THE REQUIRED COMPETENCIES OF ELT STUDENTS IN WRITING AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS IN LIGHT OF THE 4Cs' 21st CENTURY

Writing an undergraduate thesis may become a challenge for ELT students as newbie researchers. Therefore, they have to anticipate them by having some required competencies discovered in this study. This research article explored eight Indonesian ELT students' alumni writing their thesis within one and two semesters, particularly their required competencies. They reported their essential competencies to accomplish their thesis writing in a zoom interview. Their interview results were clustered with the 4Cs' 21st-century skills consisting of creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. The reported competencies indicating creativity skills (4C1) include practicing, implementing, elaborating, innovating, modifying, composing, and demonstrating. Next, the explored competencies representing the critical thinking skills (4C2) cover thinking, sorting out, associating, synthesizing, investigating, interpreting, reflecting, and proving. Meanwhile, the testified competencies demonstrating communication skills (4C3) are listening, communicating, understanding, instructing, motivating, and informing. Finally, reported competencies representing collaboration skills 4C4 involve interacting, cooperating, discussing, contributing, managing, and overcoming. The finding can be the basic knowledge for the ELT students to write their thesis successfully. The interview results were categorized into the 4Cs because these ELT students performed the 4Cs during the writing undergraduate process, although they or their supervisors might not be aware of the 4Cs.