Problems In HOTS Application: A Study of Teacher’s Reflection and Decision Making

Higher Order Thinking Skill (HOTS) is a demanded strategy to be applied in any teaching activities, including English teaching and learning process. This HOTS application offers attainable learning outcomes to the teachers when conducting teaching activities. Teachers are able to see how far students can learn based on cognitive, affective, and psychomotor aspect. However, there were problems which teachers found and challenged them to encounter the problems to keep the implementation of HOTS successful. This research was carried out to figure out teacher’s self-reflection on problems found and to determine decisions how to encounter them. In line to the research purpose, a qualitative research design was applied within interview and questionnaire. Furthermore, based on teacher’s reflection, it was revealed that during learning activities the students acted unmotivated and lack of confidence; they lacked English interest; and HOTs was not applied properly based on its stages. Then, decision making was established in terms of teaching strategies and lesson planning. In conclusion, despite the importance of creating HOTS to invite students to be creative and critical, problems still remained. Thus, self-reflection did assist teacher to analyze and figure out what teaching weaknesses are and imply to the HOTS application to improve teaching and learning process.

Imagined Communities and Identities in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Learning: A Literature Review

Imagined community and identity have been recognized as critical aspects in English language learning. Imagined community refers to the ideal community that learners wish to get engaged in, while imagined identity refers to the ideal self that language learners wish to become in the future. However, there is a scant research on these two notions in relation to English as a foreign language (EFL) learning. To that end, this paper aims to present the literature review of the contemporary theories on imagined communities and identities in EFL learning. It first discusses the imagined communities regarding the functions, community of practice, notions of imagined communities and concepts of imagined EFL classroom communities. It then scrutinizes imagined identities in terms of poststructuralists’ theory, English language learners’ identities, notion of imagined identity and EFL learners’ imagined identity. This paper is hoped to provide a timely and needed conceptual framework for other relevant constructs (e.g., English language learning investment) in English language learning.

The Use of Video for Distance Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic: Students’ Voice

During covid-19 pandemic, teachers need to change the activity from a face-to-face into distance learning activity. There may many methods and media used by the teacher, one of them is video. One of the aims is to assist teachers in explaining the material and attracting students' interest. Hence, this study aims to find out the benefits of the use video in teaching and learning activity in pandemic situation. In this study, the researchers investigated what the benefit of the use of video for English learning as perceived by students in Covid-19 pandemic situation. the researchers used qualitative method in this research. The instruments used in this study are questionnaire and interview. The researchers took the data from two classes, which were XI KI I and XI KI III of SMK SMTI Bandarlampung.The research findings shows that students had positive experience when using video as medium in teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Moreover, most of the students agreed that video gives the advantages to the students, such as the increasing of motivation in learning, acquiring new vocabularies, and improving the pronunciation of Englsih words. During covid-19 pandemic, teachers need to change the activity from a face-to-face into distance learning activity. There may many methods and media used by the teacher, one of them is video. One of the aims is to assist teachers in explaining the material and attracting students' interest. Hence, this study aims to find out the benefits of the use video in teaching and learning activity in pandemic situation. In this study, the researchers investigated what the benefit of the use of video for English learning as perceived by students in Covid-19 pandemic situation. the researchers used qualitative method in this research. The instruments used in this study are questionnaire and interview. The researchers took the data from two classes, which were XI KI I and XI KI III of SMK SMTI Bandarlampung.The research findings shows that students had positive experience when using video as medium in teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Moreover, most of the students agreed that video gives the advantages to the students, such as the increasing of motivation in learning, acquiring new vocabularies, and improving the pronunciation of English words.

An Analysis of Authentic Assessment in English Textbook “Stop Bullying Now” Used for the Eleventh Grade Students of Senior High School

The objectives of the present research were to describe the characteristics of authentic assessment used in the English Textbook “Stop Bullying Now” and to find out the characteristics of the most dominant authentic assessment applied in the book “Stop Bullying Now” used for the eleventh grade students of senior high school. This research was a library research using a qualitative descriptive approach. The data which were obtained from document analysis were analyzed using concurrent activity flows from (Miles et al, 2014). The results of this research showed that the textbook had applied authentic assessments to all English skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, among the four skills, listening was the skill with the least activity. The textbook applied eight out of nine characteristics (realistic activity or context, cognitively complex, performance-based, formative assessment, collaborative, defense is required, multiple indicators or portfolio, and mastery expectation). The textbook did not apply the criteria known by students because it did not illustrate how teacher assessed students’ work. The most dominant criteria used in this textbook was realistic activity or context. This textbook also took a lot of materials related to the real-life of students.

A Case Study of the Use of Wikipedia among English Department Students of Andalas University

This article reports an investigation of university students’ use of online Wikipedia site in writing their assignment or research report. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire and interview. First of all, a survey questionnaire was distributed among the learners (n=70) identifying their computer and internet literacy, frequency, strategy, and future orientation of using Wikipedia for their writing assignments or essays. Then, interviews with some lecturers (N=8) revealed teachers’ lack of awareness and agreement of Wikipedia in academic writing, partially due to the absence of Departmental policy. As the results, despite being already informed of the encyclopedia’s academic unreliability, Indonesian EFL informants in this study were proven to be familiar with computer and capable of using internet and incorporating Wikipedia materials when writing their essays at Andalas University. The data also indicated that students had improved their techniques of using the Wikipedia from copying-and-pasting to editing and paraphrasing. Half of them did not cross check Wikipedia article’s citations and references. Therefore, students’ awareness of the ease of Wikipedia may have encouraged them to consciously plagiarize in addition to the absence of their lecturers’ awareness upon this issue.

Students’ Perceptions on the Use of Story Maps in Reading Comprehension

In the classroom, students need to have good reading comprehension. Without that, they will not have critical skills for studying academic material. However, many students in Indonesia still have difficulty understanding the text. Using an appropriate strategy can help them understand the text. Story maps can be used can be used for students to help them in understanding the text. This research aims to know students’ perceptions on the use of story maps in reading comprehension, the advantages and the difficulties of using story maps for students’ reading comprehension in class. This research was conducted to the students of tenth grade at one senior high school in Lamongan. The instruments in this study were a questionnaire and interview. The research design of this study used a qualitative research design. The technique to analyze the data were data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. The results show that story maps can help the students in understanding the text. Most students felt that they have an improvement in reading comprehension because they felt easy and fast to understand the text. Story maps also help the students understand the structure of the text and it was also an interesting activity. Besides that, the students also faced difficulties when using story maps such as difficult making the story maps, still don’t understand the concept of story maps and difficult to understand the content of the text so they also have difficulty in making story maps.

The Challenges Faced By Educators in Online Teaching during the Covid-19 Pandemic Outbreak

Since the pandemic attack the whole world, various research has been conducted related to the challenges of online learning. Focus has always been on the issues faced by the students, but lack of research has been to done from the educators’ perspective. Therefore, this research aims to identify the issues and challenges faced by the educators in online teaching. The issues that the researchers identified are technology, lack of training and lack of tools and materials make it difficult for the educators to adapt with the changes from teaching in the physical classroom to a virtual classroom which exposes the educators to a new teaching environment and this imposed countless challenges. The research method that is used in this research is simple random sampling where the sample size of this study is around 30 educators which focus on the educators that engage in online teaching at the age range between 21 years old until 60 years old. The data was collected through a questionnaire and the questionnaire is divided into three different sections. The data analysis procedure used in this research is frequency analysis to offer the researcher to analyze the data of the questionnaire. It was identified majority of the respondents are facing challenges with online teaching which decrease their motivation and productivity and contribute to low satisfaction and outcomes in their delivery of lectures.

An Analysis of Novice Teacher’s Questioning Types During the Microteaching Classroom

The only thing that is expected in classroom learning activities is the achievement of learning objectives. One of the efforts to achieve the learning objectives is to always communicate with students, such as asking questions. This study aims to determine the query used by novice teachers during their micro-teaching practice in teaching Senior High School students. The theory of Lockhart (1994) is used in this research. Researchers used qualitative methods in processing data. The data obtained from the results of classroom observations with video zoom recording and documentation. The data sources for this study were taken from 10 novice teachers at one of the universities in Indonesia. The author took the data to find out what the novice teacher used during they were doing micro teaching classroom. As a result, the types of question that the teacher used are procedural question, convergent question, and divergent question. Then, the type of question that frequently uses is convergent question. The questions that novice teachers in teaching often use do not require high thinking.

The Speaking Performance and Anxiety: A Correlation Study in EFL Senior High School Students in Madiun, East Java

This research is conducted to see if there is a significant correlation among the students’ speaking performance and speaking anxiety of eleventh grade students in Madiun, East Java. There were 22 students who participated in this study. The researcher used quantitative research method with correlational research design. The researcher collected the students’ speaking performance through the speaking test using Brown’s speaking assessment and investigated their speaking anxiety using 1-5 Likert-scale questionnaires. The questionnaires were modified from students’ speaking anxiety scale conducted by Woodrow. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) ver 22, specifically on normality and correlation test. The result shows that the correlation coefficient number of -0.766 and sig (2-tailed) at 0.000. It means that the H0 is rejected and Ha is accepted, and there is a significant correlation among two variables, moreover the two variables are strongly negative correlated.

Revealing Pre-service Teachers’ Reading Skills by Utilizing CEFR in their Self-assessment

An English teacher should meet the standard English skills requirement since proficiency constitutes the foundation of non-native English teachers' professional confidence. This research aims to measure the pre-service teachers’ reading skills by using CEFR level and to investigate pre-service teachers’ awareness regarding their reading skills as their preparation as future English teachers. The study involved 40 (forty) students from the English program in a private University in Yogyakarta, and used Descriptive Mixed method to collect the data. The researcher used the questionnaire for the students' self-assessment, and the EF SET test to assess their reading skill level. The result of the questionnaire obtained shows 20% of students are in level A1, 25% are in level A2, 25% are in level B1, 12% are in level B2, 10% are in level C1, 8% are in the level C2). The test result shows 17% of the students are in level A1, 25% in level A2, 25% in level B1, 20% are in level B2, 8% are in level C1, and 5% are in the level C2. Six students joined the survey, of which 3 (three) rated themselves at a reading level above the result obtained on the test, and 3 (three) others rated themselves at a level lower than the result they got on the test. The result of this research showed that pre-service teachers should improve in English language proficiency and self-assessment. This knowledge expects to be used as information to those involved in the Educational field.