Print-based multimodal texts: Using illustrated poems for generating ideas and writing narratives

The article provides insights on how print-based multimodal texts can be utilized to generate ideas and help students to write narrative texts. A qualitative approach in research design was employed with a pre-test and a writing assignment. NAPLAN’s (2010) Writing-Narrative Marking Guide was adapted to evaluate the respondents’ narrative essays. Moreover, diary notes were used as instruments to gather data. The respondents were five Year 10 students from a suburban secondary school in Selangor, Malaysia. The findings indicated that the illustrated poem ‘Pond’ enabled the respondents to generate ideas for their writing. The narratives also fulfilled the criteria of text structure, ideas, character and setting, and vocabulary as stated in the Analytical Rubric for Narrative Marking. Therefore, the respondents were able to write narratives. However, the utilisation of picture stimulus only helped to generate ideas to a certain extent. The quality of narrative writing was also further improved through feedback provided during the teaching and learning sessions. The findings also revealed that the respondents were able to achieve the ‘can do’ statement as stated in the CEFR Assessment Format. Furthermore, the use of print-based multimodal texts encouraged multimodal and visual literacy as the respondents exploited semiotic resources within the texts. This study suggested that print-based multimodal texts could be used as instructional materials in narrative writing; thus, teachers should consider them to promote effective learning.

Culture teaching in EFL classes: Teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and classroom practices

It is inevitably believed that culture teaching is the pivotal feeling of integrating culture into the teaching of a language, including in the EFL setting. This study aims to explore the English teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and the reflection of their beliefs and attitudes on the teaching syllabi. The sequential explanatory mix-methods design was applied in junior high schools in Ngawi. The data were obtained from 144 English teachers’ answers to a questionnaire and interviews with six teachers. Then, the data were analysed by using descriptive statistics, the independent sample T-test, and the Mann-Whitney test. The results indicated that the majority of junior high school English teachers believed in the importance of incorporating culture into their teaching of the language taught and students’ learning process. Moreover, both state and private junior high school English teachers showed similar beliefs and attitudes related to culture teaching. When they taught English, the culture associated with that language had also been taught so that the misconception of learning the language can be minimized. The result of teachers’ practices strongly indicates that the English teachers in Ngawi had implemented the teaching of culture and inserted various cultural elements in the process of their teaching and learning in the EFL classes.

Am I getting my point across? Microstructure of English classroom discourses by Acehnese teachers

For English teaching practice, productive talks that spur students’ comprehension, creativity, and problem-solving ability are vital. This research aimed at finding out the spoken discourse based on six phases of microstructure in English classrooms. The data were obtained recordings and observations of two English teachers, chosen through purposive sampling, from Islamic senior high schools in Aceh. The data were concerned with the lexical density or the ratio of content to grammatical or function words within a clause. They were analyzed through thematic analysis which consists of five steps: data familiarization, code generation, theme search, themes revision, and theme definition. It was found that the total lexical density obtained by the first teacher in Class A was 63.66% and in class, B was 66.52%, while the second teacher in Class A was 71. 74% and in Class B was 68.12%. The second teacher 2 in Class A had a higher lexical density than the first teacher even though both of them are considered to produce a high lexical density of around 60-70%. The formality of spoken discourse of the two teachers shows that the first teacher produced 172.5 while the second teacher produced 184. It means that the second teacher's spoken discourse was more formal than the first teacher’s discourse. To analyze the utterances of teachers and to find the density of language used in the classrooms during the teaching and learning process is important because they implicitly inform whether the language used is understandable for the students or not.

Question-declaration coupling in a university meeting talk: Discourse of social inequality and collegiality

Conversation Analysis (CA) deals with the description of the microscopic and corpus-driven data in an ‘unmotivating looking’ analytical fashion. As long as there are new, interesting, or deviant features from the data, they are always worthy of a micro analysis. For this paper, we report the ‘question-declaration coupling’ in meeting talks as a new feature and explicate it through the discourse of social inequality and collegiality in the academe. The data came from a total of five recorded meetings from three departments, such as Education, Arts Science, and Social Work, in a private university in Manila, Philippines. The meetings lasted for five hours and 50 minutes. From adjacency pairs of question-answer, the sequential pattern shows that the questions deserve conspicuous answers from the subordinates, but the Chair automatically couples them with declarative sentences and other utterances that serve as continuers. The pattern is categorised as a strategic turn-suppressing mechanism to hold back the members from possibly challenging the existing policies of the institution. It is also seen as a strategic mechanism to deprive the members of extending the litanies of possible counter-arguments. From a positive perspective, we argue that it is through the air of social inequality and collegiality that people are able to know their boundaries in an ongoing interaction. Toward the end, we state the implications of the results for teaching and learning socio-pragmalinguistics. We also recommend future cross-linguistic comparisons for these microscopic features under study, considering the small corpus of this study.

Lecturers’ perception on the implementation of approaches to teaching literature in EFL classrooms

The selection of appropriate approach(es) to teaching literature in EFL classrooms becomes a necessity that they can result in good performance of the students, both in their critical thinking aspect and their language proficiency. The problem appears when the lecturer does not implement a suitable approach to literary analysis when teaching literature to the EFL students. These problems led to the student’s inability to perform as expected. The present study examines how lecturers perceive the implementation of approaches to teaching literature in EFL classrooms and their relations to improving the students’ reflective writing skills as the manifestation of the student’ responses to the literary works. Among the approaches studied were the Language-based approach, the Reader-Response approach, and the Philosophical approach. The study was carried out on six lecturers teaching the Literary Criticism course in the EFL classrooms at the university level. A questionnaire was distributed to the lecturers teaching this course at a university in Semarang, Indonesia, containing eight-question items regarding how they perceive the literary approaches and how effective they used them in improving the students’ reflective writing skills, in encouraging the students to think critically about the events in literary works and in relating the readings to some aspects of their own lives. The study revealed that each literary analysis approach in teaching literature has its benefits and characteristics. The study results also showed that each approach has its strengths and weaknesses that differ from one another.

Indonesian EFL students’ perceptions of effective non-native English teachers

Effective non-native English teachers (NNETs) are essential to facilitate students to develop their English mastery. However, while students are directly affected by teachers’ instructions, they have been limitedly involved in teacher education and development research. The current study aims to explore the qualities of effective non-native English teachers (NNETs) from students’ perspectives in Tanjungpinang, Indonesia. This study was mixed-method research specifically an explanatory sequential design. In the quantitative phase, 380 students were selected using cluster sampling techniques. Meanwhile, in the qualitative phase, six students were purposely selected based on their English proficiency levels and gender. The instruments used were a questionnaire adapted from Park and Lee (2006) and an interview guide. To analyze the questionnaire data, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were employed. MANOVA test was run to seek significant differences by students’ gender and English proficiency levels. Meanwhile, the qualitative data were coded to identify the emerging patterns. The results show that the qualities concerning teachers’ socio-affective skills gained the highest mean scores compared to those concerning teachers’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogical skills. This study also confirms that there was a significant difference among students in perceiving effective NNETs by English proficiency levels. This study is expected to help various stakeholders to improve pre and in-service EFL teacher education and development in Indonesia.

L2 attitude and motivation of secondary, undergraduate, and postgraduate ESL learners in India

Second language (L2) attitude and motivation-related studies focusing on differences caused by age have mostly highlighted the temporal dimension of L2 attitude and motivation. Age-related L2 motivation studies have also been gainfully employed at comparisons between L2 learners of different age groups recruited from different L2 learning environments. Such studies have not, however, attempted an analysis of the L2 attitudinal and motivational differences that may exist among L2 learners within a closer age range, e.g., 18 to 25 years. This article presents the findings of an L2 attitude and motivation survey, using a modified version of Dӧrnyei et al. (2006) and Ryan (2005), conducted among secondary, undergraduate, and postgraduate English as a second language (ESL) learners (N210) in India. It primarily presents a comparative analysis of the L2 attitudinal and motivational constructs of integrativeness, instrumentality, cultural interest, linguistic self-confidence, and L2 anxiety attested in the sample. Additionally, it offers a description of the correlation between the five L2 attitudinal and motivational constructs concerning the different ESL groups. As the ESL learners across the academic levels demonstrated ESL motivation more on the side of instrumentality, they also reported linguistic self-confidence more in the familiar environment of an L2 classroom than outside of it. Since better motivational strategies enhance learner dedication to the learning of a certain L2, an elaborated understanding of the specific differences in L2 attitude and motivation within this important age range should help design more useful and effective L2 pedagogical methods.

ICT platforms for Indonesian EFL students viewed from gender during the COVID-19 pandemic

The aims of this study are to find out (1) ICT (Information and Communications Technology) platform used by male and female students from Islamic universities in Indonesia, (2) their perception of using ICT, and (3) their barriers to using ICT in English language learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data was collected from an online questionnaire (Google Form) from students majoring in English from seven Islamic universities in Indonesia. There were 30 male students and 30 female students from every university who participated in this research, making a total of 210 student respondents. The data were analyzed quantitatively by using the SPSS computer program. First of all, female students used more various types of ICT platforms compared to male students. Second, the female students viewed ICT use more positively than male students in language learning. And lastly, even though the females deemed ICT more optimistically compared to male students, nevertheless the females encountered more barriers in using the ICT platforms compared to the male students in this study. Again, even though male students were more skillful in ICT literacy than female students, female students constructively regarded ICT use in language learning as more beneficial to them in terms of skill, knowledge, and motivational improvement.

Aspects of writing knowledge and EFL students' writing quality

Writing knowledge pertaining to process, system, content, and genre plays an essential role to produce an intelligible composition. The purpose of the present study is twofold – to investigate the correlation between aspects of writing knowledge and quality of writing, and to investigate the contribution of the overall and individual aspects of writing knowledge to writing quality. The participants were 54 second-year ELT undergraduate students of a university in Indonesia. A writing test and multiple-choice test on writing knowledge were used as the instruments of data collection. The analysis employed Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regressions. The result revealed a significant positive correlation between writing knowledge and writing quality. As a unit, the knowledge of process, system, content, and genre, indicates a significant contribution to the writing quality. Individually, however, only process knowledge significantly contributes to the writing quality. It provides additional pieces of evidence that process knowledge be given special attention, thus writing instruction should allow students to learn writing knowledge explicitly and implicitly.

Non-millennial teachers’ strategies in coping with the online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

This article discusses the strategies used by five non-millennial teachers (aged 54-59 years old) of a junior high school in coping with the online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, in Ngawi, East Java, Indonesia. The teachers were interviewed, and the data were transcribed and analyzed by creating a data repository, expanding the codes, describing the coded data, and drawing conclusions. The results revealed that the teachers had several strategies used, which were to increase students’ interest in learning, provide students with knowledge and attention, create efficient learning resources, and use SIMPEL (Sistem Informasi Manajemen Pembelajaran or Learning Management Information System), which is specifically available only in Ngawi. SIMPEL was specially developed by the Ngawi district education office, to ensure that the learning processes in Ngawi Regency continue to run optimally during the COVID-19 outbreak. SIMPEL substituted the use of online YouTube videos and materials because the materials were already provided by the system, decreasing the need for the teachers to depend on other resources. Despite these teachers also using other online platforms, hence issues such as the slow internet connection, running out of quotas and blackouts, hindered their efforts to use these platforms at times. Hence, WAG was the most used media to conduct their online learning due to its simplicity and availability. These teachers continued to strive to learn digital technologies ever since they changed from their previous face-to-face teaching strategies.