Trends of EFL Students in English Education Program : A 2005-2015 Survey

One of the purposes of English Education Program of State Islamic Institute of Tulungagung, Indonesia, is to lead the graduates to do research on linguistics and language teaching and to write a thesis accordingly. However, the preliminary study shows that there is some repeatedly research on the same topics, because the students commonly spend their time copying and pasting or modifying their seniors’ previous studies during writing the research proposals. If the advisors are not punctual in advising their advisees, it is possible to do some unintentional plagiarism which furthers block the contribution toward the body of knowledge in English language and education. Therefore, this article is intended to describe research trends of EFL students in English education. This descriptive study done through a questionnaire survey to 450 out of 849 students’ theses reveals that during the last eleven years, TEFL is the most popular research topic, because it is their mainstream topic. Still, they include other topics than TEFL which are mostly researched by using Descriptive (Qualitative). However, the students’ theses also indicate the development of implementing various research methods i.e. Quantitative, Classroom Action Research, and Research & Development. Moreover, although it is revealed that the research has already indicated the appropriateness of research objective with its title and research background, the EFL students’ theses need some improvement on writing research gap, reviewing related literature and previous studies, and on drawing conclusion and stating suggestion and research contribution as well. This study is then useful as the basis to make a research road map and important to avoid plagiarism and set a thorough research contribution to the body of knowledge on TEFL in Indonesia.


A. Introduction
To be involved in the development of technology and science and to contribute to its advancement, people must be engaged in scientific activities such as doing research and reporting the research result and publishing it as well.English Department of State Institute of Tulungagung as one of the educational institutions also takes part in the development of science and technology.This can be seen from one of its mission which is to conduct a higher education in English education that is up to date and updated toward the development of English science and education.
To achieve the above mentioned mission, one of the objectives of the English Program concerning with the teaching and learning English is to equip the EFL learners with knowledge and competence in doing research on linguistics and English instruction ("menghasilkan lulusan yang memiliki pengetahuan dan kemampuan melakukan penelitian bidang linguistik dan pemelajaran Bahasa Inggris" (Pedoman Penyelenggaran Pendidikan, 2015).This means that EFL learners should be able to conduct research concerning with their own field of study so that they can contribute to the development of English instruction.The efforts of the Program to chase this target is by providing some courses leading the EFL learners to be able to write an academic writing, conduct research on their own selected topics, and report their research result in written (it is hereafter called theses).Students gradually do this since the first semester of their study terms.Then in the seventh semester, they do their research, not only for the sake of becoming a bachelor in English, but for implementing all the knowledge and science on English language and English instruction during the previous semesters as well.This is the peak time to show how much knowledge they gain.
The EFL students doing research are those having passed "Seminar on Thesis Writing" course.This means that they formally conduct their research proposal in order to get feedback from both their peers and lecturer.However, in accordance to the result of preliminary study done by interviewing and observing what the EFL learners are doing during writing their research proposal and doing their research, they do not normally do their research based on their research proposal, but they commonly make another new research proposal by spending their time sitting in the library taking a look and noticing their seniors' theses.As a result, there would be topics which might be repeatedly researched with the difference on the research settings and/or research objects.This demands an extra punctuality of the advisor during their advisory, unless they will do unintentional replication or plagiarism.Moreover, on the basis of the story of the theses advisors, it is not easy to synthesize related articles and to quote some related theories.This will also easily lead to do some unintentional plagiarism.Therefore, to provide the EFL students and their advisors with issues concerning with the students' research trends is worthy and helpful for the sake of avoiding some plagiarism which can block the roles of giving contribution to the development of English language and English language instruction.However, since its establishment until at present, English Education Department of State Islamic Institute of Tulungagung has never set any research roadmap.As a result, this leads to a high possibility of repeating some research topics among the students that will further trigger some unintentional plagiarism and replication.They commonly only check and review research conducted in their own campus.
In addition, there are few studies about research trends for example Alias, et.al. (2013) who studied Research and Trends in the Studies of Webquest; Chen (2013) who surveyed Master's and Doctoral Theses on Second Language Writing in China; Chou & Hayes, (2009) who studied on an overview of English Writing Research in Taiwan; Ma & Kim (2014) who studies on current research trends of English education in domestic and international journals; and Langer & Applebee (2016) who studied on English Research from 1984 to 2015.However, studies and publication concerning research trends of EFL students in Indonesian context have been taken little attention; so that the whole research roadmap of EFL students is hardly found.As a result the EFL research findings do not indicate comprehensive contribution to the body of knowledge as a whole.
In accordance to the above mentioned fact, it is significant to conduct a study on the research trends among the EFL students of English Department of Islamic State of Tulungagung.The research was focused on finding out trends of 1).research topics of the EFL students' theses; 2)."gap/niche" in the subsection of "Background of the Study"; 3).research objectives; 4).review of related theories and previous studies; 5).research method used in their research; and 6).drawing conclusion, suggestions, and contributions of the research written from 2005-2015.The results of the study is then useful for the policy maker to set a research road map and revise curriculum which is mainly about grading courses leading to an understanding of doing research and writing research report feasible and appropriate with the ethics of scientific research report.It is further worthy on avoiding the practice of plagiarism.

B. Literature Review
Research is a compulsory scientific activity done by students in order to take part in the development of science and knowledge including English language.However, to do research is often intimidating especially for novice researchers.Research as defined by Nunan (1992) is a systematic process of inquiry which consists of three elements i.e.
(1).A question, problem, or hypothesis, (2) data, (3) analysis and interpretation of the data, is conducted in order to answer age-old questions, acquire new knowledge, describe how things work, and ultimately improve the way people all live (Marczyk et.al., 2005).It is a process of discovering new knowledge.Research in education is specifically at least useful for expanding knowledge, improving practice in education, and giving information to the policy makers (Cresswell, 2002) Research will be scientifically feasible if it is done by following the design of research which is considered as the structure of any scientific work, so that it will guide them to conduct the research in a relatively more leading and easier way.Marczyk et.al., (2005) further state that there are some research-related issues which are common to most types of research done prior to collecting any data.Researchers must typically identify a topic area of interest, conduct a literature review, formulate a researchable question, articulate hypotheses, determine who or what will be studied, identify the independent and dependent variables that will be examined in the study, and choose an appropriate research methodology which are then considered as especially the steps of research.In addition, research will sound more scientific if it is appropriately done with the ethical norms of research because of some reasons (Resnik, 2015).First, norms promote the aims of research, such as knowledge, truth, and avoidance of error.Second, since research often involves a great deal of cooperation and coordination among many different people in different disciplines and institutions, ethical standards promote the values that are essential to collaborative work, such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness.Third, many of the ethical norms help to ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public.Fourth, ethical norms in research also help to build public support for research.People are more likely to fund a research project if they can trust the quality and integrity of research.The key to ethical research is professional approach which fulfills four criteria: (1) avoid conducting harmful research, (2) be objective, (3) use integrity in conducting and reporting the research, and (4) protect confidentiality.In short, many of the norms of research promote a variety of other important moral and social values.
No matter what topic is being studied, the value of the research depends on how well it is designed and done.Therefore, one of the most important considerations in doing good research is to follow the design or plan.However, there are various types of design stated by different experts.Cresswell (2009: 5), for example, mention three commonly used types of designs: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods.Qualitative research is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures.Data typically collected in the participant's setting.Data analysis is inductively built from particulars to general themes, and the researchers interpret the meaning of the data.The final written report has a flexible structure.Quantitative research is a means for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables.These variables, in turn, can be measured typically on instruments, so that numbered data can be analyzed using statistical procedures.The final written report has a set structure consisting of introduction, literature and theory, methods, results, and discussion (Creswell. 2008).Like qualitative researchers, those who engage in this form of inquiry have assumptions about testing theories deductively, building in protections against bias, controlling for alternative explanations, and being able to generalize and replicate the findings.Mixed method combines or mixes quantitative and qualitative research techniques in a single study.Two sub-types of mixed research includes mixed method research-using qualitative and quantitative approaches for different phases of the study-and mixed model research-using quantitative and qualitative approaches within or across phases of the study.In addition, Cohen et.al.(2002)mention some other styles of educational research, namely naturalistic and ethnographic research, historical research, survey, longitudinal, cross sectional , and trend studies, case studies, correlational studies, ex post facto research, experiment, quasi-experiment, and single case research, and action research Each design has some alternative strategies of inquiry.For example, Qualitative design includes narrative study, ethnography, case study, grounded theory study, and phenomenology.Quantitative design covers experimental and non experimental design i.e. survey.Mixed method includes concurrent, transformative, and sequential.
In short, there are various designs which are used in research depending on the purposes of the study and the nature of the phenomenon, such as Descriptive Designs which is intended to observe and describe, Correlational Studies which aim at predicting, Semi-Experimental Designs which is intended to determine Causes, Experimental Designs which aims at determine Causes, Reviewing Other Research which is intended to explain, Test Study Before Conducting a Full-Scale Study which is aimed at testing whether the Design Work, Typical Experimental Designs.The design of research is selected based on different factors such as the aims of the study, the nature of the phenomenon, the reliability of the information, ethical norms to conduct the study, the cost of the design, current scientific theory and literature on the topic.After designing the research method, researchers consider what planning steps gearing to conduct the research.As according to Marczyk et.al.(2005:26),there are some steps, namely choosing research topics, reviewing related literature, formulating research problems, developing testable hypotheses, identifying and operating independent and dependent variables, and selecting and assigning research participants.

C. Research Methodology
This research was done through a Descriptive Quantitative method by using a questionnaire survey to describe the phenomena of the EFL students' research trend.As stated by Polland (1998) that surveys can be used to describe phenomena and summarize them in order to get a precise measurement of certain things such as political preference.Because it is systematically collected from a relatively large sample taken from a population (De Leeuw, 2008), the present survey was addressed to 450 theses of the students of English Education Program of State Institute of Tulungagung Indonesia.The total population is 849 research reports (thesis) written in the last eleven years, exactly from 2005 up to 2015.The data which were randomly taken from the total number of population is 450 EFL research reports (53 %).The detail representatives of the sample can be seen in Table .1 below.The instrument was developed through several steps, namely 1).reviewing literature of elements involved in research reports, 2).Drafting the questionnaire which was then named "Inventory sheet for research trends of students of English Department; 3).Validating the draft of research instrument, 4) Revising draft of the research instrument based on the feedback gained in the step of validation, 5).Trying out the revised draft of the instrument, 6).Revising the draft based on the feedback of collected in the step of trying out.Therefore, the data of the present research which are in the form of any information concerning with the elements of research were collected by using the previously mentioned instrument.After collecting the data useful to answer the research questions, then those collected data were analyzed quantitatively in order to the biggest number of percentage which is useful to decide the trends of some elements of research such as research topic, gap/niche, research objective, review of related literature and previous studies, research method, and conclusion, suggestion and contribution as well.Moreover, in order to know what those percentages mean and indicate, they are then qualitatively analyzed.

D. Findings and Discussions
The findings of this research are divided into six parts based on the research questions on the EFL students' research trends during the past eleven years (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) namely trends on research topics, gap/niche of research background, research objectives, review of related literature and previous studies, research methods, and research conclusion, suggestion, and contribution.

RQ.What research topic has been the most popular among theses of students in English Education Program written during 2005-2015?
The result of analyzing data shows that TEFL is the most popular (62.89%) research topics out of the other topics such as linguistics, literature, and pragmatics among the students of English Education Department within the last eleven years (See Table 2).They emphasize more on describing problems, cases, and phenomena occurring in the instructional process of English language within a certain period.This is a descriptive considered as a synchronic research on a language (Mahsun,2005).The finding of the present research is in line with the research finding of Bani-Khaled (2012) stating that the highest rank of the theme researched in either theses or dissertation on English language instruction is the one directly dealing with pedagogy and English education.
The above mentioned orders of research topics found by Bani-Khaled ( 2012) are parallel to those of the present study 1).Pedagogy/concerning with the implementation of teaching strategies in the teaching of English language skills and components such as Story Pyramid, Talking Chip, Mind Map (repeatedly implemented), Dictoglos, Think-Talk-Write, Summarizing technique, PQ4R, Think Aloud Strategy, Semantic Mapping, KWL, GIST, DRTA, Cross Talk Method, Vocab Picture (researched several times by using different names with the same essence of using pictures to teach vocabulary), Graphic Organizer, Home-Made Book, Cross Talk Method (repeatedly studied) Questioning Strategy, Word-search puzzle, RAP/Read Ask Put, Computer Game Software, Small Group interaction, Modified postcard, Talking Chip Technique, Pair work technique, STAD &CIRC (repeatedly studied), Adob Flash CS3, Jeopardy,Vocab self-collection strategy (several times studied by using different terms), Grouping and Organizing, Jigsaw, Scramble, 20 question Games, TPR, Pictorial board game, Jumble picture, Team Game Tournament , TPS, SQ3R, Square Picture, Pictorial Puzzle, CTL (repeatedly studied), GTM, Colorful Picture, Series Picture, and so on; 2).English instruction in the levels of Kindergarten, Elementary, and Secondary; 3).Curriculum and its implementation, 4).Strategies of Native Speaker in teaching English, 5).Item test analisis (rarely studied ); 6).Developing instructional materials and media (rarely studied), 7) National Test (rarely studied); 8).Learner dan Teacher's Talk, 9).Translation (rarely studied) and English instructional problems, and10).Students' learning styles.
Those themes can be used as the basis to decide which theme necessary and potential to be further researched.In addition, the students need to be invited to take parts in current issues in English Language Teachings such as CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning), Test/Evaluation in language teaching and learning, Media and Material Development, Translation, and the other current issues in ELT.This is in line with the research result done by Mehta (2012) that the most popular research trend is English instruction concerning most with technological advancement such as computer, internet, or mobile phone.The very popular trends found in ELT are as follows.
• Teaching with Technology This finding indicates great preference directly connected to the students' major study-English education.However, research on English education will contribute to the body of knowledge if it fits to the changes and development of TEFL connected to technology advancement (technology, language skills, and technology and language learning), as in line with Carter (2004).

RQHow is the students' trend in deciding the gap/niche in the research background?
Concerning with "Gap" in background of the study, the research shows that within the last eleven years, 53.11% theses (see Table 3) do not successfully demonstrate niche/gap, because they focus too much on providing the readers with positive justification, talking about norms, discussing about definition and elaborative concept, but not really critically reviewing previous studies which are up to date and relevant.In addition, they fail to exhibit the uniqueness.The gap can be set by reviewing some previous studies by demonstrating what has been known and what has not been really known.Ideally, background of the study as stated in 'Thesis Writing Guide" of the English Education Program should discuss about the reasons why the research is worth doing or important to be conducted.Besides, it also discusses the gap between the reality and the expectation.Therefore, the research background should discuss both theoretical background (TB) and practical reasons or empirical background (EB) why the research is significant (Shofiya et.al. 2014:10).Yet, what the researchers do is quoting the experts' ideas concerning with their research topics.They made positive justification, but lacked of exhibiting the uniqueness of the research theme.As a result, niche of research can not be completely demonstrated.This fact indicates that the students' understanding on explaining niche/gap needs to be improved, so that the gap of research can be feasibly appeared.In regard to the trend of related literature (RL) and previous studies (PS) reviewed as the basis to conduct the research such as to know the researcher's position, to analyze data, to develop research instruments, to guide the procedures of developing a product, or to guide the steps of doing treatment, it is revealed that most of the EFL students' theses, 61.78%, has been equipped with both reviewing related literature and previous studies (See Table 5).This is in line with Thesis Writing Guide written by English Education Department of IAIN Tulungagung, that reviewing literature is useful for shaping the theoretical construct for each concept being reviewed.A construct is a theoretical definition that is determined by the researcher after considering the theoretical contributions of experts.Thus, the researcher could follow the following process: (1) selecting relevant theoretical resources, (2) describing each theoretical concepts, (3) conducting critical analysis and comparison among theories.The researcher should not merely compile or copy-paste the opinion of the experts (Shofiya, 2014:37).This reviewing literature can be done through selecting related literature, explaining the selected conceptual theories, and critically analyzing those relevant theories and previous studies so that the position of the present research can be clearly seen.However, the findings indicate that most of the students do copying and pasting the quoted related literature when they review related literature and previous study without critically analyze so that the theoretical framework is nor sufficiently exhibited and the present researchers' stance and the originality of the present research are not sufficiently described.This means that the EFL students need to be better guided in the way to critically analyze English texts so that unintentional replication and plagiarism can be avoided as supported by Ary et.al. (2002:66), "a thorough search through related research avoids unintentional replication of previous studies."This finding can be further used as the basis to develop sources concerning with the way to criticize English texts.

RQWhat is the trend of research method used by students in doing their research in 2005-2015?
Unlike the findings of the research trends in articles published in national journal -English Teaching and international journal-Tesol Quarterly-that show the proportional usage of both quantitative and qualitative methods (Ma & Kim, 2014) indicating the most popular implementation of those research methods in research on English language and instruction, the result of the present study show that most of the students, 42.57%, (See Table 6) used descriptive (qualitative) in doing their research which primarily aimed at generating or to testing theory and contributing to knowledge for the sake of knowledge, Patton, 2001:10),.This study is parallel to studies done by Alias (2013), Chou &Hayes (2009), andRizkapuri (2007) in her study also found that most of the students used descriptive qualitative for their theses which are affected by some factors such as the lecturers teaching research method subject, instructional facilities, instructional process, and peers' influence.The second most popular research method, 17.56%, used by students in their theses is experiment which is intended to determine whether a particular instructional intervention causes an improvement in student learning, then one should use experimental research methodology, (Odle &Mayer, 2009), This finding supports a study by Langer and Applebee (2016) the students' preference of this research method in doing research in education.The finding (See Table 7) shows that completely all of theses state Conclusion (C) of the research as the answers of the research questions.It is ideally about both the answers the research questions and the exploration of the hidden message reflected in the research answers.Meanwhile Suggestion (S) is written almost similarly with that written in the significance of the study located in Chapter 1 of the theses and the Contribution (C) is seemingly the same as the suggestion.Suggestion should be written based on the limitation of the research findings, so that there can be further researchers who can complete the present research findings.Moreover, since it is research in English education, the theses should give pedagogical contribution written based on the research result.Accordingly, it is important to better equip the students of English Education Program with knowledge and experience on how to draw research conclusion, suggestion, and contribution.

E. Pedagogical Implication
The result of this descriptive quantitative research reveals six important points.Firstly, the most popular research topic of the EFL students' theses written within the last eleven years (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) is the one directly connected with Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) with various research themes as parallel to a study done by Chen (2013 i.e. the implementation of teaching strategies, item test analysis, Curriculum and TEFL, and description of English instruction in Elementary, Secondary, and Higher levels of education as in line with a study of Lin and Cheng (2010), and the development of media and instructional materials.This fact indicates either the students' big preference toward themes concerning with English instruction or good understanding on knowledge connected directly with their major study, English education.In short, it can be stated that TEFL is the trending research topic among English education students' theses within the past eleven years because it is directly concerned their own experience on English instruction which leads to their good understanding and familiarity toward the topic.Still, some knowledge gained during their classroom instruction also inspires students to study other topics than TEFL, such as literature, linguistics, and Pragmatics.This means that any knowledge and competence the students gain during the instructional process will much inspire the selection of the research topics.Therefore, it is significant for English lecturers improve their instructional quality in order to be able to equip the students with sufficient knowledge and skills of English language useful for inspiring their students to conduct an innovative research in English education as well.In short, English lecturers have important roles to lead and guide their students to gain knowledge and English language skills inspiring them to do research.
Secondly, the niche/gap of a research is actually important part which tells the position of the present research.This can be done by avoiding too much telling about norms/regulation and positive justification concerning with the research topics.When the researchers are able to provide balance information between theoretical background and empirical background by critically review some previous studies and current phenomena, the gap will clearly appear.In contrast to this, if the researchers provide too many cliché sentences and too much talk about definition and elaborative concept which are usually quoted from various references without critically analyze, the niche/gap can not be clearly demonstrated.This is parallel to the finding of the present research.Accordingly, to guide the students to be able to demonstrate gap/niche in conducting their research, it is significant to equip them with skills of critically analyze English text and reference since the early step of Reading and Writing sources.Moreover, the theses advisors need to be more punctual to advise their advisees in composing background of study/ introduction part of the theses, so that gap can be clearly exhibited.
Thirdly, the objectives of the research can be formulated by taking a look at the title and background of the research as found in the theses of the EFL students written since 2005 to 2015 which already reflect relationship between research questions/research objectives and title which reflects theme and the whole content of the research.It is then taken as the basis to develop research background and subsequently it is used to formulate research questions/research objectives which are then considered as the basis to decide the following steps of doing the research i.e. reviewing related literature and research method.Hence, researchers are stated to understand the procedures of conducting research whenever they can correlate one part of theses to the other parts of theses.
Fourthly, the trend in the students' theses is the availability on reviewing related literature and previous studies which are appropriate with the research topics.This is useful for the researchers themselves to decide the stance point of the research, to clarify the concept of their research, to trigger the rise of reasons on the different/new, to prove that the method/strategy/approach implemented is worthy, and to avoid unintentional replication and plagiarism.By comparing and contrasting the on going process research and the previous ones, the originality of research can be seen.This trend is gradually built from time to time.Still, because most of the EFL students only concluding the related literature and previous studies with only some of them critically review, then the originality of most theses are not exactly clear.Therefore, it is important to train the EFL students critically review literature and previous study related to their research topics.To give practical experience in citing sources appropriately is essential to avoid both intentional and unintentional plagiarism in students' writing (Shih, 2014).
Fifthly, another significant point is that descriptive (qualitative) is the most popular research method implemented by the students of English Department within the last eleven years from 2005-2015.However, the other research methods such as Quantitative (experiment, comparative, correlation, descriptive quantitative), Classroom Action Research, and Research and Development (R&D) are also implemented gradually from year to year with a small number of percentage.By considering the result of this present research, it can be considered that is the students' understanding on research method in education gets improved gradually.If they well understand various methods of research, the preference of implementing those methods will be various as well depending on the needs and the objectives of research.Therefore, it is important to keep getting improved on understanding and implementing the variety of research methods, because the preference of using a certain method of research is affected by how much researchers understand it.
Sixthly, in relation to the trend of drawing research conclusion, suggestion, and contribution, this research reveals that conclusion is driven from the research questions which indicate the answers of those questions.Ideally, the researcher can also exhibit what is beyond those answers.Meanwhile, suggestion and sometimes it is implicitly the same as contribution is written in line with the content of significance of the study which is put in the other chapter of the students' theses.The more the researchers understand the procedures of doing research, the better they draw conclusion, so that they can deliver its contribution toward the researched field of study.In addition, they can also show the weaknesses and the strengths of the research which are useful as the basis to give suggestion for the other people interested in the same field of study.This means that pedagogically, the way to draw suggestion which is normally based on the limitation of the research and that to provide the readers with contribution which is normally taken based on the research results need to be improve through firstly revising the syllabus of some courses concerning with the matters and subsequently implement the revised syllabus in the instructional process.Accordingly, both the advisors and advisees need to be more punctually advise their advisees during the process of doing research and writing theses.The advisees, on the other hand, need to more seriously do their research in order to improve the quality of their research.

F. Conclusion and Suggestion
In short, research trend is continuously changing and developing based on the preference of the student researchers and their advisors toward understanding on the theoretical basis of doing research in education and English education specifically, and keeping up to date with the current issues in TEFL.Since each part of theses is correlated each other, an understanding of each part of each step of conducting research i.e. writing proposal, doing research, and writing theses needs to be thoroughly improved in order to produce qualified and contributive research toward related researched body of knowledge.Even, if it is necessary, the curriculum revision could be done to decide the gradation and orders of courses leading students to understanding on doing scientific activities such as doing research and writing academic texts.More importantly, setting a research roadmap based on this research result is significant to guide the students doing their research and avoiding plagiarism.
Finally, there are many higher educations offering English Education Program in which the EFL students are demanded to take part in the development of English language and education by one of many ways is doing research in English education.As a result, there is a big possibility of repeating the same research topics and cases without connecting one research result to the others to create an innovative theoretical framework which might sometimes lead to unintentional replication and plagiarism.So, it is not sufficient to find out the EFL students' research trend done in only one study program of English education.Therefore, the present research will be more meaningful, if there are some other researchers doing the same research with a wider coverage of research population.Subsequently, they are hopefully able to correlate the result of the present research with that of the following ones, so that it can create a more comprehensive road map for EFL students in Indonesia which is useful to build a new theoretical framework in EFL especially and that in a language in general and to avoid unintentional plagiarisms as well.

What Is the Trend of Research Objectives in the Students' Research Reports Written In 2005-2015?
Trend on the Gap/Niche in Background of the Study of Theses Written in 2005-2016 In relation with trend of formulating research question, Table4reveals that the objectives of the research / RO were written appropriately with the research title / RT.This indicates that the researchers have known the way to formulate questions and the objectives of the research.

Table 4 .
#RQ3 Trend on the Objectives of the Students' Theses written in 2005-2015

Table 5 #
RQ4 Trend on Reviewing Literature and Previous Studies in Theses written

Table 6 #
RQ Trend of Research Methods employed in EFL students' thesis written in

Table 7 .
Trend on research conclusion, suggestion, and contribution of the Theses