STUDENTS' NEEDS IN ENGLISH TEACHING MATERIALS FOR KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS

The aim of this study was to investigate the students actual foreign language needs (Masuhara, 1998: 239-260) , namely : first, personal needs which focus on their personal information and second, learning needs covers five points, to be exact: learning attitude, learning preferences regarding activities, teaching media and topics in the EFL classroom, the gap between the target level and the present level of proficiency. A descriptive survey research design was used in this study. A set of smiley questionnaire were collected from for 113 kindergarteners from six kindergartens in Pringsewu District, Lampung Province, Indonesia. Furthermore, interviews with six homeroom teachers and six principals were conducted to get deeper data. The results show that the students are members of various tribe, included in the low to middle socioe-conomic class, the number of students surveyed is more female than male (62 female and 51 male) aged 6-7 years old. They have positive attitude toward EFL class, and they prefered learning English using games to other activities . Animals, numbers and foods were the students favorite topics. Furthermore, from four kinds of oral competencies they were able to naming objects.Â

“I FORGOT WHAT IT IS”: THE ENACTMENT OF 2013 CURRICULUM IN EFL CLASSROOM

To date, the 2013 curriculum has been implemented for almost a decade. But this latest curriculum has not been well-implemented due to many obstacles. Accordingly, plethora studies have been extensively carried out to refine the praxis. However, the investigation of this area in junior high schools is underexplored. Thus, this study was carried out to fill this void. This research study aimed to investigate the problems in enacting 2013 Curriculum, to reveal the hindering factors, and to showcase how teachers cope with those problems. Grounded in a case study, nine English teachers of state junior high schools were recruited. Data were collected through observations, documentations, and interviews. The findings confirmed that teachers experienced some delinquent setback in translating curriculum into instruction. This was related to how they teach using suggested teaching stages, integrate intended domains of competence, and conduct authentic assessment. Furthermore, students’ lack of motivation and autonomy was also a sizeable impediment. In relation to this, some hindering factors and teachers’ endeavours to cope with the abovementioned problems were also elaborated systematically. To end this article, some practical recommendations were proposed accordingly.

FOR STUDY, FUTURE CAREER AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES: FEMALE SANTRIS’ MOTIVATIONS FOR LEARNING ENGLISH

This paper reports a survey study investigating motivation for learning English of Indonesian female students. The participants were 200 female students of a senior high school of a pesantren in West Java, Indonesia who participated voluntarily. The data was gained through close-ended and open-ended questionnaires. The close-ended questionnaire was adapted from Choosri’s (2011) instrument. The data from the close-ended questionnaire was analyzed quantitatively involving average score and percentage using Microsoft Excel statistical package; whereas the data from the open-ended questionnaire was analyzed qualitatively using Miles and Huberman’s (1994) framework of qualitative data analysis. Based on the data, it was found that the students’ motivations were more instrumental than integrative, especially to continue their study to the university level, to broaden their knowledge, achieve good grade/score, and achieve better career. It was also revealed that religious motivation of learning English existed among the students: expecting to be future pendakwah ‘Muslim preacher’ and making silaturahmi (knowing more and communicating) with English speaking Muslims.

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARD THE ENACTMENT OF METACOGNITIVE INSTRUCTION IN AN EFL WRITING CLASS: LESSON LEARNED FROM A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY IN INDONESIA

Metacognition plays an important role in developing EFL students to become successful learners who are able to plan their learning goals, monitor their learning progress, and evaluate their learning outcomes in the disruption era. Because of the crucial role of metacognition in language learning, the implementation of metacognitive instruction in an EFL writing class had been investigated during one semester. Thus, this article discussed the students’ responses towards the use of the teaching program. This research study conducted with thirty three students in a private university in Lubuklinggau used a case study by collecting data through a questionnaire and reflective journals. The research results revealed that most of the EFL students had highly positive responses towards the implementation of metacognitive instruction in an EFL writing class including three aspects, namely the learning materials, learning activities, and benefits of the learning processes. Therefore, the teaching program had encouraged and benefited to the students in learning to write. Metacognitive instruction, as an alternative of effective methods, should be considered by teachers to help their students to become more independent learners.Keywords: Metacognition, metacognitive instruction, writing

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF S.U.R.E. APPROACH AS A MEANS OF ENHANCING STUDENT PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE

Due to the deficient pragmatic competence, pragmatic failures or even miscommunication will be produced in actual communication. Regarding those problems, S.U.R.E approach is offered to overcome in promoting learners’ pragmatic competence. This study aimed to investigate the impact of implementing S.U.R.E approach in improving students’ pragmatic competence. This study is a quantitative research embracing one group pretest-posttest design. One class participated and 33 students were taken as the sample of the study using random sampling technique. Three English native speakers evaluated the test takers’ pragmatic competence. They were called on to read the speech acts, along with the transcripts, and to indicate the rating based on the rating descriptions provided. The mean score among the three raters was assigned as the closing score. To collect the data, the students were given a pretest and a posttest. The data were then analyzed employing paired sample t-test through SPSS V.24. The result of the study showed that significance value was 0.00 of which it is lower than level of significance 0.05. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected. This implies that the use of S.U.R.E approach has a significant effect on improving students’ pragmatic competence.

THE USE OF DIGITAL LEARNING SYSTEM TO ENGAGE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN LISTENING PRACTICE: A CASE STUDY FROM EFL CLASS IN INDONESIA

This preliminary research aimed at portraying the impact of Digital Learning System (DLS) implementation on student empowerment. This work used qualitative descriptive case study. First semester English students of a state university in Medan, Indonesia, negotiated to participate in the study. Grounded in dialogic interview, the results suggest that the enactment of DLS gives attractive lesson for the students. The students felt the instruction made them borderless between the students and the lecturers. Overall implementation of DLS enables students to reach minimum standardized criteria in their listening skills. Limitation and further recommendation for next research are also presented

LANGUAGE TEACHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE: TEACHERS` VIEWS AND ITS CHALLENGES

The update technology usage and its changes come and give positive effects to us including the teaching and learning process in school practices. It enjoys, motivates, and facilitates the students in learning English This qualitative research aimed at analyzing the English teachers` views on the use of the digital tools in the classroom practices and the challenges in order to face the digital teaching. The results indicated that the English teacher provided digital teaching tools including laptop, speaker, mobile phones, websites and the teacher used the downloaded materials and videos from You Tube as the digital media. Lack of training for teachers, lack of time, and lack of facilities were the challenges for the English teachers in order to apply the digital teaching efficiently and create their own digital media in the school practices. Findings suggest that English teachers should participate actively on the teacher professional developments such as group discussion, workshop, training, and seminar in order to be familiar with the evolution of the new technology.

THE USE OF INFORMAL ASSESSMENT IN EVALUATING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING ABILITY: STUDENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ VOICES

In this era, English becomes an important subject to be learned in senior high school. In the case of English Language Learning, the curriculum design (K13) required the students to have critical thinking and active learning that should be master both written and spoken. Unfortunately, there are major problems faced by the students such as less confidence and low motivation in speaking. Thus, this research is conducted under a phenomenological study at SMA Muhammadiyah 2 Yogyakarta. There are two teachers and ten students who participate in the study. The Semi-structured interview had been conducted to obtain some information related to the students’ and teachers’ perceptions toward the use of informal assessment in assessing speaking. The result presents that the use of informal assessment is useful to improve the students’ interest to perform speaking and enhance the students’ confidence and motivation to perform the speaking test. Hence this research has some implications for other researches to develop a further discussion about the use of informal assessment in other language skills.

ENGAGING STUDENTS IN A FLIPPED CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION: JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL GRAMMAR PROGRAM

The importance of grammar pedagogy in learning and teaching of foreign language has been the focus of discussion for many years which has resulted in a variety of views on grammar and grammar teaching and different teaching approach as well depend on various perspectives and contexts of language learning. The present study reports students’ perception on flipped classroom mode in learning English grammar. Drawing on classroom action research through reflective journal, photo elicitation and interviews data. Qualitative findings show that: All of the students enjoyed watching the video materials and had an interest in using them for learning grammar; (2) the use of the flipped classroom mode in learning grammar made students’ independent and active in learning grammar; (3) flipped classroom engaged them in learning grammar in different discourse contexts; (4) flipped classroom mode motivated students in learning grammar. The findings of this study may be useful to other researchers who are interested in EFL teaching innovation or teachers who seek effective grammar teaching method.

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION TOWARD THE INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY TO IMPROVE MULTILITERACIES COMPETENCE IN EFL CLASSROOMS

The rapid development of information and communication technology in the 21st century undoubtedly has profound impacts on human lives and dramatically transforms education. This research aimed at finding out students’ perceptions on the integration of technology to improve multiliteracies in EFL teaching. This study employed explanatory sequential mixed method in which the data were obtained through questionnaire, interviews, and classroom observations. The results indicated that vast majority of the students supported to the use of technology in the teaching and learning practices (90.6%) for the reasons that technology helped them acquire lots of resources in their learning (89.5%) and boost their motivation (86.5%). Regarding with the students’ perceived technology level, they believed that they had good skills in using word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation program (50%). They also could use communication tools (56.3%), social media (61.5%), authoring tools (52.1%), desktop publishing (57.3%), and creating video (57.3%). In terms of the perceived barriers to integrating technology, the data indicated that the biggest constraint that the students had was the lack of or limited internet access in the their school environment (42.7%), followed by the limited to produce digital projects (39.6%). In addition, the findings show that technology was utilized as a tool for accomplishing the tasks given by the teachers and helped the students gather information from online resources and provided them more understanding about the topic learned in the classroom