ADMINISTERING CLASSES IN VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: FACILITATIONS, PRINCIPLES, EDUCATORS’ ROLES AND INTERACTIONS

This study investigates teachers’ competencies in the implementation of facilities, principles, educators’ roles, and interactions in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Using explanatory sequential mixed method, it aims to examine whether all those competencies such as learning system tools and resources, technology quality, and workload management are considered throughout the learning process. In total, 102 students from the Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teachers’ Training at Antasari State Islamic University were involved in the survey. Fourteen of them, as well as three lecturers, were then interviewed. The results indicate that despite students’ limited access to the internet, lecturers attempt to provide all students’ facilities. However, in some departments, various learning activities, monitoring, and feedback still need to be improved. The lecturers generally execute the principle of the virtual learning environment. The students mostly believe that lecturers are aware of their roles, and manage their interactions well. In conclusion, the study suggests teachers’ competencies in the virtual learning environment and calls for further studies in this subject.

LISTENING COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES; A CASE STUDY OF EFL STUDENTS IN LISTENING CLASS

Listening skill in English is one of the most important skills in communication and educational process. However, listening skill is a skill that is not easily mastered by all non-native speaker students. The students need to know and understand the difficulties in listening process. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the difficulties faced by the students dealing with listening comprehension. This research is a descriptive qualitative research with case study approach that examines six students in third semester of the English education study program in Universitas Muhammadiyah Kotabumi with three different proficiency levels: low, moderate, and high level. The results of this study showed that students with low level faced difficulties with unfamiliar words (message content), speed of speech (speaker), and lack of vocabulary (listener). Then in moderate level students felt difficult in the speed of speech (speaker) and noises (physical settings). Meanwhile, students with high level faced difficulty with the long spoken text (message content), variety of accents (speaker) and noises (physical settings). It can be concluded that the listening comprehension difficulties encountered by the students at tertiary level are different depending on their proficiency in English. Therefore, the implication of the current study is that the lecturer need to consider the information revealed in this study in order to be able to overcome the difficulties faced by the students.

INSTAGLISH: WHEN INSTAGRAM IS BEYOND ONLINE PHOTO-SHARING PLATFORM TO INDUCE YOUR ENGLISH

Motivated by the growth of social media throughout the globe, including in Indonesia, educational practitioners need to be creative and make use of this opportunity to boost up the learning goals, for example making use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Line, and many others (social media) in educational settings. Among those social media, Instagram has increased its popularity, particularly in Indonesia, with its 22 million users. It is an online platform in which users can share their stories via uploaded photos. Recently, it is not merely used as photo story sharing but also online shopping, news updating, and video conferencing. As Instagram offers promising features, this study explored how this platform was applied to improve the students English written competence, focusing on reading and writing. This study is action research that investigates the use of Instagram as a social-and-educational medium that offers beyond new language learning experiences in the project called InstaGlish, Instagram English. The data were collected from the classroom observation during the project, students' Instagram photo posts, captions and comments, and students' reading and writing scores after project implementation. A questionnaire and direct interview to the students were also carried out to give a more thorough and deeper understanding of the students' responses toward how effective InstaGlish helps them learn and induce their English. In addition, the findings of this current study were expected to give fruitful insight on how to use social media not merely as the fun-without-meaning activity yet fun-and-meaningful new learning experiences.

THE STRATEGIES APPLIED BY EFL LEARNERS TO OVERCOME MORPHO-SYNTACTIC DEVIATION IN SECTION 2 OF TOEFL TEST IN A PESANTREN-BASED UNIVERSITY

The study aims at revealing the morphological and syntactical deviations patterned by EFL students, and their strategies to respond structure and written expression of TOEFL-Like Test. 70 students participated in this study. The students who were from study programs of English Literature, Technical Information, and Political Sciences of Universitas Sains Alqur’an were involved in this study. Their feedback were analyzed based on a qualitative approach. The findings exposed that 70 test-takers constructed 1.711 morpho-syntactic deviations. The most six morpho-syntactic problematic queries based on EFL students’ responses are epithet in parallel structure, subject-verb needs, object needs in noun phrase forms, quantifier-noun agreement, inversion of negative expression, connector subject pronoun in the adjective clause. Concerning strategies adopted by the students, they revealed that paying to the object of the preposition, focusing on past participles, making in mind that verbs of the sentence agree to the subject in cases of prepositional phrases, making in mind verbs agreement on an expression of quantity cases, and focusing on the present participle questions need to be put in. Furthermore, this study suggested that the EFL students are encouraged to take into consideration those six most morpho-syntactic deviations.

STUDENTS' LITERACY CULTURE IN NON DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AREA (PESANTREN)

Literacy is a social practice. In the past, literacy was only focused on reading and writing. Recently, literacy can happen everywhere, become a culture and people can make meaning of the practice. Literacy also cannot be separated from technology nowadays. Most people become digital natives to accomplish their daily business in which it is also the literacy activities. This study wants to clarify students’ preference in reading, to know students’ multimodal literacy, to probe students’ literacy practice in Pesantren, and to probe students’ literacy cultures if there are some digital technology stuffs. By applying qualitative approach using questionnaires and semi-structured interview to students, the results showed that mostly students were not really love reading (medium) in Pesantren because of no any book collections, the obligation of their own regulation to finish what they have read, boredom reading, no much time to read due to some other activities in Pesantren and preference to sleep rather than to read in Pesantren. Students also preferred reading novel as their multimodal literacy in Pesantren. The following answers, students conveyed that they felt so-so after doing literacy practice. The last, the answers related to the literacy culture if they meet some digital technology stuffs were various. Most students would not read at all at home when they get holiday. Most students also were very agreed if they have access to digital technology stuffs in Pesantren, but the claims also showed that the presence of digital technology stuffs would disturb their reading quality. Therefore, the students’ literacy cultures in non-digital technology area are average because they have various main activities of Pesantren to do and the availability of the access to some digital technology stuffs in Pesantren are seen disturbing.

EDUCATIONAL VALUES ON ENGLISH ISLAMIC SONG LYRICS OF SAMI YUSUF ALBUM

Educational values can influence people’s behaviour and daily life. Besides, educational values can create good characters of human beings. This study aims : 1) to find out educational values in English Islamic song lyrics of Sami Yusuf album and 2) to analyze educational values in English Islamic song lyrics of Sami Yusuf album. This research is a content analysis study that includes descriptive analysis. The data collecting techniques used by researchers were observation and documentation. The result shows the educational values that are found in Sami Yusuf’s song lyrics deal with honesty, courage, peace, self-reliance & potential, self-discipline & moderation, loyalty & dependability, respect, love, sensitive & unselfishness, kindness & friendliness, and justice & mercy. The highest educational value that is found is honesty which is 19%, while the least are peace, respect, and love that are only found once with a percentage of 3% each of them. Therefore, it is recommended for English teacher to use English Islamic song lyrics in Sami Yusuf album as a medium in teaching and learning. Teachers do not have to worry because the songs in this album contain a variety of positive values that can be used in the learning process.

COMIC STRIPS FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING: THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES ACCORDING TO RECENT RESEARCH

Recent studies have argued for the use of comic strips in language teaching, while concerns with the challenges in its application are also frequently highlighted. Using George’s (2008) model of literature review, the present study will elaborate on the use of comic strips as a medium of learning, its benefits, and the challenges in its implementation. The data sources are research articles related to the implementation of comic strips for language teaching, published in reputable international journals and accredited national journals from 2011 to 2020. The review reveals that previous studies have proven that comic strips in language teaching can promote students’ vocabulary, improve students' grammar competence, support the students' reading skills, and help the students who lack writing skills. However, these studies also show concerns on challenges in implementing comic strips in language teaching, such as its relevance, the choices of the topics, and how it cannot support spoken skills as much as it would support the written skills. It implies that while comic strips can be good media for teaching language, teachers should also find strategies in overcoming the challenges that may occur during its implementation.

TEACHING ONLINE IN PANDEMIC TIME:THE EXPERIENCE OF INDONESIAN EFL TEACHERS

Myriad studies reported abrupt transition of face-to-face classrooms to online learning due to pandemic and the results were various, contextually-bounded from country to another. Yet, studies exploring the aforementioned issue in Indonesian EFL context are still scarce. This study explores issues and challenges experienced by Indonesian EFL teachers in conducting English online learning during the pandemic within qualitative approach. Twenty-five secondary English teachers from urban, suburban, rural and remote area participated in this study. Subsequently, online questionnaire and semi-structured virtual interviews were employed to collect data. Then, the data were analyzed descriptively and thematically. The results showed that the participants had positive responses to online learning to maintain learning processes in pandemic time. In terms of teaching language skills, the participants argued that speaking is the most challenging to teach online. Moreover, the study identified three types of online learning challenges related to technical aspects, teachers and students. Pedagogically, this study implied that pandemic time has given teachers disguised blessings as they had an opportunity to upgrade their information technology skills and literacies.

REVITALIZING RESEARCH IN THE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL PROGRAM: INPUTS FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT AND FACULTY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

The study aims to find out the experiences and observations of teachers in teaching Research to Junior High School students. In particular, it wants to identify what needs to be enhanced in the research curriculum and faculty development program, particularly in terms of the knowledge and skills of research teachers and the other teachers in the junior high school department. It found out that students consider research a difficult subject that makes them less interested. Research theories and concepts appropriate for junior high school must be identified for curriculum revision. Teachers believed that they need to enhance their knowledge and skills and gain more experience in writing to become creative and confident research teachers. For teachers to be actively engaged in research, they have to be provided with training and workshops related to research and be strongly encouraged to do at least action research. The faculty development program may also include creating research mentors and the provision of opportunities for publication

ENGLISH MATERIAL NEEDS OF AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY STUDENTS: AN ESP APPROACH

English for automotive technology is a specific discipline in which the students require particular language learning materials to meet their academic and future career needs. Hence, contextual material is a prerequisite to achieving the success of language learning. Drawing on this issue, the present study identified the English material needs of automotive technology students for working in vehicle inspection. The required data were collected using a web-based questionnaire and semi-structured interview from 186 students, 7 English lecturers, and 44 graduates of Poltrada Bali and PKTJ Tegal Indonesia who were purposively selected as the participants. This study classified English materials into content areas of automotive technology, language skills, and linguistic features. The results revealed that content areas needed by the students included vehicle components and their performances, ranging from engine system to support components. This study further suggested that speaking and reading were the most frequently needed skills than the other two skills because of the rapid growth of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) and the needs of international information exchange in the automotive field. It was also depicted that the students preferred applied terminologies and translation to grammar since many automotive technology references and vehicle inspection were normally written in English. The results of this study could serve as an overview for lecturers and institution in automotive technology program to create standard syllabus and contextual material textbooks for the students.