Teachers' perceptions toward EFL textbook

Teachers have an important role in determining a good textbook for students. However, it seems difficult because the teachers should have academic and non-academic considerations. This qualitative research aims to investigate 10 teachers’ perceptions toward the use of EFL textbook and the strength and weakness of the ’English Ok’ textbook used in 5 schools in Bandung. Through the questionnaire, interview and document analysis, 80% of teachers said that the use of the textbook was helpful and important for them. They used the textbook as the source of learning and made an effective time in transferring the knowledge. Meanwhile, 20% of teachers perceived that they preferred to use adapting materials from other resources as the materials than the book. In terms of practical consideration (accessibility, attractiveness, accessibility, and publication), layout and design, content (materials, practice, and activities), learners’ need and language accuracy, the ‘English ok’ book was considered as a good textbook. The weaknesses of the textbook were the unavailability of the audiocassette, answer sheet and exercise preparation for the national examination. Involving more participants are recommended to find out the perceptions of anti-textbook teachers.

From ‘Lockdown’ to Letdown: Students’ Perception of E-learning amid the COVID-19 Outbreak

This research is motivated by the need of exploring the students’ perception of e-learning implementation of two English language subjects in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. This research is descriptive, and data were collected through online questionnaire. The participants were students of International Business of Padjadjaran University taking English for Business Purposes and Speaking for Business Purposes courses. The result of the analysis shows that 100% of students participated in e-learning, and 96.4% have accessibility in online learning. However, only 56% expressed satisfaction with the implementation of e-learning.As a result, the students’ perceptions of e-learning are somewhat fruitful; further, it can promote flexibility, offer personalisation where learners can choose their learning path and pace. Fair assessment of students’ perception in e-learning may grant a good precedent in the implementation of full online learning due to physical isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which alternatively can be done with the method of blended learning in the New Normal.

English Needs Analysis for Economics Students: An Exploratory Research

Learning specific English relevant to the work field has currently been necessary for students studying in a specific subject field. Designing an English course for EFL students learning in a specific subject field requires a needs analysis. This research aims to investigate target needs of EFL students learning in economics field in order to be able to communicate both personally or professionally. The purpose of this research is also for developing an English syllabus for economics students based on the needs analysis. Through exploratory research design, this research involved 67 students from Economy Major in the third semester. The data about students’ target needs of English were collected through questionnaires adapted from Dudley-Evans & St. John (1998), Hutchinson & Waters (1987), and Nation & Macalister (2010). Based on the needs analysis, the results revealed that the English teaching should integrate four English skills (speaking, listening, writing, and reading) to accomodate the students’ needs.

Teaching tolerance through intercultural English language learning to elementary students

This study aims to find out how the intercultural English language learning can foster values of tolerance in elementary school students, as well as how it is implemented by teacher in the classroom. This research used a case study research design and the subjects in this study were a teacher and 20 6th grade students at an elementary school in Karawang. Data collection techniques were carried out by observation in 4 class meetings to observe the learning activities and interview with a teacher and 6 students. From the observations, this study showed that intercultural English language learning was moderately relevant to apply to elementary students. The teacher used simple, fun and stimulating activities and material such as songs, short stories and games in English, both from native culture (Indonesian) and target culture (English). Students could learn the use of English while recognizing cultural differences between native and target culture and languages. On the other hand, from the interview, students stated that they were very pleased with the method applied. They expressed their pleasure because they could get to know other cultures and most importantly they accept cultural differences as an amazement. Therefore, it can be concluded that students at a young age are fair enough to be introduced intercultural learning so they can think critically and have a tolerant attitude from an early age. However, the teaching method and material should be adapted to their age and thinking capacity.

Improving students’ environmental awareness through Project-Based Learning (PBL): A case at a secondary high school in Karawang

The environment in which we are living is an important and inseparable part of human life. Any environmental degradation therefore will have both direct and indirect impact on human and other living creatures. This research is aimed at exploring the implementation of PBL and the students’ responses towards the implementation of PBL especially in relation to the ways the students learn English as well as raising students’ environmental awareness. Employing qualitative case study, this research was conducted at a secondary high school in Karawang. Twenty students of grade eleven participated in this research. The data were collected through classroom observation and interview. The result indicated that the PBL was implemented through several stages, i.e. preparation, designing the project, executing the project, project presentation, and evaluation. The analysis also revealed the students’ responses towards the implementation of PBL. It can be concluded that the students responded quite positively towards the implementation of PBL as an effort to improve the students’ writing ability as well as their awareness towards environmental issues. Besides its benefits, there are several concerns found related to implementing PBL including learning management, group work distribution, and facilities.

Teaching Critical Discourse Analysis of Sociocognitive Approach to EFL Learners through Corpus-based Analysis

Many studies have been researching critical discourse analysis, henceforth CDA, in analyzing a numerous contexts, nevertheless, those studies still have lack of contributions such as in pedagogical aspects and lack of incorporations with specialized technology such as corpus tool. However, this study intended to fill a gap that qualitatively aimed to explore on how teaching CDA focusing on sociocognitive approach through corpus analysis and to know learners’ responses about their experience. Then, this study concerns to three elements: corpus based approach, CDA approach, and pedagogical approach. The target of participants were undergraduate students of university in Karawang, Indonesia. It was randomly participated from higher semester, 7th semester, had been studying linguistics and learning media. The study ran for one month and included two training sessions for learners on how to use concordance software in analyzing words, phrases, concordance line, frequencies, and collocations in order to get sociocognitive which specialized by only microstructure couched by Van Dijk (2008). The corpus were made from 2 different newspaper with a specific issue contained a big data. The main findings showed that the participants can be able to use a concordance software independently as it seemed very excited in the exercise. It indicated successful way that students eventually can criticize some discoures through corpus analysis that corroborated by the training and the learners’ responses. However, the further study requires to deepen and incorporate with other approaches such as systemic functional linguistics to strengthen the analysis.

A Washback Study on Portfolio Assessment

The latest developments in the field of learning English as a foreign language have encouraged language teachers to use more authentic and realistic assessments. This situation makes portfolios as alternative assessments increasingly popular. As the popularity of the portfolio grows, questions among assessment developers have also arisen. They question whether the portfolio really is a proper assessment. In this study, the researcher investigated the wash-back effect of portfolio-based assessment. She observed the instructional process in a translation and a writing class to see how the two types of portfolios were used. This qualitative analysis study also studies by triangulating the data with the support of data from interviews and questionnaires. Researcher then classified the opinions and reflections of students and lecturers obtained from the interview and questionnaire responses. The findings suggest the use of a portfolio is indeed appropriate for use in writing and translating subjects. Portfolio-based assessments generate positive washback effect on the learning process.

Series of Nusantara Folklore Storybooks as the Media for Extensive Reading for Indonesia Elementary Students

Reading the series of storybooks for Young Learners (YLs) promotes the vocabulary development. Incidental learning and direct teaching the words can develop them. Therefore, the reading materials become essential to be provided. As the English becomes extracurricular at elementary schools in Indonesia, the opportunity to use the English language by activating all four skills is necessary. As for reading, the YLs can get the experience by reading different reading texts ranging from simple signage to long stories. In addition, the Series of Nusantara Folklore storybooks is recommended to choose by teachers because it assists YLs learning principles that are interesting and authentic. In a nutshell, the series of storybook is a special package of narrow reading to support the extensive reading in English for Young Learners (EYL).

Providing teaching resources for young learner classes: Best practices in efl context

The availability of teaching resources is one of important factors to create successful lessons in teaching English to young learners (TEYL). Teachers can use flashcards, toys, songs, rhymes, books, audio visual materials, digital recourses and others to support teaching and learning process. Ready-made materials are available in stores, however they are usually expensive. The aim of this article is to share one of the best practices in providing resources for young learners in learning English. In the academic year of 2018, 40 students of English Department of IKIP Siliwangi took English for Young Learners (EYL) course for two credit hours. This is the second subject which is related to teaching young learners after they learned TEYL subjects as the perquisite subject in the previous year. In this course, students re-learned the concept of TEYL and the concepts how to provide teaching materials and resources for TEYL classes. At the end of the course, they should show their projects and demonstrate how to use them in TEYL. The findings reveal that students’ are very creative in designing resources for TEYL classes. This ability is very crucial in order to create child-friendly pedagogy in EYL classrooms.

Contrastive Analysis between Indonesian and English Declarative Sentences

The issue of English acquisition in Indonesian context where English is taught as a foreign language has been circulating for years. The presents study aims at contrasting two languages as, Indonesian language as the Source Language (SL) and English as the Target Language (TL). Participants were chosen purposively and generated 10 students of Senior High School. Data were collected through written test. The researcher provides 21 Indonesian declarative sentences as the main instrument. The result of this research was initiated qualitatively. The findings of the study indicate that the similarities of declarative sentence patterns between Indonesia and English language revealed in three categories. They are transitive, bitransitive, and intransitive. Furthermore, the differences are indicated by four categories, those are nominal, adjectival, prepositional, and numeral category. The presents study suggests to initiate the study of contrastive analysis in different languages to obtain deeper understanding and horizon about the language.