. Table 3. The means of participants’ responses Item number Mean score 1 2,84 2 3,24 3 3,24 4 2,84 5 3,36 6 3,24 7 3,32 8 3,40 9 3,28 10 3,16 11 2,80 As could be seen in Table 3, the finding of 8 items of statements had a mean score above 3.00 and 3 items yielded a mean score lower than 3.00. This first group of mean scores indicated that the participants had a high motivation concerning their essay writing. The second group of mean scores, which were lower than 3.00, indicated the participants’ low motivation in relation to their L2 writing. As seen in Table 3, the highest mean score was item 8, which was 3.40. Item 8 asked the participants about their reading intensity in relation to their writing achievement by the expression “the more I read the better I write”. This indicated that students wrote better if they read a lot to stimulate their understanding of the specific topic before they wrote. It also showed that students had a high motivation if they could write better. Paszylk (2009) supported that the integration of reading and writing skills brings some benefits for students' motivation in the target language learning process. In the writing process, students could ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 2, October 2022 119 develop their critical thinking through reading more (Paszylk, 2009). If they had good critical thinking in writing, they felt more motivated to write and could improve their writing styles. Another advantage of integrating reading and writing skills was to enhance students' capability to process deep information (Paszylk, 2009). It may help students select the relevant information from the passage that they read. It may also help them in the process of addressing good complex structures, lexical items, and a full range of vocabulary used in the writing form. The present study's result was in parallel with the findings by Habibi et al. (2015) in Malaysia. They found that students who have a good ability and knowledge in reading feel motivated in producing a gratifying piece of writing. In another study, Alqadi and Alqadi (2013) explored the good impact of integrating extensive reading on improving the EFL Freshmen’s grammatical accuracy. The result showed that utilizing extensive reading could increase students' ability and motivation in writing skills. It indicates that EFL learners in the Indonesian and Malaysian context have high motivation when they integrate reading and writing skills to help them write better. Furthermore, the second greatest mean score showed in item number 5 which yielded 3.40. Item 5, with the expression "I always feel excited to improve my quality of essay writing", indicated that students had a high motivation to be better writers. In this item, 96% of the participants indicated their agreement with this statement. It showed that they tended to enhance their writing proficiency by improving the quality of their writing. This present study result is in parallel with the finding by Pajares and Valiante (2001), who found that gender differences could determine students' motivation and their writing achievement. It found that female students had a high writing achievement goal rather than male students. It may indicate that female students tend to have a high motivation to perform better in writing to avoid appearing inept. The result of the analysis also showed that the female students felt more motivated to improve their quality of writing because they wanted to avoid other people's bad perceptions about themselves. It may indicate that EFL female students in Indonesian and United states contexts tend to have a high motivation to achieve better writing performances than male students. To support EFL students' writing process, a collaborative writing strategy needs to be implemented during the writing course. Latifah and Ulfa (2020) claim that a collaborative writing strategy is designed to provide students with many opportunities to practice writing among learners. It means that working in pairs or groups in collaborative writing may help students to increase their motivation to produce a satisfying piece of writing. Moreover, item 7 "I think composing essay writing after reading on the selected topic is important", had the third greatest mean score of 3.32. This result showed one of the writing and reading processes that could help them to organize and adopt some ideas before putting the ideas into essay writing. This explains a cognitive process theory in writing. Pablo and Lasaten (2018) state that in the cognitive process of writing theory, students do not directly write but they must tackle a distinct process where the students have to read, organize, arrange, and brainstorm some ideas before composing. This is an example of the students' Limeranto & Mbato: Motivation and Its Relaionship with … 120 process in developing their critical writing. Through managing a set of distinct writing processes, it may increase students' writing motivation. The lowest mean score could be seen in item number 11 which yielded 2.80. Item 11 asked about the use of feedback that could help them produce better essay writing. In this item, 73% of participants agreed with this statement. Item 11 with the expression: "I am grateful that there is the teacher-student conference for checking students' progress in writing an essay", seemed to suggest that students’ belief if the teachers did a correction on their progress of writing regularly, it could increase their motivation. A study conducted by Bahous et al. (2011) highlighted written feedback was one of the essential parts of the writing process. Bruning and Horn (2000) claimed that to achieve learners' writing goals, specific feedback on writing had to be given to enhance students' confidence and competence in writing. Students tend to feel more motivated if the teachers make specific feedback or comments on their works about what went well and what needs to be improved. A study conducted by Lam and Law (2007) found that giving feedback led EFL students to focusing on the ways they could improve their writing skills. It may help the students to boost their motivation to practice more on writing more. Besides, another study conducted by Johnson (2017) further found that providing useful feedback helped students to specifically participate in the writing process rather than creating good writing. However, there were 28% of participants disagreed with this statement. It may indicate that providing feedback does not help the students to produce good essay writing. Johnson (2017) further stated that to encourage students to be motivated more in writing, teachers need to provide positive feedback. 2. The relationship between students’ motivation and their writing achievement To find the correlation between students' motivation and their writing achievement, the researchers presented the result of Pearson product-moment correlation using SPSS 25 in table 4 below. Table 4. Correlation between students’ motivation and their writing achievement Total Score Motivation Pearson correlation 1 .304 Sig. (2-tailed) .140 N 25 25 Writing scores Pearson correlation .304 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .140 N 25 25 As could be seen in table 2, this present study found a significant positive correlation between EFL undergraduate students' motivation and their achievement in writing (r (23) = .304, p <.05). It showed that there was a positive weak correlation with r = .304, while the significant level was notable with p .304. It can be concluded that students' motivation was positively correlated with the students' writing achievement. It means that if students had a high motivation in writing, the students also had high writing scores. It also means that students who had high motivation tend to be successful in writing. The present study result was in line with some previous studies. For instance, Cahyono and Rahayu's (2020) found that the correlation between students' writing motivation and their writing proficiency was positive. Their study yielded (r (53) = .052, p >.05). Another study (Hashemian and Heidari,2013) yielded (r (28) = .055, p <.05). ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 2, October 2022 121 These two studies suggest that EFL students tend to achieve a more advanced level of writing proficiency if they have good motivation in writing. The present study indicates that students need to continuously increase their motivation in writing to keep them engaged and motivated during the writing process. Al-Hoorie and Macintyre (2020) argue that intrinsic motivation plays an essential role to help students to be more successful in the target language learning process. Moreover, students' motivation is integrated into their achievement in the target language (Al-Hoorie & Macintyre, 2020). This may indicate that students who have better motivation and writing proficiency tend to reach a higher level of achievement in L2. This result supported the previous finding by Hashemian and Heidari (2013), who found that students' positive attitude and their success in L2 writing were positively correlated (r (28) = .055, p <.05). This may indicate that if the students have a higher positive attitude in writing, the students also have a higher level of success in the target language of writing. Li and Pan (2009) agree that learners with a positive attitude toward second language learning tend to be more internally motivated to be successful in writing. In addition, the similar findings among the three studies in the different contexts could be affected by several factors. Firstly, there is a similarity of the participants' attributes in these three studies. The participants may have rich exposures and experiences in writing, especially in essay writing. Moreover, the participants may have previous experiences with effective essay writing strategies. 3. Factors affecting students’ motivation in essay writing There were two themes emerging from the participants about major factors that they believed could contribute to their motivation in writing. It can be observed in the following table. Table 5. The emerging theme of factors Emerging Themes Theme 1 Teachers’ method and attitudes can decrease students’ motivation in writing Theme 2 Students’ lack of English grammar knowledge and lexical resource impede their motivation in writing Teachers' methods and attitudes and students' motivation in writing Two participants commented that teachers' teaching methods could decrease their motivation in writing. S1 and S2, for example, admitted that the teacher's teaching methods were not interesting for them because the learning activities were monotonous. They further admitted that they felt demotivated because the teachers showed a negative attitude during the process of writing. As reported by S2: “I felt so bored when I joined essay writing class [....]. […] to keep myself motivated in the learning process. The main problem is on the teacher's teaching method [...]. it is not interesting for me. [….] the writing activities were so monotonous. I want the teacher to use attractive teaching methods to help me and my friends [....] using websites and technology. Here are some examples of monotonous learning activities in the classroom. She always opens the class by explaining some writing Limeranto & Mbato: Motivation and Its Relaionship with … 122 materials [...]. She is too busy explaining the materials without guidance on how to write. Then, she asks us to write and consult our writing to her. I do not like these kinds of activity.” [S2] Similarly, S1 commented that her motivation decreased because of her teacher’s negative behavior. Based on S1 and S2’s perspectives, the teaching methods of the teacher played an essential role in the writing process. The teacher's monotonous methods could decrease their motivation to write and produce a good essay. The present study's result revealed that teachers' teaching methods had a great impact on the students' motivation. Students tend to be successful when they enjoy every process of learning. Yilmaz et al. (2017) further state teachers’ innovative and effective use of teaching techniques and methods can help the teachers to create a good atmosphere and effective classroom environment. By implementing various interesting teaching methods, it enables students to enhance their motivation in learning (Dang et al., 2021). In this present study, however, their teacher lacks some experience in implementing effective teaching methods. Moreover, related to teachers’ negative attitude in the classroom, Dang et al. (2021) point out that teachers’ attitude has great effects on students’ motivation in learning. Teachers who have a positive attitude can enhance students’ confidence in writing (Yilmaz et al., 2017), which in turn will help students to feel more valuable and enjoy every process of learning. Otherwise, students may feel undervalued and demotivated if the teachers compare one student’s ability with other students. Students’ lack of linguistic competence and their motivation in writing All participants commented that they had problems related to their linguistic competence such as a lack of grammatical rules, vocabulary, and syntax during the process of writing. S2 and S3, for example, admitted that they felt difficulty in constructing some grammatical and syntax features into effective sentences. Joni reported: “Grammar is the most difficult thing in writing. I feel frustrated to construct and find the correct grammar while writing. [...] it can impede my motivation in delivering my developed ideas into writing. I keep finding some frequent errors including inaccurate use of singular/plural, tenses, and subject-verb agreement. […] find some problems in constructing some clauses and forming some effective sentences. […] these problems can lead me to poor of writing performance" [S3] Based on this point of view, it showed that they kept making inappropriate grammatical errors. Another issue arose from their incompetence in complex syntax. These problems led them to poor performance of writing. The results of the interview analysis are in parallel with the perspectives shared by Refnita (2014), who stated that the most frequent problem that students faced during the writing process was linguistic competency including grammatical errors and complex-syntax knowledge. It seems that many students feel difficulty writing a grammatically correct essay and wording appropriate sentences. To help students have a better writing performance, EFL Indonesian students need to have sufficient linguistic competence in writing to develop their ideas. Refnita (2014) pointed out that in order to support and enhance students' English skills, especially writing skills, grammar instruction is highly needed to overcome students’ grammatical difficulties and to facilitate the students to have better linguistic competency. ELTIN Journal: Journal of English Language Teaching in Indonesia, Volume 10/No 2, October 2022 123 In contrast, S1 reported that, although she experienced some difficulties in grammar, it did not influence her performance in writing. She further reported that she was struggling to expand her vocabulary to help her keep improving her linguistic competence. As a result, she could deliver and express more developed ideas. She commented: “In my opinion, vocabulary is really important to help me express and address my ideas in writing. I admitted that grammar is also important but if I do not have a lot of vocabulary, it does not fully support my ability in grammar. My problem is I, sometimes, use inappropriate vocabulary, especially academic vocabulary. In essay writing class, I have to use academic vocabulary because I write a lot of expository essay paragraphs [….]” [S1] The data above indicated that vocabulary was necessary for forming English grammar. This indicates that if learners do not have sufficient vocabulary knowledge, they tend to feel difficulty communicating effectively either in spoken or written forms. The result of the interview is in parallel with the point of view of Viera (2017), who highlighted the importance of vocabulary in helping students to express their ideas well in writing. It shows that students who have good vocabulary knowledge tend to succeed in writing skills. 4. Effective strategies to improve students’ motivation in writing All participants commented that writing strategies were really helpful to improve their motivation in writing. Joni and Nana, for example, admitted that using writing strategies could help them to set their plans to achieve their goal in writing. They commented: “I always use writing strategies to guide me write the essay properly. There are some writing strategies that I always do such as collecting some journals (looking for some ideas), reading those journals, brainstorming, writing, reviewing, and rewriting. These strategies help me to improve my motivation in writing because I know what I have to do before and after writing” [S1 and S3] S1 also commented that she used another writing strategy, which is a collaborative writing strategy. She reported: "I prefer to work with my peers or groups. Even though the teachers never ask me to work in a group, I make my groups share my ideas and help others. Collaborative writing strategy is a good strategy to improve my ability in writing. [….] not only do teachers give me some feedback, but also my friends' feedback is an important one, I feel more motivated to work with my friends because they can help me whenever I need them" These findings are in line with a study conducted by Chien (2012) about the use of writing strategies to improve Taiwanese students' writing performance. Its result showed that there were three major writing strategies that Taiwan students used such as generating, arranging, and putting the ideas into writing. The result also showed that writing strategies could enhance students' motivation to become more proficient writers through collaborative writing strategies. In other words, it is important to keep students motivated. In collaborative writing strategies, students do not only develop their writing skills but also critical thinking in the process of writing (Veramuthu & Shah, 2020). Limeranto & Mbato: Motivation and Its Relaionship with … 124 D. CONCLUSION The result of this present study revealed the importance of the relationship between students’ motivation in writing and their writing achievement. It showed that there was a positive correlation between students’ motivation and their writing performance. It indicated that if students had high motivation, they would also have high writing performance. Students tended to succeed in writing if they felt happy and motivated in every process of writing. Moreover, this study also explored some factors that students believed to contribute to their motivation in writing. Its result showed that teachers' monotonous teaching methods and teachers' negative attitudes could decrease students' writing motivation. Students' lack of linguistic competence became the second factor that could decrease students' motivation in writing. 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