Characteristics of Effective English Teacher for Millenials

The millennial era is an era of digital technology in which people are close to technology and have instant access to information. This study investigated students' perception of the characteristics of an effective English language teacher in the millennial era. This study used a qualitative approach and used a descriptive qualitative design and took place at a private university in Yogyakarta. The participants were four students of the English Language Education Department (ELED) batch 2016. In collecting the data, the researcher interviewed the participant. The findings showed that in socio-affective skills, an effective English language teacher in the millennial era should enhance students' motivation to learn, create a good classroom atmosphere, have good relationships with the students and other teachers, and understand students' character. In pedagogical knowledge, an effective English language teacher should give feedback, have a valuable ability to explain the lesson, ensure students' understanding of the lesson. They also should have a lesson plan, utilize and apply technology, allow students to write a reflection, and control class activities. In knowledge subject matter, an effective English language teacher should be knowledgeable and master English well. Lastly, an effective English language teacher should have personality traits such as intelligent, caring, friendly, disciplined, creative, kind, patient, humorous, responsible, open-minded, and professional. The findings implied that to teach students in the millennial era effectively, teachers should possess and maintain the characteristics of an effective English language teacher.

English Education Master Students' Perceptions on Their Agency as Future EFL Teachers

This study investigated English Education Master Students’ perceptions of their agency as future EFL teachers. The underlying concern for conducting this study is a shortage of future EFL teachers’ professional development literature exploring the significance of promoting agency in varied second language classroom contexts. The narrative inquiry approach was employed to obtain more overarching depictions about the apparent stories told by the research participants to fulfil this central research objectivity. Ten open-ended written narrative inquiries were harnessed to shed more enlightenment for future EFL teachers’ professional development with the support of robust agency establishment. This set of narrative inquiry questions heed more profound attention to dig out graduate EFL students’ perceptions of their agency as prospective second language educators. The obtained findings overtly revealed that future EFL teachers could elevate their agency and promote holistic second language learning enterprises while their school institutions imparted continuous mutual supports. Eventually, the findings will shed more enlightenment for ELT experts, practitioners, and policymakers to design more unrestricted educational regulations. They supportively substantiate future EFL teachers' agency growth, particularly in Indonesia's EFL learning contexts, emphasizing the text-based learning achievements.

A Qualitative Research on Self-Regulation Practices of ELT Students in Reading Class

This paper investigates the self-regulation practices in reading classes among students from a private university in Yogyakarta. In an era where students and their thinking process are the centers of the teaching and learning process, each student’s metacognition skills need to adjust the teaching methods used inside and outside the classroom. To that end, students must be aware of their metacognitive skills and self-regulating behaviors. The research method used in this paper was the quantitative method. The researchers used the interview and focused group discussion (FGD) method on gaining information regarding students' awareness of their metacognitive skills and self-regulation habits. The participants were students from a pre-determined private university in Yogyakarta, where the reading classes are known to be student-centered. The results showed that while the students could create strategies and reflect upon said strategies, they still lacked a critical component of self-regulation, namely the preparation phase. This discovery means that the students need to be aware of the importance of preparing to meet specific goals and self-motivation.

Implementing Stylistics in IELTS Writing Preparation Focusing on Noun Phrases

In the IELTS writing preparation class, the teacher can facilitate the students by integrating the stylistic approach in building writing students’ style. Not only achieving the primary goals in English proficiency by focusing on the writing style, but students can also comfortably share their ideas in their style. The paper examined the stylistics integrated material in IELTS writing through noun phrase construction. This study employed a qualitative method and a descriptive design. The data were collected using structured observation sheets as the instrument and were analyzed stylistically. Writing materials and the writing results of 12 students at an English course were collected. Results showed that stylistics was used in phrase complexity and ambiguity as a part of writing strategies. It was supported by the three dominant types of noun phrases produced by the students in their writing: determiner + head, determiner + pre-modifier + head, and pre-modifier + head, as the evidence of the implementation of integrated material in IELTS writing. For the noun phrase uses, the students could vary the noun phrases in their complexity, function, and type in their tests, though the variations in each of those aspects were still low. Implications of the results are stylistics could be implemented in language learning-teaching activities in general. It could encourage students to develop their writing style for self-expression and more explicit writing products.

Demotivating factors of learning second foreign language: The case of Chinese language learners in Ghana

Demotivation is a negative counterpart of motivation that affects student learning process and outcome. The present study attempted to determine the demotivating factors in learning a second language in Ghana using the Chinese language as a case study. A structured survey questionnaire data were collected from two hundred students learning Chinese at the University of Ghana to achieve the stated objective. The study identified the significant demotivation factors affecting students learning a second language: Teacher competence and teaching style, learning materials, crowded classroom, high competition in acquiring scholarship to China, less chance to get Chinese Ambassador Scholarship Award, and lack of self-confidence and experience of failure. Teachers should use more appropriate textbooks to improve their teaching skills. Also, students should be motivated to learn and participate in classroom activities to form lasting reminiscences.

The Effect of Summarizing Narrative Texts to Improve Reading Comprehension

This study demonstrates the effect of summaries of narrative texts to improve reading comprehension. This study consisted of sixty elementary school students who had evident reading comprehension deficiencies, especially in narrative texts. This study is a pre-experimental study with a mixed design. Qualitative and quantitative instruments were applied to meet the purpose of this study. The instruments included pretest and post-test, rubric, learning log, survey, a checklist to measure the students’ development and progress, and their perspectives towards this innovation. Results indicated an improvement in students’ reading comprehension. Post-test means increased from 5.96 in the pretest to 9.10. The checklist also proved that students included the required elements in their summaries. Students indicated in the learning logs that they would extend this strategy to other subjects, and they had to reread and identify the most crucial information to summarize. The study has implications for teachers and learners since it can bring positive considerations about the importance of using summaries to improve reading comprehension.

Classroom management: Applying appropriate strategies to enhance effective teaching

The teaching and learning process should be conducted effectively so that students can obtain the learning objectives. In so doing, teachers should have the ability to deliver the teaching materials effectively by conducting good classroom management. In this case, as prospective teachers, pre-service teachers should manage the classroom well to maintain teaching effectively. However, handling classroom management is not easy, and therefore pre-service teachers should apply appropriate strategies in managing the classroom. This research aims to investigate the strategies that pre-service teachers use to overcome the problems in managing the classroom during their teaching practices in a private senior high school. A qualitative research approach was employed to answer the research questions, in which in-depth interviews were administered to collect the data. Besides, four pre-service teachers at an Islamic university in Yogyakarta volunteered as the participants in this study. This study’s results showed that the participants applied several strategies to respond to the problems emerging during their teaching practice. The strategies which these pre-service teachers applied to overcome the problems comprised 1) improving self-confidence, 2) preparing lessons carefully, 3) anticipating unpredictable situations, 4) responding to unpredictable questions wisely, and 5) handling with the students’ heterogeneity. Having various ways of handling classroom management, these pre-service teachers could deliver the lesson effectively. Therefore, this study is beneficial for those who are having teaching practice to keep the classroom run successfully.

Autonomous Learning during COVID-19 Pandemic: Students’ Objectives and Preferences

Students’ voices remain one of the essential sources to evaluate and develop learning materials in which students as the center. This study attempts to evaluate the current English teaching and learning process in a school of aerospace technology. The researcher felt the urge to evaluate it since the teaching and learning process suddenly turned the direction into online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic globally. Specifically, this study explored the students’ objectives and preferences in learning English during the current situation. Initially, the researcher asked students in one of his classes randomly to be interviewed as the study's preliminary data. A questionnaire was developed from the interview to survey all students of his classes, with 166 students in total. Besides interviews and questionnaires, the data were also collected from the documentation owned by the academic affairs. From the data, it was found that students were basically aware of their learning objectives that corresponded positively to the curriculum developer's objectives. Their preferences in online learning showed how autonomous they were as English learners. However, some findings from the documentation indicated criticism to the teachers that revealed another learner autonomy level.

EFL Speaking Fluency through Authentic Oral Production

This article describes the development of speaking fluency through authentic oral production in a six-week action research study of a public high school in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The methodology included a pre-test and a post-test that measured quantitative aspects of student’s spoken fluency (speed, pauses, repetitions, and corrections), a survey with closed-ended questions that collected learners’ perspectives towards their own speaking fluency, and an interview that addressed students’ opinions towards the elements of this action research. Twenty-four students’ audio recordings were analyzed and the results indicated that there was a significant increase of students’ speaking fluency. Results also showed that student’s perspectives on the innovation were positive since it raised awareness of their mistakes, helped them feel more confident, and let them practice the target language with autonomy outside the school boundaries. However, some considered that time and the lack of equipment and technological skills were issues that made the activity look less pleasant. This paper affirms that authentic oral production, facilitated by vlogging, helps students develop speaking fluency. Other EFL teachers and professionals in this field who would like to improve the fluency of their students in their oral production may consider reading this paper.

Word Recognition and Reading Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension

This research aimed at showing the influence of word recognition, and using skimming and scanning skills to improve reading comprehension. Participants were a group of 15 students whose ages ranged from 14 to 16. They had problems in reading comprehension and vocabulary. This action research was conducted at a private language institute. The instruments to collect data were pre- and post-surveys, pre- post-tests, learning logs, skimming and scanning forms, and an interview. They provided quantitative and qualitative information. Results showed that there was a statistically significant improvement in parts of speech knowledge from the pre- to the post-test. The result was an average improvement of 28.2% in student performance. Cohen’s d was calculated with a result of 1.09 which means there is impact in learning. There was also a steady improvement in skimming and scanning which was exemplified by the ability to correctly complete a form after reading texts. Lastly, students’ perspectives were positive to this innovation. Therefore, it is advisable to apply the same innovation with other learners in order to compare results of improvement of reading comprehension and overall proficiency.