EFL Students’ Challenges towards Home Learning Policy During Covid-19 Outbreak

Obviously, the world wide is shocking with pandemic of Covid-19 where it effects to every single part of human lives and everyday activities for sure. Additionally, the Covid-19 pandemic also has its influence toward education system from lower to upper levels. Both teachers and students feel the impact from the recent pandemic especially in Indonesian context where of course it triggers barriers due to the educational adjustment they have to follow. Therefore, this research is particulalrly aimed to investigate perception of EFL students toward home learning during pandemic of Covid-19. In-dept interview was applied to eight students of English Department students of University of Widya Gama Mahakam Samarinda. Specifically, the in-dept interview is consisted of the students’ perception mainly regarding with challenges they faced when having home learning activities during the Covid-19 pandemic up to the recent time. As a result, the researcher found that the students face three major types of challenges including internet connection, healthy reason, and the use of certain online application. Further discussion and and fruitful suggestions also provided in this research.

Strategies to Improve Skills to Write Stories: A Case Study in Universities in Tulungagung City

The article discusses the quality of language exploitation performed by the students of the English Language Study Program in the City of Tulungagung in writing English text stories. The data was collected for 4 months, starting May up to August 2020 in IAIN Tulungagung campus in the sense of data collection, through the observation. This study used case study design and involves 43 Indonesian undergraduate students and who were majoring in English. Narrative texts produced by the students were collected to be analyzed using a qualitative approach. Two aspects becoming the focus of discussion are the text structure and the text texture. The former represents how discourse units are selected and arranged in accordance to the narrative format, while the latter is related to how grammar is exploited and how words are selected for the stories. The results show that most of the students are very good in selecting and arranging discourse unit to build the stories. Meanwhile, they still show weaknesses in constructing grammar and selecting words for the stories. In these areas, inferences from Indonesian and Javanese languages happen.

The Violation of Maxims in Indonesian Speech of Mental Retardation Child

This article aims to describe the violations of the maxims in the Indonesian speech of mentally retarded children. This study used a descriptive qualitative method. The data source of this study is one mild mental retardation child. The data of this research are words, phrases, and sentences that contain violations of the maxims in the principle of cooperation. Data collection techniques in this study were observation, stimulating, recording, and field recording. Data collection procedures in this study include entering the field, making observations, recording speeches, transcribing field records, entering data in tables, validating data that has been collected. In analyzing the data, a pragmatic equivalent analysis method is used. Data analysis procedures in this study are reducing data, presenting data, interpreting data, and concluding. In analyzing the data, a pragmatic equivalent analysis method is used. Data analysis procedures in this study are reducing data, presenting data, interpreting data, and concluding. The results of the data analysis of this study are the maxima violation that most children with mental retardation are the maxim of relations. That is because the research subject often changes the topic of speech. The research subject often changes the topic because he is not interested in talking about topics.

The Online Media Practice in Covering Indonesian National Police’s Prevention Efforts on the Prohibited Party's Ideology Spread in Indonesia

Critical discourse analysis examines the efforts of social forces and ideological interests of a group that are reproduced and defended through texts. The discussion is connected with social contexts that have specific purposes and assumptions. This study focuses on online news reported at liputan6.com site on May 11 th, 2016. This study’s method is a critical discourse analysis introduced by Norman Fairclough with the implementation of transitivity system as the data analysis theory. It aims to uncover the elements of social practice from the aspects of linguistic and discourse. The result indicates the existence of social practice from the online news site in processing information shapes the practice representation conducted by figures who act the discourse which can affect the views of people including their understanding and behavior in social life.

Project-based Learning Implementation to Cultivate Preservice English Teachers’ 21st Century Skills

The contribution of Project-based Learning (PbL) to 21st century learning skill development has been widely discussed by experts. This present qualitative research aims at exploring how PbL is applied in Lantern School of English Education (LSEE), an undergraduate program in Indonesia that produces an English teacher. In further, this research also looked at how the implementation enhanced the students’ 21st century learning skills comprising creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Considering those objectives, this research stood under qualitative approach and specifically employed case study design in order to investigate a single case which was project-based learning implementation in a particular context. The data were collected from interview, observation, and relevant documents which in this case, reflective essay, syllabus and students’ final projects. Observation and syllabus were used to investigate the implementation of PbL in LSEE, interviews and was to gather information about how the implementation cultivated students 21st century skills, while students’ works and reflective essay were to triangulate information from the other data collection techniques. After gaining the data, all were analysed using coding process to obtain the embedded themes as findings. The findings showed that the institution implemented PbL through the assessment, classroom activities, teacher roles, and student roles. Based on the students’ viewpoints, project-based assessment, group classroom activities, teachers being a facilitator, and students’ centeredness were successfully trained their ability on creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Conclusion and recommendation are also presented after the findings were discussed.

An Investigation into Teachers Practices of Teaching Early Reading and Practical problems in Its Implementation

The purpose of this study was to investigate practices of teaching early reading, and challenges teachers face in its implementation at the Ethiopian primary schools. The study was carried out in 224 grade two government primary schools found in the Amhara National regional State, west Gojjam zone, Ethiopia, in 2019/2020 academic year. To attain this objective, a descriptive research design was employed. The participants of the study were 112 English language teachers enrolled in the primary schools at Dembecha woreda, Jiga woreda, Jabitehinan woreda, and Bure woreda in west Gojjam zone. Interview, questionnaire, and observation were used to gather data. The findings revealed that teachers failed to practice the teaching of early reading in line with the purposes and principles of teaching early reading. Teachers used traditional way of teaching approach in teaching reading. The study also showed that teachers are deficiently trained regarding phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, reading comprehension, oral fluency, vocabulary, and phonemic awareness. Besides, lack of teachers training, lack of materials, and unrelated educational qualification were major impediments of teachers while implementing teaching early reading. Finally, it was recommended that teachers be given trainings about methods of English language teaching in general, and teaching early reading in particular.

Developing Writing Module for the Fourth-Semester Learners of English Department at State Islamic Institute of Palopo

This research aimed to develop an appropriate module based on the writing needs of the learners. The author took the fourth-semester learners of the English Department at the State Islamic Institute of Palopo in the academic year 2018/2019. The author involved 40 learners as her participants. The method of the research was Research and Development. The author used the ADDIE model. The ADDIE model consisted of five stages, namely analysis, design, develop, implementation and evaluation. The instruments of the research were questionnaires and documents. The data were analyzed quantitatively qualitatively. The results of the content, the design, and the media experts validation showed that the module got good and very good category. The writing I module quality based on the learners’ response in the field try-out showed that 75% of learners very agree and 25% of learners agree with the materials presented in the module. The result of this research hopefully gives a contribution to some parties, especially to the writing I lecturers and to the other researchers.

Elements Hindering Vietnamese Tertiary Students’ Participation in Group Activities: A Case Study

Plenty of meticulous research has been conducted to investigate the entire process for implementing group activities in language classrooms. Nevertheless, few detailed empirical investigations have been pursued in the sub-area of what influences the participation of English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students in group discussions. Thus, the present study was conducted to examine the elements impacting the group-work participation of first-year EFL students at University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University (VNU). Ten EFL freshmen and four teachers of English participated in the study over a four-week period by attending semi-structured interviews. The findings highlighted a variety of elements discouraging the learners’ participation related to themselves, pedagogy, and culture and also revealed internal elements as the most significant.

The Interferences of Indonesian Grammatical Aspects into English: An Evaluation on Preservice English Teachers’ EFL Learning

Decades-long researches in a language in contact field have proved that when a learner learns a new language, his/her knowledge regarding their first language might interfere with their learning. If it occurs, the learning process will be more challenging. The data in this research was collected by using document study technique on twenty-five research outlines written by preservice English teachers in order to investigate the potential of interferences of Indonesian subject – verb agreement pattern into English. To do so, a descriptive study was adopted. The data was analysed by incorporating error and contrastive analyses. The finding of this research confirmed that four types of subject – verb agreements pattern of English had been interfered by that of Indonesian. The grammatically incorrect sentences, which were caused by such interferences, occurred very individually. It means that the interference varies from one preservice English teacher to another.

Blended Learning Application in Higher Education: EFL Learners’ Perceptions, Problems, and Suggestions

This study sought to explore Indonesian university students' perceptions, problems, and suggestions of the application of blended learning in their EFL courses. A questionnaire consisting of 6 categories (benefits of online learning, benefits of face-to-face learning, learning assessment, problems in blended learning, suggestions for quality improvement of blended learning, and open-ended questions) was used as the research instrument. The collected data were analyzed descriptively and qualitatively. The results showed that most of the students perceived positively both the online and face-to-face modes used in their blended EFL courses, although they tended to have negative views on certain online technical aspects. Internet connectivity was the main problem and the solution of all technical problems was the main suggestion reported by the students. As this research was conducted only with students from one study program, the results should not be generalized and future research is suggested to be more focused on the comparison of students’ preferences for other blended course formats and relate them to students’ EFL achievement.