Considering the frequent difficulties encountered in writing, especially in
thesis writing as the final assignment needed to graduate from an advanced college or
university with a bachelor's degree. The learning period for higher education
programs is regulated by Article 16, paragraph (1) of Permenristekdikti 44/2015. The
period of undergraduate (S1) lectures is a maximum of 14 semesters or 7 years. If
within 7 years the students have yet to complete their education successfully, a Drop
Out (DO) policy will apply. However, many students at UIN Antasari Banjarmasin
cannot complete their undergraduate education on time, leading to a dropout (DO)
policy.
This research aims to found the psychological and linguistic challenges
perceived by the final year students in thesis writing. Hopefully there will be a
reduction in the number of final year students who end up dropping out. The
participants of this research are 3 students from each English Education Department
in 2015 and 2016 who have not fulfilled their thesis. This study uses a qualitative
descriptive as a research method. The data in this study are the result of interviews
and documentation by collected and checked students’ thesis draft. This study uses
data analysis with the steps of data reduction, data presentation and concluding.
After analyzing the data, the researcher found the psychological challenges
perceived by the final year students in thesis writing, which are (1) self-esteem, (2)
anxiety, and (3) motivation. Moreover also found linguistic challenges are (1)
grammatical problems, (2) problem of sentence structure, (3) problem of word
choice, and (4) cognitive problems such as punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and
content.