AN ANALYSIS OF VERBAL AND NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by difficulties with social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. Autistic is a person affected by autism. The level of autism of each individual is varied. It can range from mild to severe. Due to this condition, the person shares some symptoms of the difficulties with social interaction. To make them involved in social interaction, it needs special effort to make them be able to speech or communicate first. For this reason, there should be the use of the combination between verbal and non-verbal communication. Thus, this study attempted to investigate the process of using both kinds of communication in teaching children with autism since children are easier to be threated than adults. To make the distinct result, the participants were from different level of autism. Then, based on the observation and interview, the findings showed that the verbal and non-verbal communication used by the therapist in teaching the autistic children can enhance their social interaction and communication skills.

INFLUENCE OF SEX ON STUDENTS’ LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES: A CRITICAL REVIEW

Due to the importance of providing learning environment that suits the students’ preference in learning a language, many studies have been conducted on the learning strategies employed by the students. Doro and Habok (2013) investigated the learning strategies of Hungarian young students learning English as a foreign language. The instrument they used was the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) for adult. It was statistically found that the instrument was reliable and worked well with the young learners. Another result of the study was that meta-cognitive strategies were the most frequently used while compensation strategies were the least frequently employed by the students. The study also discovered that female students showed higher frequency of learning strategy use. I conducted a similar study on Indonesian young students and tried to compare the result. There will be, however, difference in the instrument to collect the data. After consulting an English teacher who teaches young students, I decided to use the modified SILL for Taiwanese children by Lan (2005). This is due to the consideration that Indonesian students might not be able to fill in the complex questionnaire as in the adult version of SILL.The findings show that Meta-cognitive strategies as the most preferred group of the six strategy categories have exactly the same means of both Doro and Habok’s and my studies i.e. 3.2 and female students appeared to use language learning strategies more frequently that male students.

EFL STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE ON WHATSAPP AS MEDIA OF ONLINE TEACHING AND LEARNING IN COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 Pandemic indicated a unique challenge to the educational system. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently advised doing social distancing. Many applications were developed and web-based. One of them was developed and become famous was WhatsApp. WhatsApp is one of the mobile phone applications and web-based social network that integrates with various features used to communicate with other users, ranging from education, business, and entertainment developed this social networking site. This study aimed to explore the EFL student’s perspective on WhatsApp as media on teaching and learning during this Pandemic. This paper used a qualitative descriptive method. The data was collected through questionnaire and call interview. After the research is conducted, we will find out how EFL students perspective WhatsApp as an online teaching-learning media during a pandemic.

READING ONLINE: EVALUATION OF ONLINE SOURCES CREDIBILITY

The vast amount of online information demands readers to check its credibility since fabricated information has widely been misused and also supported by a lack of filters in web-based sources in ensuring its quality. In practice, checking the credibility of an online source is not an easy task to do as searchers need to consider several aspects in its application. This happens due to some factors, such as language and searchers’ willingness in identifying the quality of online information. This paper focuses on the evaluation of online sources' credibility covering scholars’ definitions of online sources credibility, English-native and foreign searchers’ perspective in judging online sources, and varied criteria applied in online sources credibility in which give insight for readers about this issue and provide references for further study.

EXPLORING THE LEVEL AND PRIMARY CAUSES OF PUBLIC SPEAKING ANXIETY AMONG ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS

English public speaking anxiety is a crucial issue experienced by students and it needs to be coped with acknowledging the importance of public speaking proficiency concerning today's demands. As EFL students, many studies have found that they encountered a considerable level of public speaking anxiety in which significantly affects their speaking quality. Therefore, measuring students' public speaking anxiety is essential since it can help both the students and teachers to know the level and primary causes of public speaking anxiety so that effective strategies can be designed to overcome this particular issue. Hence, the researchers attempt to investigate the level and primary causes of EFL students' public speaking anxiety. This present study participated by 34 third-semester students of the English Department at Universitas Tidar. In collecting the data regarding the public speaking anxiety level, the researchers used the Public Speaking Class Anxiety Scale (PSCAS) proposed by Yaikhong & Usaha (2012). Furthermore, the results from the questionnaire are delineated to explore the causes of public speaking anxiety. The study found that 58.8% of students experienced a medium level of public speaking anxiety. In addition, most of the students agreed that fear of negative evaluation becomes the major anxiety-provoking factor following by communication apprehension and test anxiety—lastly, only almost half of the students’ experience comfort in speaking English.

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF JIGSAW IN TEACHING ESP SPEAKING FOR ACCOUNTING DEPARTEMENT IN UNIVERSITY OF MUHAMMADIYAH LAMONGAN

Speaking is a part of spoken and productive skills. In oral communication, the speakers and listeners are actively involved in the message. The speakers transfer a message in the appropriate language, and listeners have to interpret the message. Brown (2004) defines speaking as a productive skill that can be directly and empirically. In teaching speaking, lecturers should have a proper technique to enhance the students to be more active in the speaking class. Therefore, teachers need some appropriate techniques face that condition. Jigsaw is one of cooperative learning method that will help the students gain the information not only by reading the materials, but also sharing and discussing with their friends. Jigsaw consists of several groups, in which every group consists of several students who have various in ability, gender, religion and race. The purpose of this study was to describe the implementation of Jigsaw, the supporting factors in Jigsaw, and the teacher’s obstacles in implementing Jigsaw. In conducting this study, the writer applied descriptive qualitative research as the research design because it described the phenomena that exist in the Jigsaw implementation. The data are collected in the form of words. The reseacher used observation and interview to gain the data. Based on the result that concluded, there were 3 important points. First, choosing material, making lesson plan, organizing Jigsaw in classroom, giving quiz, and evaluating were the steps in implementing Jigsaw for speaking class. Then supporting factors were media, professional teacher, situation surround the class, material, student’s motivation, and class management. Third, limited time and different level of student’s comprehension were the obstacles that faced by the lecturer. In conclusion, Jigsaw was recommended for teaching Speaking, because it gained the students to be more active and interactive in teaching and learning process.

ENHANCING DESCRIPTIVE PARAGRAPH WRITING OF SECONDARY STUDENTS THROUGH SHARED WRITING

The objective of the study is to find out whether or not there was a significant difference in descriptive paragraph writing enhancement of secondary students who were taught through shared writing and those who were not. This study was conducted by using an experimental method. The sample of the study was 35 eighth grade students taken by using convenience sampling technique, 18 students belonged to experimental group and 17 students belonged to control group. The data were collected through pretest and posttest. In order to maintain validity, content validity was applied. Then, two raters were used to maintain reliability of the result. The experimental group was taught for twelve meetings by using Shared Writing. The result showed the students in the experimental getting the mean 14.67 with standard deviation 2.058 and control group getting the mean 12.00 with standard deviation 1.414 got a significant improvement in the posttest. There was a better significant improvement in descriptive paragraph writing in the experimental group who are taught by using Shared Writing if compared to the students in the control group.

IMPLEMENTING POWTOON TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ INTERNATIONAL CULTURE UNDERSTANDING IN ENGLISH CLASS

The use of technology has increased rapidly in our daily activities since first industrial revolution and its features also becomes more and more enchanting from time to time. Thus, people are used to work with it to lighten their jobs, including education, such as delivering/learning material through multimedia, online teaching and learning, etc. It is line with the result of preliminary study that 56% students of English Literature at Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia (UTI) said their lecturers used more technology in class. Thus, the researchers used classroom action research in order to know whether the use of technology does not only help the lecturer in delivering material in a class but also improve students’ international culture understanding in English class. To collect the data, the researchers used observations, tests, and questionnaires. The subjects of this research were second semester students of English Literature at UTI. The finding showed that students’ international culture understanding improved after each cycle. Improvement was also seen based on the result of observations that students showed positive behaviour during the teaching and learning activity.

AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH TEXTBOOK IN THE FIRST GRADE OF JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

This research is attempted to analyze text reading from two different textbook publishers, Erlangga and Yudhistira Ghalia in the first grade of Junior High School. Those two textbooks are designed based on Curriculum 2013. The analysis is focused on the three aspects of Systemic Functional Linguistics; ideational meaning (transitivity), interpersonal meaning (mood structure), and textual meaning (theme-rheme). Those three aspects are used to analyze the contents of text reading in those two textbooks. In addition, clause complex, nominal group and lexis are used to find out the readability of those two textbooks that used by Junior High School students. These data analyzed by triangulation method. To analyze the data, the researcher used domain analysis, taxonomy analysis, componential analysis, and theme- culture analysis. The finding showed that content of reading text in Erlangga’s book is more detail in describing an object than Yudhistira Ghalia’s book. It can be concluded that Yudhistira Ghalia’s Book is more difficult and complicated for students of Junior High School than Erlangga’s book.

NEGOTIATION OF MEANING: STUDENTS’ AWARENESS OF THEIR MISTAKES IN USING ENGLISH FOR THE SECONDARY SCHOOL LEVEL

In traditional classes, teachers teach grammar in a deductive way with meaningless activities. The activities do not emphasize the uses of English in real life and lack of communication among teachers and students. Language awareness might give the students a challenge to pose questions and encourage them to explore themselves on how language works. The teachers might be able to encourage the students to participate to lead them to get communicative skills by using negotiation of meaning. This article is intended to explore and analyze the students’ mistakes when negotiating meaning in the language learning process. The qualitative descriptive research was employed in this study with 33 students in senior high school as the subjects of the research. The data were from the students’ interviews and recordings. The finding revealed that the students produced mistakes in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. It showed that the extent of the students’ awareness in responding to a mistake in the negotiation of meaning was low. It was only 16 incorrect utterances that might be corrected by the students. It was divided into two sides, willingness and unwillingness to correct. Factors were affecting the students not to be aware during interaction such as focusing on meaning, the same proficiency level, and condition of the class.