The Challenges of English Language Teaching in Indonesia

The widespread use of English worldwide has brought about a significant impact for human beings to date. In the education sphere mainly, many studies have been conducted to discover the issues in English instruction. Moreover, English teachers in Indonesia were highly encouraged to figure out the best method to teach and cope with any problems encountered by the students to achieve the best learning outcomes. Besides, the government had also tried its best endeavors to accustom the curriculum to the needs in this globalization era. However, the results have not always been as expected since teachers and students possessed divergent points of view linked with the implementation of English language instruction. Therefore, this scientific literature review discussed some issues related to English which included; English in Indonesia, English Language Teaching for Education, Teachers’ Strategies to English Language Teaching, Problems of English Language Teaching, and Students’ Perceptions towards English Language Teaching. Furthermore, the main aim of this paper was to acknowledge to the readers that the teachers and students essentially require English due to its crucial role in the development of Education in Indonesia.

Online Collaborative Writing: a Tool for Enhancing Students’ Business Skills and Cross-Cultural Awareness

This paper describes a project implemented by students from the University of Economics in Varna and the University of Costa Rica as part of their respective English Language instruction. In the course of the project six teams comprising students from both universities collaborated to create blogs on topics of their choice. The paper dwells on aims of the project, the process that resulted in the creation of six blogs, the skills that students developed or furthered as a result of this activity and the project outcomes.

Exploring STEM Undergraduate Self-Regulated Learning at a Vietnamese Transnational University

STEM education in Vietnam is prioritized, yet effective learning may be difficult for students attending transnational universities. The purpose of this study is to examine the self-regulated learning experiences of STEM undergraduate students attending a collaborative transnational university in Vietnam. Challenges included English language instruction and STEM-specific terminology. Despite barriers to their learning, students describe strategies for navigating their learning process. Strategies included extensive rereading of the material, using Google to look up new terms/ideas or to translate words, asking instructors for translation, and reviewing online resources. Implications for practice include instructors providing more detailed feedback and guidance and leveraging technology use for learning.

University students' perceptions through e-learning implementation during COVID-19 pandemic: Positive or negative features dominate?

English language instruction that moves away from offline to online should become the EFL lecturers’ concern for their students’ successful learning outcome. The students must be kept in the lecturers’ mind when they plan and program the instruction. This study aims at investigating the students’ perceptions and preferences on English instruction through e-learning implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research applies a qualitative approach in a descriptive method design by involving 106 English class students from three different higher educations in Aceh, Indonesia. The thematic and comparative analyses are applied in analyzing the data. The findings of the study show that 50% of the students impress negative features concerning the internet network, a high need of internet quotas, the limitation of learning material explanation and absorption, and the social media influences. The study also reveals that 59.6% of positive features dominate the findings associated with the students’ interest in e-learning implementation as a new learning experience/exploration, engagement and enthusiasm, the flexibility of time and place, and the advance of digital technology usage and adaptation. Besides, WhatsApp, Opensimka, Google Classroom, and Google Meet have become the four most preferable e-learning platform among the respondents. It implies that e-learning implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic gives a variety of practical benefits to university students in the virtual English class. Yet, this still requires sufficient mentoring and extra supporting digital tools for the students and the lecturers.

Keeping Watch on Learners' Language

Generally, Caribbean teachers seem to have limited engagement with applying observation of young learners' language in the classroom setting. For this chapter, a sample of 40 Grade 1 to 3 teachers from six Caribbean countries provided information to examine teachers' use of observation of learners' oral discourse to inform instructional pedagogy in English Language teaching. Based on primarily qualitative methods, a standardized structured-interview guide, focus group discussion, and classroom observation guide were used to collect data on teachers' classroom instruction. The findings revealed that while teachers declared knowledge of the merits of applying observation for evaluating learners' real language, the evidence of application of this assessment strategy was missing. In addition, results which showed that some teachers appeared to lack awareness of utilizing information about learners' home language use to cater to their individual language needs, warranted attention to transformative pedagogical perspectives in English Language instruction.

Successful Classroom Management in English Language Instruction

Umiejętne zarządzanie klasą w procesie nauczania języka angielskiego Artykuł ma na celu podkreślić znaczenie dostosowania organizacji klasy i technik nauczania języka angielskiego do uczniów z różnych grup wiekowych szkoły podstawowej. Aby skutecznie wdrożyć to rozwiązanie, nauczyciel powinien być świadomy różnic rozwojowych dla każdego wieku oraz zdobyć umiejętność zarządzania klasą. Kluczowe znaczenie ma również fachowa wiedza teoretyczna związana z wczesnym nauczaniem języka angielskiego (np. hipoteza okresu krytycznego oraz teoria rozwoju poznawczego według Piageta) i zastosowanie jej w praktyce na­uczycielskiej. Aplikując rozwiązania omówione w tym artykule, nauczyciel ma szansę odnieść sukces w nauczaniu języków.

VIETNAMESE NON-ENGLISH MAJOR EFL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ RECEPTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE MOST FREQUENT ENGLISH WORDS

The receptive knowledge of 442 non-English major university students in a General English program in Vietnam was measured with Webb, Sasao, and Ballance’s (2017) New Vocabulary Levels Test. It was found that despite 10 years of formal English language instruction, nearly half of the participants had not mastered the most frequent 1,000 words and more than 90% had not mastered the most frequent 2,000 words. The study calls for more attention to high-frequency words in English language instruction in Vietnamese EFL context.