Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 42 Article History: Submitted: 12 January 2023 Reviewed: 18 January 2023 Edited: 30 January 2023 Article Accepted: 31 January 2023 Narratives of Two Indonesian Lecturers about Challenges of Writing an Undergraduate EFL Thesis Yustinus Calvin Gai Mali Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana, Indonesia Author email: yustinus.mali@uksw.edu DOI: https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.17551 Abstract The literature has overwhelmingly explained challenges in writing the undergraduate thesis from students’ perspectives. Yet, there is a scarcity of research that presents the perspectives of thesis supervisors about the challenges experienced by their EFL students and, at the same time, on possible solutions to solve them. This qualitative study presented two English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lecturers’ narratives on challenges EFL students experienced when writing their undergraduate thesis and on solutions to deal with those challenges. The research data was collected through a reflective essay written by the lecturers, who then met in an online synchronous meeting to discuss what they wrote in the essay. While the data analysis communicated various things, the students’ challenges in writing their undergraduate thesis were commonly about finding a research topic, writing the literature review, and using various academic vocabulary. In light of the results, possible solutions to solve the challenges, practical recommendations for EFL thesis writing and teaching activities, and guiding questions for further research were presented. This study should benefit EFL thesis supervisors to reflect on their own experiences, find areas for improvement and enhance their thesis supervisory practices. This study also hopes to benefit EFL students who wish to learn practical strategies to progress with their undergraduate thesis. Keywords: Undergraduate Thesis Writing; Reflections; English Writing Challenges; English Writing Strategies. =========================================================================== https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 mailto:yustinus.mali@uksw.edu https://doi.org/10.18196/ftl.v8i1.17551 https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.18196/ftl.v8i1.17551&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2023-01-30 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 43 Introduction English as a Foreign Language (henceforth called EFL) lecturers in universities in Indonesia is responsible for supervising undergraduate students in writing a thesis as a partial fulfillment to graduate and obtain their bachelor’s degree. However, this task is not easy because the lecturers always deal with their students’ various academic writing and research-related problems. Several studies have researched EFL students’ challenges in writing their undergraduate thesis. For example, an undergraduate student at a university in China said that “the thesis-writing experience was painful,” and the student admitted that “it was difficult to find supporting evidence to support topic sentences” (Bian & Wang, 2016, p. 25). In that situation, Wang and Yang (2012) stated that EFL students might need to build supportive and productive supervisor-student communication. “Having a conference is a better way of responding to student writing because teachers usually cannot fully get their ideas expressed through written feedback, and students cannot take much in from written feedback either” (Bian & Wang, p. 24). In a study of seven Taiwan undergraduate students, Yeh (2009) found out synthesizing literature is a formidable task as a student said: “Synthesizing information is difficult. One source says one thing, and another source says another” (p. 326). In brief, synthesizing means determining similarities, differences, patterns, and themes among articles, creating general conclusions based on those articles, and making connections among ideas (Bloomberg & Volpe, 2019). The finding was aligned with that of Alsied and Ibrahim (2017). In their survey on challenges that 42 Libyan EFL students had when conducting research, the students had difficulties writing the literature review part, especially in justifying and connecting the findings of the previous studies to their current research. “Reviewing and critiquing the previous research, creating a research gap, and designing the research methods” (Cai, 2013, p. 10) were some other difficulties in writing academically. There are no simple answers to solve these challenges. Research by Alsied and Ibrahim (2017), Altinmakas and Bayyurt (2019), and Bian and Wang (2016) similarly found that choosing a research topic is a challenging task for undergraduate students. In Horowitz’s (1989) words, “what shall I write about?” (p. 349). This challenge might create a dilemma. On the one hand, most students may be more motivated to work on topics that interest them (Yeh, 2009), and the lecturers do not want to spoon-feed their https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 44 advisees with research ideas. The lecturers might also want their students to make writing choices and develop as writers (Reynolds & Thompson, 2011). However, giving the freedom to choose their topics may lead the students to an “agonizing process of choosing unsuitable topics and then changing them repeatedly for various reasons” (Horowitz, p. 349). With all these findings, the thesis is more than just “constructing grammatically acceptable sentences” (Bram, 2012, p. 15). The literature explains possible challenges in writing the undergraduate thesis from students’ perspectives. However, there is a scarcity of research that focuses on the views of thesis supervisors on the challenges experienced by their EFL students and, at the same time, on possible solutions to solve them. Conducting surveys often resulted in statistically related numbers or percentages (as presented in Alharbi, 2019; Cai, 2013; Diasti & Mbato, 2020; Husin & Nurbayani, 2017), which might need more detailed explanations of the challenges and solutions of writing the thesis. Alternatively, a more in-depth exploration can be done by reflecting on the lecturers’ years of experience supervising their undergraduate EFL students. That reflection or conscious thinking about what we are doing and why we are doing it” (Farrell & Jacobs, 2016, p. 2) might help the thesis supervisors to make more informed decisions about their practice based on what they have reflected. However, with the number of students to supervise in one academic year and other responsibilities of teaching, research, and community services, the lecturers might barely have time to sit down, catch their breath, and reflect on those issues. Farrell (2004) pointed out seriously that “If teachers do not take time to reflect on their work, they may become prone to burnout” (p. 8). The tight schedules might put the lecturers in an isolated situation where they do not have support systems (e.g., from other lecturers) to share and talk with one another about their thesis supervisory tasks. Gemmel (2003) said that “lecturers who work in isolation resort to familiar methods rather than approaching concerns from a problem-solving perspective” (p. 10), specifically when dealing with the challenges of their undergraduate thesis students. Therefore, the lecturers might need to have supportive and “practice-centered” (Smith, 2019, p. 2) conversations with someone who can listen (Campbell et al., 2004) to each other’s stories and advocate success in supervising the students. With that in mind, this study aims to document those conversations between two EFL lecturers, particularly about the following issues: (1) https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 45 challenges the students’ experience when writing their undergraduate thesis in English and (2) possible solutions to those challenges. Answers to these research questions hopefully help EFL thesis supervisors to reflect on their own experiences, find areas for improvement, and enhance their thesis supervisory practices. The paper also hopes to benefit EFL students who wish to learn strategies to progress with their undergraduate thesis. In this study, I allow my readers to connect personally with any ideas and thoughts presented in this paper. They are also welcome to have various perspectives in interpreting the supervisors’ narratives presented in this study “as knowledge is “subjective, contextualized, and should be personally experienced” (Egbert & Sanden, 2020, p. 35). Method This study employed a narrative inquiry approach to answering the research questions. The approach looks at how the narratives of the research participants shape and inform their practices (Bell, 2002). These narratives also describe and analyze social phenomena as they naturally happen and are experienced in the personal life setting of the research participants (Nunan & Choi, 2011). Moreover, the narrative can be a first-person account or a collaboratively constructed narrative that tells stories about the individual’s experiences and reports the meanings of those experiences (Ary et al., 2019). Research Context The research context was in an undergraduate English Language Education Program at a private university in Indonesia (henceforth called EDU). In this study, the thesis was written by students who consider English their foreign language, meaning that they use English only in their language classroom but do not use it for daily communication. Moreover, the thesis was written in the form of publishable journal articles (i.e., around 5000 words) with the following components: introduction, literature review, method, findings and discussions, conclusions, and references. See Egbert and Sanden (2015, p.12) for detailed descriptions of each section. Typically, the students spend two semesters to be able to complete their thesis. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 46 Research Participants Calesia (pseudonyms), a senior lecturer at EDU, was selected to participate. The researcher and the participant trusted each other and could communicate well, listen, and advocate success for each of their supervisory thesis works. With that foundation, they agreed to recall past experiences in supervising their students. Table 1. The Participants of the Study Name Nationality Teaching Experiences Research Areas Author Indonesian Eight years Language, Literacy, Technology, English Education Calesia Indonesian Twelve years Bilingualism, Teaching English for Specific Purposes (TESP), pragmatics, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication Note. Previous researchers (e.g., Hunter et al., 2014; Mali & Salsbury, 2022) also involved themselves as the research participants in their study. Data Collection Procedures To help this process, I collected and looked back at their students’ progress report book, their thesis draft, and their written feedback on the draft. Then, while reviewing those documents, I wrote down my feelings and thoughts in a reflective essay ranging from 500-700 words. I wrote the essays on Google Docs (GD) and used the following prompts as our writing guidelines: 1. In supervising students to write their undergraduate thesis (other than grammatical aspects), the three most common challenges that my students experienced were […] 2. To solve those challenges, I offered the students three possible solutions: […] Then, on GD, Calesia and I read each other’s narratives several times, left, and responded to some comments on interesting phrases or sentences to discuss further. These activities gave them time to reflect on what they did as teachers and their practice (Farrell, 2016), specifically when supervising our thesis students. I italicized the comments and responses in the essays. Next, I invited Calesia to meet synchronously in Zoom (https://zoom.us/). The meeting lasted for 40 minutes to discuss the comments written for the essays. In their “reflective dialogue https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 47 about each other’s experiences” (Hunter et al., 2014, p. 9), they did not act as “an expert in a special field of academic knowledge, who put right wrongs” (Holden, 1997, p. 444) to each other’s experiences. Instead, they helped each other to gain insights (Rarieya, 2005) and better ways to supervise our thesis students in the future. In this approach, the reflection practice “does not occur in isolation, but in discussion with another practitioner” (Walsh & Mann, 2015, p. 356). Data Analysis Following Hunter et al. (2014), I showed my essay and Calesia’s separately and compared them in the end (see the discussions) to present each of our experiences. I then looked for commonalities in the essays about the challenges of writing the thesis and possible solutions to deal with them, which hopefully could also invite readers of this paper “to reflect on the meaning these stories hold for them and as a means of transforming mistakes into wisdom” (Puzio et al., 2017, p. 225). Findings This section presents the narratives of the research participants about the (1) challenges their students to experience when writing their undergraduate thesis in English and (2) possible solutions to those challenges. Author’s Story The most common challenge was about finding a research topic. When asked if they had a specific research topic in mind, most of my students came to the class with a broad area of research, such as English speaking or writing. They did not know what to explore more specifically in their thesis. To deal with this challenge, I usually asked them to go to the ELT Journal (https://academic.oup.com/eltj), which provided concisely written articles about English Language teaching and education. They could also find some free articles in the journal. Then, I asked my students to try some keywords of their research interests (e.g., writing motivation or speaking challenges) to find two or three articles. After that, I gave them about a week to read the articles they were interested in, see the research questions presented in the articles, and then bring the materials to the thesis consultation time. We discussed the articles together and formulated as many research questions as possible for their study. Alternatively, I asked my students to visit my academia.edu https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 48 (https://satyawacanachristianu.academia.edu/YustinusCalvin) and find one or two papers that they were interested in exploring further. Then, we could start to discuss my articles and explore possible directions for their research. Calesia: It is good that you have your own articles repertoire. Author: I use it to encourage my students that if I can write those papers, they should be able to do similar things, even better. The other challenge was related to students’ motivation to write and complete the thesis. In 2016, I had two students who rarely came to the consultation time in my office and reported the progress of their thesis writing. I had no idea where they were and how they were doing with their thesis. Reflecting on this experience, I decided to have a weekly face-to-face class meeting with all my thesis students. We usually met on Wednesdays from 3.00 to 4.50 p.m., sat together in the class, opened our laptops, and started to write together. I also answered my students’ questions about their thesis and discussed some common issues I found in their thesis drafts. Calesia: Do you think this helps the students being more motivated to write? Author: I feel so because of the presence of other students. They should not feel alone in that process. Another challenge was related to using varied academic vocabulary in the thesis. When reading my students’ thesis drafts, I found that they repeatedly used the same verb (e.g., said) to paraphrase ideas or report findings of previous studies. I also read another repeated verb (e.g., conducted) in their method section to explain the research approach and setting of their study (e.g., this study was conducted qualitatively to […]; this study was conducted at the Faculty […]). Calesia: They lack vocabulary, so they need to learn and read more. Moreover, it seems that they have the same pattern for their reports, almost the same sentences for different findings. Author: Yes, that is a challenging part of the writing process. To deal with this, I usually encouraged my students to download academic journal articles, read, and study how the researchers wrote their papers (e.g., the literature review or method sections). For instance, in Al-Tamimi and Shuib’s (2009, p. 34-35) article, the students could find the following phrases to review the previous research: 1. Another study by researcher A attempted to explore […] 2. One of the most relevant studies was that of researcher B, who surveyed […] https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 49 3. A more recent study has been carried out by researcher C in the EFL context. More specifically, the researcher tried to […] 4. In Japan, a related study was undertaken by researcher D who sought to assess [...] With these academic phrases and different ways to express ideas that my students could find in the article, I hoped they could use more varied vocabulary and convey ideas in their thesis more clearly. Calesia’s Story The first major challenge almost all my students faced was finding a topic. I felt surprised when students came up with broad topics, such as motivation in learning, learning strategies, and technology in teaching. Many were confused when I asked them to develop more specific topics. Perhaps, they had not read enough research articles. I encouraged them to search the Internet and download articles related to their topics of interest. From the campus database, I also provided them with examples of well-written research articles submitted by students from previous years. Author: Do you have any other criteria for selecting the students? Calesia: I also usually use students’ theses published in local journals or (undergraduate) conference proceedings. I gave my students a week to read and asked them to discuss their topic the week after. They typically come up with more specific topics in the discussion session. I then provide some questions to help them further consider the research topics they have in mind: What is your reason for choosing this topic? Do you have any experiences related to the topics? Why do you think your topic is interesting to study? When my students could answer my questions, they usually became more confident about their research topics. The second major challenge was writing the literature review. I often asked my students to find and read articles from free sources like Academia.edu (https://www.academia.edu/) so that they had more ideas about what they would write. However, reading too many articles sometimes overwhelmed some students as they could not decide which ones to put in their literature review. Some also took too many ideas from the article and wrote them in their literature review. As a result, they had unorganized extensive literature reviews. Therefore, to https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 50 help the students organize that part, I usually asked them to rewrite their literature reviews step by step, starting from the definition of terms they use in their research. Author: How did you usually do this? Calesia: I explained it first in class; then, I asked them to write at home. After a week or two, I asked them to have an individual meeting consultation with me. After I checked their work on defining terms, my students continued writing relevant theories to answer their research questions. I did another check before they could write the last part, such as a short review on a related topic. Although this strategy was tiring for me as I needed to spend more time checking every aspect of the review, I found it successful in getting the students to write a better literature review. Occasionally, I asked my students to work in a group of three. Then, they should read each other’s literature review and give constructive feedback on each other’s work. Another common challenge was choosing the appropriate data collection methods. Most students were familiar with distributing questionnaires and conducting interviews. My students often said they wanted to use those methods for their thesis. When I explained other methods that could be more suitable for my students in collecting their data (e.g., using focus group discussion, observation, or asking participants to write their experiences), many of them found it challenging. In that situation, I gave them examples from my previous students who collected their data using methods other than doing interviews and distributing questionnaires. Then, I explained the data collection steps and encouraged them to try their research instruments with their friends before they started their data collection. Author: So, they pilot their instruments to their friends, right? Calesia: Yes. I believe they can find some parts to improve. Some of the students finally dared to try other methods to collect their data, and I found this rewarding. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 51 Discussions This study explores the challenges undergraduate students experience in writing their thesis in English and the possible solutions. While the essays communicate various things, I emphasize three commonalities. The first one is about finding a research topic. In our conversations, Calesia and I both accept that finding a research topic is the most challenging task for our students. The difficulty of selecting a research topic is also asserted by Alsied and Ibrahim (2017), Altinmakas and Bayyurt (2019), and Bian and Wang (2016). In our online synchronous conversation, asking the students to read our previous publications or previous students’ theses published in local Journals or an (undergraduate) conference proceeding might help them find some ideas for their research work. For instance, they might replicate methods of the previous works with the same topic using a different theoretical approach. Another possible solution is to ask them to read research papers in academic journals and databases (e.g., Google Scholar or Academia.edu) and note some research questions they can generate from the articles. At some points, if they still find it difficult to find research ideas, we usually guide them to read specific articles that discuss topics in English Language teaching and education, such as motivation (e.g., Al-Tamimi & Shuib, 2009), learning attribution (e.g., Farid & Akhter, 2017), class peer observations (e.g., Nguyen & Ngo, 2018; Vo & Nguyen, 2010), or critical friendships (Farrell, 2001). The second commonality is about writing a literature review. Calesia and I find it difficult to read unorganized and too-long literature reviews as some students do not synthesize their sources. This finding echoes the previous studies by Alsied and Ibrahim (2017), Cai (2013), and Yeh (2009). We converse that asking students to read journal articles and study how the researchers write their literature review part might be a possible way to deal with that issue. For example, we like how Al-Tamimi and Shuib (2009) wrote their literature review part. Besides using various verbs and sentences in introducing previous studies, the researchers ended their literature review with points that synthesized the findings of the studies that they reviewed. “To sum up, the following may be said about the past studies discussed in this section: All the studies mentioned above reconfirmed the importance of identifying learners’ motivation and attitudes towards the English language [...]” (p. 35). https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 52 Other solutions would be to ask students to write the literature review, part by part, and provide them with more consultation time so that we can check what they have written. We support Bian and Wang (2016) that “having a conference is a better way of responding to student writing” (p. 24). Regarding EDU, most of our students still need a lot of our presence to support their thesis writing. However, we do not want to “taking over with extensive editing and rewriting our students’ work” (Reynolds & Thompson, 2011, p. 210). Another possible solution was asking the students to work in a group and respond to each other’s literature review. Could they follow the ideas presented in that part easily? Had the students made some synthesis in their literature? Was that part too long? Did they include too many ideas? Were there some parts to delete? We also discussed using a Table adapted from Li (2009, p. 21) to summarize previous studies (e.g., the information presented in their abstract, method, and conclusion parts). A similar table can be seen in Bloomberg and Volpe (2019, p. 161). The students can complete the table soon after they finish reading the articles. The table can help them see the literature’s commonalities, differences, and patterns. For instance, I fill in the table 2 using some studies related to class peer observations. Table 2. Summarizing the Previous Studies Author Research goals Research methods/ instruments Contexts and participants Main findings Moradkhani (2019) To explore EFL teachers’ perceptions of two reflection approaches (e.g., teaching journal and peer observation) Submitting five teaching journals and five observation forms followed by focus group interviews Two groups of EFL teachers (21 teachers in total) at a state university in Iran The study highlights the strength of oral reflection approaches over the written ones done individually. Nguyen and Ngo (2018) To examine how a peer- mentoring model among pre-service teachers could facilitate their teaching reflection Peer observations followed by focus group interviews 32 EFL pre-service teachers at a university in Vietnam The peer observation activities help the pre- service teachers to evaluate their practices. Vo and Nguyen (2010) To explore the experiences of Vietnamese EFL teachers in participating in Critical Friends Groups (CFG) The CFG processes were done through class observations and interviews. Four beginner teachers (three females and one male) taught the same elementary English course. All the participants found the CFG fruitful for exchanging teaching ideas and learning from one another. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 53 Based on table 2, the previous studies conducted in EFL settings (Moradkhani, 2019; Nguyen & Ngo, 2018; Vo & Nguyen, 2010) confirmed the benefits of doing peer observation. The pattern of the previous studies involved participants at the university level. However, we do not know if elementary or junior high school teachers have the same views, which might help to “create a research gap” (Cai, 2013, p. 10) in the literature. The last one is about using academic vocabulary. Calesia and I have the same thoughts that our students like to use the same verbs, phrases, and sentences repeatedly in their thesis. We believe that the students need to read more published articles to study and borrow some words or phrases presented in those articles. We sometimes provide one or two articles (e.g., Al-Tamimi and Shuib, 2009) for the students and ask them to see vocabulary and phrases that the authors write, for instance, to introduce previous studies or explain the methods of their research. Conclusion and Practical Recommendations To sum up, the challenges that undergraduate students experience in writing their thesis in English are finding a research topic, writing their literature review, and using academic vocabulary in their thesis. Then, as the data showed, the lecturers used various solutions to help their students deal with those challenges. Based on the results of this study, I would like to give some practical recommendations for thesis students who are writing their English education thesis, thesis supervisors who supervise their students, and the head of study programs in a similar context. First, reading is essential. The more students read articles from various sources, the more research ideas, academic vocabulary, and phrases they can have, and the better parts of their thesis they can write. Therefore, in the thesis writing process, the students should not consider reading a burden. Instead, they should put their effort into reading activities and view them as healthy nutrients for their thesis writing. In that case, the thesis supervisor can reinforce that message to their students by sharing their reading experiences or strategies to comprehend research articles, specifically when they wrote their undergraduate or master’s thesis. The supervisor may invite some students who progress in their thesis to share their reading experiences. The head of the study program (or the related personnel) should also ensure access to quality academic journals and databases where the students can download and read quality https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 54 articles or research papers for their thesis. There should be no “frequent complaints of the limited library resources” (Yeh, 2009, p. 324). Second, communicating with the thesis supervisor is crucial. The students should always be in touch with their supervisor to tell any challenges (e.g., finding a topic or writing the literature review) they have in writing their thesis. They should also know their thesis supervisor’s office hours so they can always talk to and have some advice from their supervisor. In that case, thesis supervisors must have regular office hours to meet their students in face-to-face or online synchronous formats. They should not be hands-off with their student’s progress and assume that all the students can autonomously finish their thesis writing without their regular supervision. The thesis supervisors should also be the students’ resource and motivator or someone ready to encourage the students to make as much effort as possible in completing their thesis, “supply information and language where necessary, look at the student’s work as it progresses, and offer advice and suggestions constructively and tactfully” (Harmer, 2007, p. 330). That said, the head of a study program can set strict rules to ensure the presence and support of the supervisors to their thesis students. The head of the program can also manage the ratio of thesis students to those supervised by a lecturer in one academic year. With the various challenges in the writing process, it might be difficult for a lecturer to supervise too many students. Then, supervising the thesis students should not be an isolated process for the supervisors. Therefore, they might think about creating an online synchronous discussion group. They can work in groups of lecturers who listen well to one another, advocate for their work’s success, and provide non-judgmental feedback like a friend (Thorgersen, 2014). Then, they can meet regularly every month, for instance, through an hour Zoom meeting. Then, each can share their students’ challenges in writing the thesis and practical solutions to deal with them. By listening to one another attentively without criticizing, I hope the lecturers can “contribute to the growth of the other” (Fletcher & Ragins, 2007, p. 383), such as in supervising their undergraduate thesis students. To sum up, the writing process of an undergraduate thesis requires efforts from the students and their thesis supervisors and supportive collaboration between them. https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Learning Volume 8, No. 1, January 2023 Available online at: https://journal.umy.ac.id/index.php/FTL/issue/view/964 e-ISSN: 2580-2070, p-ISSN: 2527-7650 55 My conversations with Calesia in this paper have not answered the following questions, which might be areas for further research: Do other EFL lecturers in different settings have the same views on the challenges and solutions presented in this paper? 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