Investigating Ideological Factors in Family Language Policy

A family has a role in supporting bilingual or multilingual children. In acquiring English for instance, family language policy is likely to shape the development of children bilingualism or multilingualism. Through a qualitative study in a case study design, the language ideologies of two bi-/multilingual families in Palembang were investigated and explored. The participants of this study were the Zahra and the Najwa families who brought up their children in more than one language including English. The data were collected through ethnographic interviews with the parents, grandmother, and children. Thematic analysis was used in analyzing the data of this study. The raw data were coded and classified into categories to derive big major themes regarding ideological factors that shaped language policy. The derived themes were then interpreted descriptively. The results indicated that there were some ideological factors found that contributed to the shaping of the language policy of those two families, such as social values, economical values, political values, cultural values, parents' knowledge toward language acquisition, and bi-/multilingualism. The findings of this study suggest that families need to provide support for their children in their bilingual or multilingual journey. Furthermore, stakeholders and professionals should play a role in the choice of language used in education as well as provide considerable support and assistance for language policy in family domain

A Genre Analysis of Bachelor of Arts in English’ Undergraduate Theses

Research Article (RA) is one of the most important genres that received considerable attention in genre analysis. This study sought to investigate the rhetorical structures of RA abstracts written by AB-English students of Cebu Technological University. This investigation used Hyland’s (2000) framework which includes: Introduction, Purpose, Methodology, Product, and Conclusion. This paper utilizes qualitative approach where a total of fifteen abstracts were selected from Cebu Technological University. The corpus of abstracts written by AB- English students were randomly selected from the CTU graduate library. The researchers found out there were no instances of Introduction move found in the abstracts. The purpose move constituted the fourteen (14) abstracts in the undergraduate theses written by AB- English. Fourteen (14) studies included the method move in their research abstracts. Fourteen out of fifteen studies included the product move and thirteen (13) instances of conclusion move were found in the abstracts. The researchers concluded that the abstracts followed the commonly-applied three moves such as purpose, methodology and product. The results demonstrated that the research topics on phonology, morphology, and purposive communication were already widely-explored by the student researchers. There was a dearth of research topics related to multimodal communication, child and adolescent learners and learning principles. Therefore, this study provides implications to writing research abstracts and topics that need to be explored in the undergraduate theses writing.

EFL Students’ Use of Transition Signals in Essay Writing

This study is aimed to explore the use transition signals used by EFL students in essay writing in higher education level. Particularly, this essay will be conducted to English Language Education Study Program students at University of Widya Gama Mahakam Samarinda. This research is a qualitative study with content analysis research design where twenty-six comparison and contrast essays of the third semester students were analyzed by using coding which indicates transition signals used by students. Additionally, in-depth interview also applied to the students who are considered as less active users of transition signals in their writing in order to figure out deeper on what difficulties they found during writing the essay. The findings of this research reveal three major result i.e. most of students are succeed to use compare and contrast type of transition signals to compose their comparison and contrast essay, the students mostly use time order transition signals to make their essay coherent, and two out of twenty-six students have no transition signals to be used on their essays. Result from interview shows that the students still lack of understanding toward when, where, and what type of transition signals can be used for certain context. Pedagogical implication is discussed further in this research.

Technology Integration of the In-Service EFL Teachers: A Study at a Teacher Profession Education Program

Utilizing technology in the classroom characterizes the 21st century teachers. Therefore, teachers are demanded to be able to use technology in pedagogical practices in order to fulfill their students’ needs facing rapidly digitalized life. This study was designed to investigate the perceptions of a group of in-service English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers who studied at a Teacher Profession Education program at a state university, concerning the application of technology within challenges they faced during their study. This study used qualitative research with narrative approach as a strategy of inquiry. The data were obtained by using a semi-structure interview with the in-service teachers and documentation. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results of the study showed that the participants generally perceived positively the technology integration taught by their university instructors during their study time at the Teacher Profession Education program although there was a negative response when they were firstly introduced with the technology. It might have been caused by their lack of technological knowledge. The result also revealed that the participants found it challenging when it came to the use of novel technology as introduced and applied by their university instructors. In addition, their own integration of technology during their Teaching Practice was a challenge due to the students’ low motivation to engage in the online learning activity which was the mode of learning. The findings of this study suggest that teachers need to advance their skills and knowledge to utilize technology in supporting their pedagogical practices.

Writing Error Analysis in Exposition Text of the EFL Junior High School Students

The objective of this research was to understand the writing error of eleventh-grade students of SMA Negeri 4 Samarinda. The descriptive qualitative method was used to examine the written exposition text made by 15 students. The data was collected from the participants’ writing on exposition text and analyzed based on the errors’ categorization. The result showed that there are 16 categories of errors found in the data. They were punctuation, missing word, capitalization, subject-verb agreement, pronoun agreement, spelling, singular or plural, unnecessary word, wrong word form, wrong word, wrong order, fragment, preposition, conjunction, article, and need-further support error. The error factors were intralingua transfer, interlingua transfer, and students’ lack of knowledge about writing.

Corpus-Based Analysis of the Most Frequent Adjective on Covid-19

This study aims to investigate the type of adjectives in the most frequent adjectives and also the use of the adjective functions on academic writing about COVID-19. This study was conducted by using a corpus tool named sketchengine. The method of this study was a mixed-method by combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. The source of the data was corpus about COVID-19 academic writing due to the fact that COVID-19 has been the trending topic around the globe and also became an international concern. There were several data collection steps; those were first, knowing the most frequent adjective in the COVID-19 corpus by choosing a wordlist. Second, the data were taken 20 the most frequent adjectives used in COVID-19 corpus because 20 data have already represented the most frequent adjectives. Third, it chose the concordance to comprehend the function of the adjective in the COVID-19 corpus. Fourth, 20 the most frequent adjectives were inputted one at a time on concordance. Fifth, the data were analyzed based on the related theory. Finally, it is inferred that the adjective type on the most frequent adjective is a describing adjective, which has the function to frame the condition, situation and characteristic of the noun on the COVID-19 cases.

Item Analysis of English Final Semester Test

Numerous studies have been conducted on the item test analysis in English test. However, investigation on the characteristics of a good test of English final semester test is still rare in several districts in East Java. This research sought to examine the quality of the English final semester test in the academic year of 2018/2019 in Ponorogo. A total of 151 samples in the form of students’ answers to the test were analysed based on item difficulty, item discrimination, and distractors’ effectiveness using Quest program. This descriptive quantitative research revealed that the test does not have good proportion among easy, medium, and difficult item. In the item discrimination, the test had 39 excellent items (97.5%) which meant that the test could discriminate among high and low achievers. Besides, the distractors could distract students since there were 32 items (80%) that had effective distractors. The findings of this research provided insights that item analysis became important process in constructing test. It related to find the quality of the test that directly affects the accuracy of students’ score.

Critical Discourse Analysis on TV Advertisements for Beauty Products

This research examines TV advertisements for beauty products on local TV from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis. This research mainly focuses on the use of language in beauty advertisements and the strategies used by advertisers to manipulate and influence their customers. This analysis is based on Fairclough's three-dimensional framework, which shows how the ideology of “beauty” is produced and reproduced through advertisements on TV. Qualitative research was conducted on beauty product advertisements from ten TV advertisements for beauty products in 2019. The advertisements taken and analyzed were advertisements for facial beauty products from various brands and types. The findings suggest that advertisers use a variety of strategies to manipulate women. Advertising language is used to control people's thoughts. The better the words the advertisers used to manipulate the viewers, the better reaction that they will get from the viewers. This research shows advertisers are not only promoting their products but highlighting society's standards of beauty and cultural values into the viewers’ lifestyle and how the TV advertisements have shaped the beauty ideology of social practice in Indonesia.

Code Mixing in College Students’ Presentation: A Case in an Intercultural Communication Class

Studying the second language (L2) was happens around the world because of some reasons such as education. Studying another language can be important in intellectual human activities after studying first language (L1). However using L2 is quite hard because some of them use L2 just for some their activities, not for the whole of their activities, such as students who use English only when studying English subject only or on the contrary. Nowadays, some people use two language at the same time, which is called code mixing. The use of two codes for communication can help them to make clear their explanation from another language that they used. The purpose of this research is concerning on the use of code mixing in college students’ presentation in Intercultural Communication class. Apart from that, there is an attempt to find out the language dominate in their presentation, the reasons of code mixing use in their presentation and the response of the audience about code mixing in presentation. The Method use is qualitative by using class presentation as the instrument, the writer collected the data of the college students’ presentation, questionnaire to the audience and interview to the presenters. The research findings showed that the languages dominate in the presentation are English language and Bahasa Indonesia equally. The reasons’ student in use code mixing is to make the explanation clear, and the response of the audience is 56.83% of the students give positive response in using code mixing of the presenter.

A Phonological Analysis of English Loanwords in Spanish Language using Distinctive Features

Loanwords occur as the result of language contacts within the community. In Spanish language, there are borrowing words existing as the effect of the contact with English language. This research aimed at finding out the phonological process in Spanish vocabulary which were absorbed or borrowed from English language. Distinctive features were used as the approach. The research conducted was qualitative descriptive. It used 30 Spanish vocabulary borrowed from English language as the object. At the end of this research, it was found out that the phonological process which happened, involved substitution processes; not only in the consonant phonemes but also in vowel phonemes.