<![CDATA[Thesis writing demands sustained self-regulation over months or years, yet little is known about how Indonesian EFL students regulate this long and often isolating process. This study examines the self-regulated strategies Indonesian EFL students use to manage thesis writing across undergraduate, master's and doctoral levels. Drawing on Zimmerman's cyclical model of self-regulation, an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design combined a questionnaire completed by 23 students from 11 universities with semi-structured interviews with six of them. Students reported frequent difficulties with grammar and vocabulary (M = 3.39 on a 1-to-5 frequency scale) and coherence (M = 3.35), and only 2 of 22 felt very confident writing grammatically correct academic English. To manage these demands, they relied most on seeking feedback from advisors or peers (19 of 23), revising drafts repeatedly (17), using grammar checkers (15) and writing outlines (14), while only 5 attended writing workshops. Open-ended responses and interviews revealed a distinctive strategy of incremental daily progress, captured in one student's resolve to "progress every day, even if only one sentence," alongside scheduled writing blocks, reading and modelling on previous theses, progress tracking, extensive use of paraphrasing and AI tools, and persistence sustained by motivational and spiritual self-talk. The findings show that students' self-regulation is strongest in the performance phase, relies heavily on external regulation through advisors and deadlines, and is increasingly mediated by digital tools. The study proposes an incremental self-regulation cycle for thesis writing and discusses implications for supervision and writing support.]]>
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