| Abstrakt: |
Dissertation writing is a common problem among second language (L2) postgraduate students, and they tend to perceive the experience as gruelling. Apart from experiencing second language writing anxiety (SLWA), they are also susceptible to experiencing psychological discomfort or cognitive dissonance (CD) resulting from conflicting thoughts and feelings when facing the ill effects of their actions and thoughts. Under those circumstances, students may be motivated to resolve their mental conflicts as Festinger's (1957) theory of CD proposed an interplay between cognition, emotion, and motivation. However, more evidence is needed to determine whether L2 students' experience of CD in dissertation writing had caused them to misattribute the cause of their poor writing performance. To have a clearer insight into this phenomenon, this study aimed to explore the extent of the possible influences of CD on apprehensive postgraduate students' dissertation writing performance. The investigation, which was a qualitative multiple-case study, involved four (4) local postgraduate students and data were collected via in-depth interviews, audio journals and personal document analysis. The thematic analysis revealed the following themes: i) SLWA triggers CD; ii) CD changes students' existing beliefs; iii) students' new beliefs cause misattribution of slow writing progress; and iv) poor writing performance. Thus, the study posits that CD influences dissertation writing as students' altered beliefs prevent them from reflecting meaningfully on their writing performance. To overcome CD's effects on dissertation writing, it is recommended that supervisors and language teachers provide constructive feedback, discourage the perception of writing inability, encourage reexamination of writing issues and avoid provoking students' writing performance using anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
